PSA: If you haven’t taken a moment to check your monthly free games on Playstation Plus, there is a fantastic 2D adventure game waiting for you: Ender Lilies: Quietus of The Knights.
I’ll admit that, as a Basic plan subscriber, wading through the tiered offerings available monthly at PS+ has become less and less exciting ever since the more expensive subs have gobbled up the hype-worthy and more recent releases that Sony provides.
The month of August, however, brought this meditative, crunchy genre exercise into my life. It is now one of only two games that has pried my attention away from Shadow of The Erdtree this summer. If you’re a metroidvania fan, a bullet hell fan, or someone always craving a new take on traditional dark fantasy settings, you won’t regret claiming Ender Lilies while its free. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t regret paying full price for it, either, as it struck a chord with critics when it came out.
Well-done metroidvanias hold a special place in my heart, but sometime in the last ten years, the indie scene exploded with them to the point that you couldn’t crack a Vampire Killer whip without smacking one on the backside. But beyond being offered for free, Elder Lilies cut through the noise by reminding me of another lovely, elegiac game in the genre: Momodora: Reverie under The Moonlight.
Cumbersome titles aside, both games project a tone that is sad and a little depressive without being sad or depressing games. Instead, Ender Lilies, not unlike Shadow of The Erdtree, puts you in a post apocalyptic realm that is clearly about to get better. Thinking about it now, that’s a motif of my summer gaming, since Kunitsu Gami: Path of The Goddess puts the player directly in charge of restoring a damaged world.
To highlight Ender Lilies‘ unique take on the genre, you directly control an incandescent little waif of a priestess who has the power to ease her world’s suffering, but no personal way of protecting herself from all the dangers that await her. This is where Ender Lilies riffs on the bullet hell or shoot ’em up genres by also giving the player indirect control over spirits who have been cured of the realm’s blight and allowed to pass on peacefully. These spirts, then, are who perform the games combat, defense, and even some of the traversal on behalf of the player character.
In gameplay terms, these spirits play either like special moves, a la a shmup’s smart bombs, or hands-off upgrades like drones that patrol around you or post up sentinel-style (in the vein of Strider or R-Type). Each comes with a cooldown that ranges from being almost immediately available again to excruciatingly slow to return. With more than 10 spirits available to collect, this gameplay feature gives Ender Lilies surprisingly deep customizability when it comes to character build as well. Something that is often missing from straightforward metroidvanias.
So go cop Ender Lilies! You won’t regret it. And if you do enjoy it, keep its forthcoming sequel, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in The Mist (another mouthful) on your radar. It releases sometime yet this year. In fact, Steam players can grab it in Early Access right now!
Featured Image: Binary Haze Interactive
Boss Rush Podcast – A Podcast about Video Games
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