Kent is a pretty normal guy who is stuck in the year 10,000 after he crash-lands while in space hibernation. He is an employee of a company that has him on a mission (but not because of any special skills). Armed with only a stick and a robot companion, he must rebuild civilization. All of this comes down to exploring the world and crafting items to fix the technology needed to get humanity back. He himself becomes a clone; as he dies, he can be resurrected an infinite number of times. You must gather resources and expand your base to achieve your goals. As you progress, you will get better technology to reach areas you couldn’t previously pass (metroidvania). There are different modes besides the story, where you can customize your experience (such as sandbox mode). I focused on just the story because that is where you can gain Xbox achievements. They are disabled if you customize the settings or try other modes. Those are just for fun, but not what the main experience is all about.

Here’s what I liked:

Building Society — You have a base of operations that you can customize and edit to your liking. I spent a lot of time trying to make everything look neat and efficient. It’s really fun to go out and gather the resources to upgrade your base. As you progress, you will unlock new equipment, even machines and conveyor belts that will continue to spit out crafted items as you are out on your adventure. The interface for doing all this is pretty easy to follow. I do wish you could customize the colors of your machines or even name them. I spent a good amount of time just clicking in to see what each thing could craft because it was easy to forget what did what. You can build things pretty high, allowing you to divide the base into multiple sections.

Lots to Do — There are so many things you can do while you save humanity. You have base building, fighting, exploring, farming, crafting, and discovering new abilities. You will always have a goal of crafting specific things to keep the progression going. There were only a few times I had no clue what to do, but that was because I had not discovered a specific ability that was hidden away (places I missed while exploring). There’s a very fun mechanic later on that may remind you of Pokemon. You use a device to capture enemies. You then build enclosures to keep them, and they will provide you with resources they would normally drop. Once you’ve completed the story, you can choose to continue on playing and building.

Not a Walk in the Park — A few things will make you think this is just a resource gathering metroidvania that will be easy. That’s not the case! There are some really challenging fights. Even early on, there is a boss that will demolish you until you’ve upgraded a bunch. There are sections that will humiliate you. I am not always a fan of really tough games, but this has the difficulty that can be frustrating, but not game breaking. You can always respawn and get your loot from your body, though sometimes it will be an annoying trek back. You can’t just run in and kill everything; you have to worry about position and what the attack patterns are going to be. As you upgrade, fighting can become a little more interesting. You’ll have more ways to travel around the environment, like gliding and a dash ability. These help you rush through certain environments, allowing you to skip certain fights or get back to your body faster. It makes for some really fun combat and stays challenging throughout the entire game, without being impossible.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

Unclear at Times — You are allowed to navigate the world at your own will, having some dialogue between you and the AI from the robot. While there are quests to track, there is never any information about what should be done to progress. As a metroidvania, you are limited to exploration until you get specific upgrades that will allow you to travel into areas you couldn’t before. In this game, they are usually obtained by scanning a specific object. One example is the grapple ability. There was one little area I didn’t quite explore fully, and hadn’t noticed it. This is where the grapple was. I had no clue what to do next for quite some time. Luckily, I was still creating and managing my base, which gave me something to do. There’s also some confusion with a power that allows you to use your staff as a lantern. The description for the upgrades and info from the menu says it uses a battery. I had no clue what item was supposed to be the battery. I tried everything that seemed electric. Finally, at one point, I found out it was an item used as a crafting item, and wasn’t obtained through enemies or in the world. The description was not clear on what exactly would power up the staff. So when I went into the spider area, I had to use the scan feature to see, which was really annoying because I couldn’t do certain actions during the scanning. I didn’t find out about the staff battery until I was nearly finished with the game.

Need More Space — There is a good amount of things to grow and craft for your base. Editing is pretty decent, and it was fun to make things flow pretty well. I had farm plots and animal enclosures giving me all kinds of resources. But then I hit the problem of not having enough space to place everything how I wanted. My farm went really high up into the air and actually seemed perfect. But on the other side, my caught enemy enclosures looked like a mess. Having to automate things takes up space, and there are also a ton of other crafting things you need, which I put in the middle. If I had more space to work with, I could have made a really awesome base. But my creative and organized ideas were put aside as I gave up trying since I just simply could not fit everything where I wanted it. This is mostly ruined by the enclosures having three sizes and tons of options to add to them. It just takes up way too much room, and the “gotta catch em all” will not be on your list of things to do.

Wrap-up

If you like the idea of gathering resources and crafting while playing a metroidvania style game, you will likely really enjoy this. I actually love both genres. There is a decent amount of fighting enemies and a few bosses to find. Sometimes things can be pretty tough. You have infinite lives, but anything you gathered will be on your dead body, and you must go all the way back to where you died, which can at times feel miserable. There is too little space to really customize your base and put everything you want inside, but it’s still a great way to lose time editing and managing it. I didn’t mind that the hero is not much of a hero, but the story felt pretty generic. I completed everything and still felt like I wanted more, maybe because I had already invested a lot into building what I thought was an awesome base. You can really lose track of time while playing, and it’s one of those games that are hard to put down. Also, a fair warning, some of the achievements stop tracking, and so far, there has been no update to fix them.

Score: Highly Recommended

Kentum was published by V Publishing and developed by Tlön Industries on Xbox One. It was released on November 6 2025, for $17.99. A copy was provided for review