Nova Antarctica: this indie game overpromises and underdelivers

Debora Pape

6.2.2026

Translation: Natalie McKay

Nova Antarctica’s supposed to be an emotional journey through a serene post-apocalyptic landscape. But it turns out to be a tough battle against sluggish controls and annoying mechanics.

I yell words I don’t want to repeat here at Nova Antarctica’s death screen and begrudgingly click restart. My character spawns for the sixth or seventh time at the start of the tutorial. Cursing and increasingly frustrated, I set off once more. If I freeze to death again, I’ll give up.

Just 15 minutes later, I rage quit.

I’m usually pretty stubborn when it comes to games, especially when the trailer and the stunning artwork suggest the developers have put their heart and soul into it. And that’s the case with Nova Antarctica. It’s a survival indie game from Japan in which you play a child who has to find their way to the South Pole after civilisation has collapsed. What’s the point of that? Beats me.

The trailer suggests an emotionally charged story where you find out what’s happened to humanity and whether there’s any hope left for it. I expect a heart-warming game like Stray or Europa, centred around a «devastatingly beautiful journey», as promised by the Steam description.

I start in an icy canyon, around 2,000 kilometres from the South Pole. The game instructs me to follow blue footprints on the ground to complete the level. They serve as a guide for the first area, where I learn the basics. I collect materials lying around, and learn how to make auxiliary objects and tools.

The game world is comically sparse, and my character sometimes shivers in the cold. I also like the artwork that appears from time to time.

My suit protects me from the icy cold – at least as long as it has enough energy. But it’s continuously depleting. At temperatures just below zero, the display only decreases slowly, but in cold spells or in radioactively contaminated environments, it goes down alarmingly quickly. Without energy, I die immediately and have to restart the level. There’s not much time to spare: after just ten or 15 minutes, the first snowstorm hits, and I’ve to make several spare batteries to survive it.

Thanks to the blue trail on the ground, I quickly reach a hut that takes me to the next area. Or could transport me – because there’s a little cat meowing pitifully near the hut. Its mother’s disappeared. How could I ignore that? I decide to look for the cat’s mother, and follow the paw prints on the ground.

They lead me almost all the way back through the canyon to a cliff I have to climb over. I use the materials I’ve gathered to make wooden boxes that could function as climbing aids. I finally find the lost cat… only for my suit to run out of energy. I don’t have enough resources for another spare battery, and freeze to death.

Over the decades, standards have been established for videogame controls for good reason. Menus are usually closed with the Escape key. So I don’t understand why Nova Antarctica does things differently. In this game, you close the map, the inventory and the tutorial text overview with I, but the individual tutorial texts and collected documents with B. You exit the options menu with Escape, like usual. A different key for every menu: that annoys me. The crafting system is just as perplexing.

You make some items using an action wheel, for others you have to open the inventory. To use objects, you select them in the action wheel and then press U. Or B if it’s a placeable object. This takes forever, and I have three tantrums before I find out where the tent I crafted for shelter is and how to equip it for building.

What am I actually collecting?

The game doesn’t consider it necessary to give you information about collected materials. You only see icons, no text. Some things are self-explanatory, such as wooden planks or a pack with the word «Meal» on it. But what’re the green and black lumps? What’s the collected electrical device? The names of items aren’t even displayed in your inventory or in the crafting menu. I at least want to know the name of the missing thing that’s causing me to freeze to death.

The stamina bar of death

Rarely have I experienced a game in which my character runs so slowly. Moving at a snail’s pace through such a barren landscape is no fun. Fortunately, I can use the Shift key to sprint so I don’t fall asleep in front of the monitor.

Unfortunately, sprinting consumes stamina, which doesn’t replenish on its own. The use of tools, such as the pickaxe for removing rocks, also requires stamina. That’s why I have to make stamina potions all the time. But I don’t always have enough resources for them, since their availability is limited. If I’m missing something, tough luck! I can’t use my tools and can hardly get off the ground.

This makes stamina a valuable commodity. I’m all the more annoyed I have to empty half the stamina bar to chop a rock. Or a broken car body that yields… ONE(!) STONE(!?). Or whatever the yellowish blob is that I pick up after dismantling the bodywork. The game doesn’t let me know.

Always on the hunt for resources

In Nova Antarctica, resources aren’t only limited, but also difficult to reach because I move so slowly, even when I’m sprinting I constantly have to think about whether or not to go to a box a little further away, since walking feels like hard work.

I’m also annoyed the placeable items I’ve painstakingly saved up can only be used once. For example, the tent in which I survive a blizzard without multiple energy potions. Once set up, I can’t take it down again and carry it with me. The same applies to the boxes I use for climbing. These are even simply blown away in the frequent storms, and disappear after a few in-game minutes.

This leads to impossible situations: at the beginning of the tutorial, there’s an area where I absolutely need a box to progress. The search for the cat’s mum takes me back through this area. And if I haven’t counted my resources carefully, I’m faced with a cliff I’ve already conquered with a box shortly before – and I can’t get any further. The box is gone, and I can’t build a new one because I don’t have the «black things»(?) I need.

The purely decorative wooden box two metres away seems to be laughing at me. But this one hasn’t disappeared, for some reason. And – surprise, surprise – it can’t be taken apart for resources either. So my only option is to freeze to death, then restart the area.

All the deaths would be unnecessary

I’m supposed to protect myself against weather events, but apparently that’s only possible with a single-use tent. If I hide in a hut or a container, I’ll freeze in the storm. That makes sense – after all, a tent is much more stormproof than a steel container (I’m being sarcastic, if you can’t tell).

During the storms, objects can fly around and kill me. I could protect myself against gusts of wind by building a concrete barrier, but this would need 40 stones, which I’d have to collect first. And a storm like this happens every ten to 15 minutes.

You won’t be surprised to hear fall damage kills me too. A fall height of an estimated two and a half metres or so is all it takes. I don’t know the exact height. Head height is still OK, but anything above that is enough to kill me without compromise – and I have to start all over again.

I want to see the second level at least once. That’s why, on my last attempt, I head straight for the blue trail and let the poor cat freeze to death. After a short time, a radioactive storm awaits me there. The tutorial tells me there’s no direct means of counteracting the radiation. I should just make sure the rucksack has enough energy. Great.

The storm rolls in, and for a minute and a half my field of vision continues to shrink as I desperately gulp down energy potions. I can’t do anything about the storm, and my life depends solely on whether I have enough resources for more potions. Cool cool cool. I’m having so much fun. In the end, I die just like before: the rucksack runs out of energy.

Nova Antarctica is available exclusively on Steam, but doesn’t appear to be fully optimised for mouse and keyboard. You can’t scroll through the tutorial texts with the mouse wheel. This makes the game feel unfinished.

There are also little quirks in the sound: when a storm rolls in, the soundscapes sometimes change abruptly. Although this spoils the atmosphere, it’s not critical to the gameplay.

You could argue that Steam’s full of bad games thrown together by random script kiddies, and Nova Antarctica’s simply another one of them. But the trailer gives a different impression. Two indie studios are behind the game, including Parco Games, the publisher of The Berlin Apartment. This team has already shown it can deliver.

Nova Antarctica isn’t a cheap niche project either, costing around 25 euros on Steam. That’s what led me to have such high expectations, and it’s exactly where the game falls short for me.

Nova Antarctica has been available on Steam since 28 January. The game was provided to me by Parco Games for testing purposes.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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