Skip to main content

Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure review

Ephermerid screenshot 1
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure
MSRP $99.00
“Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is a beautiful audiovisual journey through the brief-yet-spectacular life of a short-lived mayfly.”
Pros
  • Beautiful audiovisual experience
  • Thoughtful, if surreal, narrative
Cons
  • Gameplay doesn’t serve the journey very well

Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is a game about getting laid. Technically, it’s about the cycle of life, from birth to death. But when you’re a mayfly with a life that spans only a handful of hours, getting laid becomes a pretty important thing. How else is the species to survive?

Recommended Videos

SuperChop Games’ brief, colorful adventure is referred to in the iOS App Store as a “rock fairy tale,” and that feels like an accurate description. The whole thing lasts no more than an hour, and while there are video game-y tap-and-swipe sequences that keep you involved, there’s no reward, no failure. There’s only the story and your unchanging path through it.

Each stage of play amounts to a new track in SuperChop’s stirring prog-rock opera. This notion plays into the presentation of the level select screen, which is a spinning record split into 12 sections, one for each level. There’s even a turntable-style slider at the bottom of the screen that allows you to futz with the speed of the music (and, by association, the play).

The piece as a whole is an audiovisual delight, with environments and the objects & beings that inhabit them built primarily out of hand-drawn and papercraft creations. Some nice particle effects, used to lend additional flavor to select sequences and call the eye’s attention to different parts of the screen, further enhance the presentation. All of it is backed by the melodic scream of electric guitars and thumping kick of double-bass drums.

The levels play out in chronological order, following the mayfly at the heart of the story from birth to death. Cleverly, the cycle repeats automatically when you reach the end; the spinning record continues to turn, transitioning seamlessly from the last level back into the first one. The mayfly explores the world, overcomes adversity, rescues its mate, and ultimately procreates before slipping free of its mortal coil.

Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is a game about getting laid.

It’s just too bad that the video game-y bits feel so forced. Your taps and swipes are always set in time to the music, but between the lack of a risk/reward system and the surreal presentation, these interactions feel meaningless. You’re tapping a series of logs to the beat of the music, clearing a path for an army of marching beetles… but why? To what end? There’s only the visual feedback of the logs breaking, and they’ll break even if you don’t tap them. The music, the unfolding story… all of it remains the same, even if you’re not doing what the game expects you to.

To its credit, SuperChop sticks to a minimalist focus in not including any sort of tutorial. There’s some satisfaction to be had in poking and prodding the screen to figure out how to get the music rolling, even if there’s ultimately no apparent meaning attached to those interactions. It’s all very intuitive and easy to puzzle out – again, challenge isn’t this game’s forte – but the “figure it out yourself” approach lends itself well to Ephemerid’s playful, lighthearted tone.

In the end, all of your efforts to guide this little mayfly through life lead it to a final act of procreation. The two insect lovers fly off into the heavens, their tiny bodies transposed with the ghostly Chinese dragons that they so resemble. It’s an ending that is also a beginning, a spoiler that spoils nothing. Ephemerid is about the cycle of life; we all know where the beginning and the ending are. It’s the journey that ultimately matters.

If you’re looking for challenge or hooks or gameplay that involves any sort of deductive reasoning, you’ve come to the wrong place. Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure is built as an experience that strips the life we know to its foundations, presenting the journey from birth to death from the perspective of a creature for which every brief, too-fleeting moment matters.

This game was reviewed on a second-generation iPad Mini using a code provided by the publisher.

Highs

  • Beautiful audiovisual experience
  • Thoughtful, if surreal, narrative

Lows

  • Gameplay doesn’t serve the journey very well
Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
All rare gadgets in Lego Horizon Adventures and what they do
A Thunderjaw roars in Lego Horizon Adventures.

Reliving Aloy's first adventure in Lego Horizon Adventures is a streamlined but faithful retelling of the first game. However, instead of the massive open-world experiences that made the Horizon series some of the best PS5 games, this entry changes the formula to fall more in line with the best Lego games. It is a much smaller game compared to those, with way fewer collectibles. This makes it much easier to play in co-op, but it isn't without a few things you can gather up. Rare gadgets are pieces of equipment you can wear to enhance or add new abilities. Here are all the rare gadgets in the game and what cool effects they have.
Every rare gadget in Lego Horizon Adventures

Lego Horizon Adventures only has 10 rare gadgets in total that you will unlock as you progress through the story. They each serve a unique purpose and are worth experimenting with as you attempt to clean up any remaining Trophies.

Read more
The best gaming smartphones for 2024
Someone playing Genshin Impact on a phone

Once mocked as the home of “filthy casuals,” mobile gaming has advanced over the last few years, with games like Genshin Impact, PUBG: Mobile, and Call of Duty showing that the humble smartphone can provide just as much enjoyment as the console parked in front of the TV.

While almost all of the best smartphones can play mobile games, some are better at it than others. If you’re really serious about games, perhaps even at a competitive level, there are phones built expressly for the purpose. Our top choice is the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro because it’s made specifically for gamers.

Read more
I’ve reviewed every AMD and Nvidia GPU this generation — here’s how the two companies stack up
Three graphics cards on a gray background.

Nvidia and AMD make the best graphics cards you can buy, but choosing between them isn't easy. Unlike previous generations, AMD and Nvidia trade blows point-for-point in 2025, and picking a brand to go with isn't as easy as counting the dollars in your wallet.

I've reviewed every graphics card AMD and Nvidia have released this generation, comparing not only raw performance, but also features like DLSS and FSR, ray tracing performance, and how VRAM works in modern games. After dozens of graphics card reviews, here's how AMD and Nvidia stack up against each other in 2025.
Nvidia vs. AMD in 2025

Read more