[b]8.5/10[/b] Use light to reveal a hidden world as you help a boy not die in an abandoned tundra outpost. Why is a boy in the middle of the arctic? Don’t know. Is the boy’s backpack special? No. Is the game fun as hell? YES!
[b]What is it:[/b]
First, what it is not. It is not a game about a boy with a magical backpack where he can pull any kind of item out to solve puzzles a la Doraemon. The backpack starts and ends with the title. I think you may drop the backpack a couple times during the game. That's about it.
Now what it is. An incredibly fun yet very short game about a boy (although too much of his body is covered up by a snow suit to confirm whether he is actually a boy and not a man masquerading in boy-fashion) who uses multiple light sources to reveal hidden structures that he uses to traverse chasms, navigate derelict buildings and ultimately escape the jaws of death. Wherever the light shines, time is erased and rusted and crumbling locations are returned to their former glory, allowing the “boy” to gain access to pathways and objects of a once active laboratory to figure out what happened.
The main gimmick of this puzzle game also functions as its story-telling device. Shine your flashlight on the room to reveal a platform you will use to get past a bottom-less pit and also on a skeleton to bring it back to life to see what happened at its time of death. It's an awesome combination I have never seen before and I was very excited to see how deep the rabbit hole went. Sadly, the story never went anywhere super interesting and I was left wishing for something more fleshed out. I was really hoping I’d be able to converse with the dead and have some mind-melting plot points revealed. A frustrating waste of a great story-telling device. Imagine entering a room with skulls strewn about the floor and holes in the wall. Tilt your joystick to the right and suddenly the room comes alive showing the massacre that ensued. Don’t want the entire story revealed, then slowly comb the room with your flashlight stopping wherever you please. Considering all the different light sources used (e.g. lanterns that light up small sections, flood lights on an on/off timer, EMT-like towers where you can reveal half of the room at a time) there were so many missed opportunities to drip feed the player a story in such a visually unique way. If this review does one thing I hope it motivates the devs to make another game with a cool story and find engaging ways to reveal it with this mechanic. This is honestly the first time I’ve wished this of a puzzle game. I typically walk into puzzle games for the puzzles and let the story go in one ear and out the other.
[b]How hard is it:[/b] ★★★☆☆.
As this is a puzzle-platformer, there are two types of difficulty - logic and reflex. First you need to think about how to “solve the puzzle” which in this case is how to use the light sources to traverse the screen, then you need to execute your idea by moving your character. Pure logic puzzle solving never reached anything above medium-easy. The difficulty lies in timing, controller manipulation and reflexes. I had to hold my controller in brand new ways to pass some of the game's challenges. For example, in the game you pick up boxes by holding R1 next to them and throw the boxes by releasing R1, you use your flashlight by moving the R-joystick and you jump by pressing A. Some challenges require the use of all 3 of these functions at once. Since the pick up function isn’t a toggle, I had to use my pointer finger to hold R1 down, use my left-hand thumb to control the right joystick and shine the flashlight on a platform that would disappear otherwise, jump by pressing A with my right-hand thumb, then release R1 to throw the box on the platform. And it only gets more complicated when you include other functions like holding R1 to scale up and down walls, etc.
[b]How long is it:[/b] Took me 5 hrs to complete the game. After completing the game once I had gotten 16/19 achievements. One is to complete the game in under one hour, another is to complete it without dying. The last is a hidden achievement. I’ve never been one to go after these kinds of achievements but maybe this game will change me.
[b]Level design:[/b] The levels are well-designed for what you get. As I mentioned above, the design ends up making you think logically for a little about how to manipulate the light sources available in each level to get you across the level, but the bulk of your energy will be spent in reflex-type movements of actually traversing the level. It's actually a fun way of thinking. In pure logic puzzlers, you are given concrete rules you must respect. When reflexes are involved I felt like I had a little more freedom, like I was designing the puzzle itself and then executing it to see if my idea was correct. Imagine the difference between a company that just designs the building VS one that designs and builds it. I could see how this freedom, if not controlled to some degree, could get a little frustrating. At what point are you breaking the entire puzzle and turning the game into a sandbox? But the distinct world altering nature of this game’s main mechanic made it very clear how I was to funnel my reflexes. There was always a clear understanding of what the designers were going for in each puzzle.
That being said, all the logic-solving parts of this game go out the window during the last section of this game. The designers went full platforming here. Everything was self-explanatory from the moment you enter a screen - you just have to execute. Still a lot of fun though.
Also, the start menu was some peak ASMR. The sound of moving between the sign posts was max-relaxing and really juxtaposed the slightly fast-paced nature of the game.
[b]Quality:[/b] All good here. Only minor gripes. When you die, you need to manually reset the level. It should auto-reset - unless you love to bask in your failure and think about how cool you are for not being good enough. Also, the in-game menu has an option to skip a level. After I finished the game I played around this and found that it would mess up some levels I skipped into softlocking any progression.
[b]The Music:[/b] The music was good. You have a different tune for each world. But if I remember correctly, it is the same tune for the entire game. The fact that the tunes are constantly changing throughout your playthrough as you switch between each world makes the whole experience manageable. However, unless the music is truly banging, I don’t listen to music while I play puzzle games so I am not the best person to judge here.
[b]What would make it better:[/b] There are only 2 things that annoyed me during my playthrough that could be fixed with a patch.
1) The final light gimmick is better managed if each button press triggered one shift and you had to let go and press the button again to trigger another shift. Right now it triggers continuously if you hold the button down and this has messed me up during precise platforming sections.
2) You cannot hold an object and trigger the light shift at the same time. You need to let go of the box then trigger the light. I couldn’t see any reason for this restriction during my playthrough and instead found myself multiple times wanting to shift the light while moving a box around. Just an annoyance, nothing game-breaking.
[b]Worth the price:[/b] At 10 USD for 5 hrs of gameplay, my pure puzzle-to-price ratio brain wants to say NO! But damn the game was very fun. The 5 hrs was well worth the price I usually spend on a good beer so I have to say YES! I need to start thinking of a new way to judge puzzle-platformers here.
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