You can outfit them in hats, and even take a moment to sit with them, making them dance, or giving one a kiss on the cheek.

To balance out its darker themes, the Rot themselves are adorable, and discovering each one is a joy as they join your little pack, following you around like your own personal army. This isn’t to say kids shouldn’t play this, as there is an easy difficulty called Story Mode, but as the game deals with plenty of death and loss, as well as some moments that can get incredibly dark, I would certainly look to it as something you could play with your kids, possibly taking the reigns on some of the more challenging encounters, as well as explaining some of its themes in ways where they can understand the story alongside you, and maybe some of the puzzles that can be a bit obtuse for their own good. Kena may also look the part for being a kids game, hell, the adorable little Rot creatures are something a marketing team would be flooding to stores in time for Christmas, but Kena’s themes and stark difficulty don’t quite lean into being necessarily a kid-friendly title. Here, every single jump, ability, or mechanic is beautifully harmonized with one another to serve the gameplay first, something that Experiment 101 failed to do with Biomutant. Thankfully, Ember Lab absolutely nails the assignment and takes a less is more approach to what Kena offers, giving us a fleshed out and polished experience that uses its few parts in enough interesting ways where the team doesn’t reach beyond their grasp and unnecessarily throw a dozen mechanics at the wall in hopes that something sticks.

Now, granted, while the visual aesthetics and direction here is top-notch, it’s another thing entirely to take those skills and adapt them into an interactive experience AKA, a video game. If there was ever a studio built to make movie-licensed videogames, Ember Lab might just be that studio. The lighting and fog in any given moment is equally as impressive, often allowing the art direction here to absolutely sing. In fact, Maya and the Last Dragon is a movie that I kept thinking back to when playing this, mostly because of how similar some visual choices are and how often lighting is used to make the air around most scenes just seem like a character in itself. Nearly every cutscene or introduction to a new character is wonderfully shot, filled to the brim with personality, and beautifully staged in a manner befitting of an animated film. Because of their history with such a craft, there is a lot here with Kena that solidifies that portfolio stunning set pieces that are well framed and directed with an appropriately trained eye, stunning animations that impress with every jump and attack, to the swelling of music in pivotal moments to drive home the offered emotion it’s trying to convey.

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