Precision platformer with plenty of deaths on every screen. That isn’t quite the case within the first minute, though, when you take control of a character carrying a big backpack. You don’t learn anything about him or what his purpose is, but he comes with a nice jump and a cool ability to climb up and down any flat surface without restrictions.
All that changes after a few screens when you gain access to a flashlight, which is the game’s main mechanic. When you shine its light towards certain objects on a screen, they might either appear or disappear because the flashlight shows how things were in the past. This means you can still have a floor, objects can be in pristine condition, and barriers that weren’t there before can suddenly appear. However, things are there only when you turn the flashlight towards them, and instantly disappear when you look the other way.
A bit later, you’ll encounter portals that change entire screens between the present and the past. Although you can see scientists working on something in the facility you’re exploring, there’s no interaction with them, which feels like a missed opportunity considering how little you learn about the world or what happened there.
Progress is split into linear screens, each containing a puzzle that requires you to figure out how to reach the other side and move on to the next one. There are plenty of gameplay elements you need to use to find a solution. There are lights that move objects when you keep the light on them, boxes you can carry and throw, barriers that prevent boxes or lights from passing through, lasers that kill you instantly, and plenty more.
Death, as is often the case in these games, comes quickly. The same goes for resetting if you die or make a wrong move that leaves the puzzle unsolvable. Thankfully, the platforming itself isn’t particularly tricky, and you often know what needs to be done. The challenge comes from the amount of timing and aiming involved, and sometimes you need to deal with both at the same time.
With aiming, you often need to keep the light focused on something, such as a platform that blocks a laser. In other situations, you might need to use the light to keep a platform in place so it can hold a box, which then drops when you remove the light and the platform disappears. Timing is just as important because you might have to throw something and then quickly shine the light somewhere else to let it pass through. Fortunately, none of the useful items or assets can be permanently lost. Even if they fall through holes or get destroyed by something, they’ll respawn in their original spot.
On the other hand, there are two features that will help anyone beat the game. The first is a hint that shows you an image of how the solution or item placement for the current screen should look. Most of the time, you can immediately figure out what steps you need to take from the image. But if you don’t want to bother solving the puzzle yourself, there’s a second feature that simply lets you skip a stage and move on. There are also certain chase sequences you can’t skip, as well as some platforming only puzzles where hints aren’t available.
Sadly, this feature is extremely unsafe to use because it will break your game. Certain levels will crash the game to the desktop with an error message, while skipping at a boss stage send you to some sort of secret stages that are not part of the natural game’s progress. You’re supposed to fail with the boss at some point, but perhaps there’s a way to survive and that’s the reason for the secret levels?
The boss fight doesn’t really feel like a fight, since you’re mostly just moving between the left and right sides of the screen and pressing switches. It’s also not particularly difficult if you’ve managed to survive everything the game has thrown at you up to this point. In my opinion, the chase sequences are much more dangerous, and it’s far easier to die during them.
For anyone who wants to skip ahead but still fight the boss: if you don’t encounter a certain mechanic and trigger its tutorial message during the relevant stage, that essential mechanic won’t be available during the boss fight. Sadly, there’s no real reward or even a proper ending waiting for you at the end. Instead, you simply get a “thank you for playing” message that stays on screen until you press a button to return to the main menu. You don’t get any bonus content or even the option to revisit certain stages, since there’s no level select.
The path forward is obvious because there’s only one exit, but sometimes you’ll spot another path that looks suspicious enough to make you wonder if there’s something hidden there. These lead to a couple of secret spots that reward you with achievements, although others lead to a disappointing invisible wall that doesn’t actually go anywhere despite looking suspicious or being reachable.
Missing secrets hurts because you’ll have to play through the entire game again to find them, although you might be willing to do that anyway if you’re after the harder achievements. These include beating the game without dying and completing it within one hour. However, both can be done easily using the skip stage feature, as long as you watch out for broken stages where the skip doesn’t work properly. Of course, I recommend doing your first playthrough without using any skips, which is entirely possible and rewards you with another achievement.
