Don’t Nod has long been one of my favourite developers. Since their first game Remember Me back in 2013 they’ve always been on my radar. Of course they are most known for Life is Strange but they don’t get enough love for games like Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. They are back with a space adventure Aphelion which I have been eagerly anticipating. So where does it stack up in Don’t Nods growing catalog? Let’s dive in.

For Aphelion Don’t Nod has gone off to space to planet called Persephone. Earth is in peril and humans desperately need to find a new place to live. Two astroscientists, Dr. Ariane Montclair and Officer Thomas Cross, are sent to the planet to figure out if it is inhabitable or not.

You can tell from the very beginning that Ariane and Thomas have some personal history and that they are working through some things, but their focus is on the mission. The human race is at stake after all. Unfortunately their ship crash lands onto Persephone and the two are split up. With communications down the two have no idea if the other survived or not, but they have hope. Hope and a plan.

Both characters believe that the other will continue the mission and try and rendezvous at the objective which is “The Source”. The Source they believe is the key to finding out if life on the planet is is possible, though they seem to know little else. As the story progresses its quite clear the pair were left in the dark on a lot of things, but we won’t go into spoilers here!

Solid Story But Missing That Don’t Nod Charm

Again without getting into too many details and spoiling the story here, while it is a pretty basic space tale, I found myself invested. The world of Persephone is gorgeous as I found myself staring out at the world a few times. Persephone is filled with EM energy and both Ariane and Thomas have an EM scanner that can pick up the energies and help guide them. It also on occasion can manipulate the world and open up paths for you to continue.

My immediate thought after the two crashed was all about survival. They have no food or water, how the heck are they going to actually survive this world? Of course this is a video game so no need to ever worry about that, but I thought they might at least bring it up once or twice to give that extra sense of panic and need for survival.

And while the world is gorgeous and the story is engaging enough, I still felt like something was missing, the character building. Don’t Nod are the masters at building great characters and having a lot of dialogue between them all which makes you really care for each of them. All these years later and we still care about Chloe & Max, but I’m not sure we will feel the same about Ariane & Thomas.

That’s not to say they are bad characters or anything. On their own they are fine and the actors did a great job portraying them. But with very little dialogue other than trying to send messages to mission control, it just felt like I couldn’t connect with them enough compared to previous Don’t Nod games. It was a missed opportunity in my opinion when they do it so well.

More Gameplay Than Your Typical Don’t Nod Game

The first thing you will notice playing Aphelion is that there is a lot more going on here in terms of gameplay compared to most Don’t Nod Games. While Aphelion still focuses a lot on the narrative with a lot of cutscenes, there is quite a bit to do in between.

During the games 11 chapters you will go back and forth playing as Ariane and Thomas as they search for one another and The Source. The core gameplay of Aphelion is a lot of walking and climbing. With no fighting involved there is definitely a lot more adventure than action here, but it is still a lot of adventure.

The climbing itself works fine enough. Sometimes the next ledge is too high and you have to make a jump for it and then hit a button to make sure you grab on. Fail to do so and you only have a moment to press another button or you will fall to your death. Same goes for the balancing sections.

You also have a grappling hook to use which at times works wonderfully well, and others is a mess. I cannot tell you how many times I pressed the button to jump or grab the next ledge and instead I just let go and fell to my death. Additionally there are a few spots where you have to gain momentum and swing from one side to another. The problem is aiming where to swing is awful. A few times I literally spent a good minute just trying to get my character to turn the right way. Moving left should mean spin left you’d think, but only when its good and ready.

The Nemesis Is My Nemesis

The other major gameplay feature is the single enemy in the game, the Nemesis. The Nemesis is a blind cluster of living organisms on the planet. There’s some decent backstory to what this creature is but again I don’t want to spoil things. Since the Nemesis is blind, it relies on sound to find and kill you. To combat this there is a slow walk to avoid making any noise as well as a distraction anomaly.

Interacting with the anomaly will distract the Nemesis for a moment, allowing you to get past with ease. Or at least in theory that’s how its supposed to work. I say in theory because during the early chapters when you come across the Nemesis in small doses, it works well once the mechanic is introduced. Hit the anomaly, run by, say see you later to scary monster! Easy peasy.

The problem lies in chapter 9 and especially in chapter 10. For the back half of chapter 9 and pretty much all of chapter 10 you need to use this system in order to avoid the Nemesis as it stalks you the closer you get to the Source. The problem is the mechanic here routinely stops working. The amount of times I hit the anomaly to distract it and it apparently just said “nope” and instantly killed me instead was painful.

It also doesn’t help that these 2 chapters were by far the longest of the game and because of the issues with the gameplay itself it really dragged the my experience down. With how invested I was in the story to then go almost an hour without much story at all and getting bogged down with poor mechanics, it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I think this is another case of Don’t Nod just trying to do a little bit too much out of their comfort zone. I can appreciate the effort, and like I said in spurts it works, but it just felt like they were trying to hard to shake the “walking sim” label they’ve gained over the years and it didn’t quite work.

Final Thoughts

Aphelion is a fine action-adventure game. I use “action” loosely here as there isn’t that much action, but there is more than we are used to in a Don’t Nod title. With a solid enough story there is enough to get invested in here. But with game play mechanics that faulter more than they work, and a final third of the game that drags on far too long, it’s hard to recommend Aphelion to anyone other than the die hard Don’t Nod fans.

Aphelion was reviewed on Xbox Series X. The game was released on April 28, 2026. It is available on PC (via Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.