Raige

The oppressive dark of Raige spans every moment of its runtime, in service of its thematic exploration of despair and futility. This dark manifests in the lighting of the game, always cloaking the landscape in blackest black and denying even lit areas the comfort of soft natural lighting, instead blaring them in abrasive florescent hums, somehow making even the bright areas feel "dark." But the darkness also permeates the writing, narration, models, landscapes, and set pieces. Abandoned playgrounds and faceless inhabitants haunt the land set to the well-crafted ambient soundtrack by Xzayvion Exile, Ars Nova, and infy. This music harmonizes with the hints provided by the world to not only conjure the dark atmosphere which characterizes the game, but also point beyond it to the topics of reflection, longing, and perhaps hope which it draws the player through. In a similar vein, the game uses light excellently. Even in its gritty polygonal world which deteriorates into ambiguous pixels in the distance, paying homage to a beautiful era of gaming strengthened by its limitations, distance can be discerned by way of single-cut pinpricks of light. Plodding slowly towards a faraway lightbulb set into a rundown shed lamp emulates the same sense of mysterious, labored perseverance that dwells quietly within the characters. Raige brings you on a journey through a world of bleak inhumanity and forgotten morality with only small glimpses of something beyond, and asks you to make of it what you will.