Stepping into the life of a mayfly can be a beautiful experience… at least when set to music! Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is here to let you experience this.
Ephemerid is an… interesting… experience. A pretty beautiful experience at that. You head into a “day” in the life of a mayfly, though I don’t quite think that mayflies head into space usually. Battle a giant spider, team up with bees and beetles, and reunite with your partner as you head through this short experience.
For the most part, the game is paced absolutely wonderfully. You’ll go from scene to scene and hear some fantastic 
music along the way. There’s one scene, however, that absolutely killed the pacing for me. Near the beginning of the game there’s a part where you need to roll a snowball. When I initially played the game, the controls on this were absolutely AWFUL. It was patched shortly after I played it so I went back to try it out again. While they are definitely improved, it still kills a lot of the pacing for me. While the other scenes are about actually matching the beat of the song, this is just you rolling around as the music gets more intense the larger it gets.
The game is completely controlled by the mouse. You’ll need to click the right things at the right time to keep the beat going. I’m not sure if you can actually “fail” a song (though I imagine one of the final scenes definitely has this potential), but the music gets to be the best when you’re actually following along to what you need to do. In some cases you’ll need to rescue some bees and beetles from a spider’s web, others you’ll need to throw shooting stars into constellations before they vanish.
Other than the snowball level, I absolutely enjoyed Ephemerid. As mentioned, even with the changes the snowball level still feels poorly paced compared to the rest of the game. While I haven’t figured out the secret to accessing the bonus level yet, I will try to someday. I’m curious as to what it’s like. Though I’ve heard that you have to keep unlocking it every time you launch the game, which sounds slightly annoying.
Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is worth picking up for the music alone. The beautiful graphics also help this title, though for me that snowball level really does just hinder it a lot. Considering it’s a fairly short game overall, that one level killing some of the pacing is a big deal I feel. Regardless, the game is fairly worth it and is worth checking out.
Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure Review Score
4/5
Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is available now on Steam.
