Retreat To Enen, developed by Head West, is a relaxing survival game that invites you on a journey where you need to learn how to survive in harmony with nature. This is what you can expect from the game.

Story

Set over 1500 years into the future, where humanity narrowly avoided extinction, they changed their ways and turned away from war to live a more peaceful life. The game focuses on your rite of passage. Once a person grows up into an adult, they are sent to the island of Enen where they have to prove that they can survive and become one with nature. This is done by meditating at the nine different ruin locations found on the island.

Exploration

Retreat To Enen has three different biomes. However, two of these are locked at the start of the game. To unlock these biomes, you must meditate at all three ruins in the biome to open a portal to the next one. Each biome has new resources and new wildlife to discover. Meditating at these ruins also unlocks more crafting and building recipes.

Survival

In order to survive on Enen, you have to pay attention to four different things. Your health can go down by not eating or drinking enough, but also by getting infected or poisoned. and of course, being hit. Hunger and thirst are also important. Enen is filled with fruit trees and animals to eat. You can drink water directly from ponds but this is not recommended since you can get infected this way, so make sure to cook the water first. The last one is called Spirit. On the island, you can find domes scattered around the place. Interacting with these domes gives you a breathing exercise that you can follow in real life to relieve stress. You can also meditate at the ruins along with the character.

Building/Crafting

You can pick up different resources from the ground as well as destroy different ore rocks to get those resources. Destroying rocks is not done with a pickaxe like in other games. You have a special quantum ability that you can activate in order to break the rocks. With these resources, you can craft items like flasks to store water or craft a spear for hunting. Building a house is really simple and the building mechanic works really well. It even comes with a nice-looking animation where it looks like you are 3D printing the building with your mind.

Combat

Retreat To Enen does not have a lot of combat encounters. This is mainly because you are the only human on the island. However, there is still wildlife to look out for. At the start of the game, you only have to look out for the snakes that are hiding in the grass since they can poison you. But in later biomes, you will be attacked by wolves or even bears, so make sure you are prepared before heading out into other biomes.

This is what you can expect when playing through Retreat To Enen. The meditation system is a really nice fit for the story of the game and will make you more relaxed while playing the game.

What do you think of Retreat To Enen? Let me know in the comments.