Path of Light

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Path of Light ist ein kostenloses Schleichspiel, das man in rund 90 Minuten durchspielt. Aber sind diese 90 Minuten überhaupt lohnenswert? Die kurze Antwort: Naja. Der Ersteindruck ist durchaus positiv. Nach einem kurzen Intro landet man in einer düsteren 3D-Welt. Die Grafik ist zwar eher rudimentär, aber völlig okay. Für ein Spiel dieser Art ist sie sicher mehr als annehmbar und ganz sicher besser als der übliche Pixelbrei. Und sie ist sichtbar liebevoll gemacht. Das gilt erst recht für die Story und das Worldbuilding. Die Entwickler haben eine interessante Welt geschaffen, die man über herumliegende Bücher und Zettel entdecken kann. Das ist definitiv die grösste Stärke des Spiels und kompensiert einige der Schwächen. Die liegen nämlich v.a. im Gameplay. Das ist stellenweise etwas hakelig, insgesamt aber doch spassig. Die Schleichpassagen sind nicht übermässig schwierig, die Rätsel okay, und dank fair gesetzter Checkpoints ist es auch nicht tragisch, wenn man mal erwischt wird. Etwas schwieriger wird es mit der Spielerführung. Nicht immer ist klar, wo es langgeht oder wo sich die Leuchtkugel befindet, die man jeweils zum Levelende bringen muss. Das ist wirklich nicht gut gemacht. Richtig doof wird’s dann aber im letzten Teil des Spiels: Statt zu schleichen, muss man plötzlich fliehen, während man gleichzeitig noch Gegenstände einsammeln und irgendwo einsetzen soll. Das ist nicht nur stressig, sondern auch nervig, weil genau hier die Steuerung auch völlig an ihre Grenzen kommt. Und dieser Schlussabschnitt relativiert leider einiges von dem, was vorher gut war. Ist das genug, um dem Spiel eine Nichtempfehlung zu verpassen? Nein. Zum Glück ist dieser letzte Abschnitt kurz genug, und das Worldbuilding stark genug, um das Spiel doch noch zu retten. Fazit: Ein nett gemachtes Schleichspiel mit interessanter Story, aber ein paar Gameplayschwächen. Keine uneingeschränkte Empfehlung, aber trotzdem einen Blick wert für alle, die Schleichspiele und gutes Worldbuilding mögen. Zumal das Ganze völlig kostenlos ist.

You are a robot tasked with evading & escaping from malevolent creatures that have taken over your humble village in [b]PATH OF LIGHT[/b], a 3D "stealth adventure" game from [b]LUMINARY STUDIOS[/b]. While the game calls itself a "stealth adventure," it really is a 3D 3rd-person platformer with some stealth mechanics. The player sees the world mainly from over the right shoulder of the game's main character, a humanoid robot named "Lumi" who is tasked with reclaiming the light that has been stolen from its village by a group of malicious entities. The majority of these entities resemble werewolves with red, glowing eyes although others are blind ram-like creatures and a few are bulky giants who rely upon a surveillance camera of sorts to guide them to their targets. "Lumi" is a pacifist by nature so anyone wanting to play a game where you slug it out with your enemies are best to go elsewhere. Over the course of the game, though, Lumi does get a few abilities that makes the arduous task of reclaiming the light without needing to slug it out with its adversaries at least feasible. For starters, Lumi has a forward 'roll-dash' which also serves as a kinda-sorta jump, in the same way that the fictional character Wile E. Coyote could sometimes run over thin air without the ability of jumping or leaping. Later on, Lumi also receives a blinding flash distraction ability, a sort of stationary flash-bang grenade effect (without the 'bang,' obviously) and also learns to distract enemies by throwing rocks (useful for the blind ram-like creatures). Admittedly, I never really used this feature (except for when you need to 'throw' colored orbs at certain doors in order to open them) but I was glad that it was there. Finally, Lumi gets a temporary shield effect in case it really gets into a bind with the enemies. The game has a sort of "look at what we can do in the Unity engine" feel to it which, by itself, is perfectly fine. If someone told me that this was a school class project, I wouldn't disagree. There are at least four "levels" to the game of which I completed three of them (more on that later). On each level, Lumi must collect "light orbs" in order to deposit at a statue so that a door will open, allowing you to progress to the next level. Each level requires more "light orbs". The visual design of the game is adequate and conveys its style without compromise. There is an odd mix of art-deco robots, medieval architecture and steampunk sensibilities which works for the purposes of this game. The controls for the game are the typical "WASD + the mouse" controls with additional keys for the various abilities. There are no NPCs in the game; It's just you and your adversaries. There's a lot of reading material in the game in the form of notes and 'books' (usually only a few pages, if that). Most of it merely adds flavor to the game but a few of them are needed to solve puzzles (unless, of course, you want to 'brute force' your way through them). The puzzles in the game are fairly straight-forward, with some taking a bit more brain-power than others in order to solve. There were no puzzles that were so hard as to discourage me from playing further; The hardest one encountered involved placing statue heads around a central statue. A little bit of additional clarity might have gone a long way for that one. Throughout the game, my computer's cooling fan sounded as though it were about to rip out of its casing and fly away. Given the game's visuals, I have no idea what was so CPU or GPU-intensive in order for that to occur. However, it did dampen my enthusiasm to continue with the game to its conclusion. Another drawback to the game is the fact that there is no save-game feature which, quit honestly, is inexcusable. If this game truly was the result of a school project, don't you think that they'd teach their students how to make a save game file? Does the Unity engine allow for games to be saved? [b]Overall, though, I'm going to recommend this game.[/b] There's nothing inherently bad with this game. It's a perfectly serviceable 3rd-person platformer that accomplishes what it sets out to do. The graphics are perfectly fine and the mechanics work reasonably well. For people who want plot, you can read the books and notes that are sprinkled throughout the levels. The puzzles are mostly simplistic and don't require too much brainpower to solve. The game is free to play and, even with modern-day 'game bloat,' its size is fairly modest at around 1.7 gigs. [b]However, this game also lacks a save-game feature[/b] which is inexcusable. At the very least, it should have had the ability to start at each level once you gain access to it. I quit shortly after the start of the fourth level because I was concerned about my cooling fan and, in order to get back to that fourth level, I would have to restart the game entirely over. Was it a nice game? Sure. Was it such a nice game that I'm willing to replay the first three levels to finish the game? Not really. Lumi's task is to reclaim the light, a task that I hope that a lot of players embark on. I also hope that the designers see the light and add some form of a save-game option so that players aren't bound to play the entire game in one sitting.

Such a fun game and really shows the talent these college students have! My friend is a developer on it and hid a Weedle from Pokemon somewhere in the game (no spoilers) and it took me 90 minutes to find it! You should totally download for a fun little play through, or to try and beat my Weedle finding time ;)

go knights! amazing work for a college game design capstone <3

Very charming short game

Its a cool game.