Night Lights Review This is a game where you control a blocky character who walks through a dark world at night. His cure for the darkness is altering any lights he can find. Light can actually alter the state of reality - allowing him to sidestep problems that block his path. It is a platform/puzzle game with the pace of a creeping crawl. I’m getting a real Limbo meets Fez vibe from this game, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a platformer in the same way that those games are and yet it doesn’t look anything like any platformer I’m used to. Night Lights relies somewhat on memory recall skills. You need to remember where certain things are, for future problems - ala navigating around Fez and remembering where you went before. You also explore a 2d world and encounter clever logic/exploration-based (similar to Limbo) problems you need to solve before you can continue. One of the cool things about this game is the way it uses both of those elements together. When you meet a problem you can’t solve, you can actually teleport to another area to work on another problem - instead of pausing the game and doing something else, to come back to it later. But you have to remember what it was you were doing before, and where certain things were and how they reacted to the world of the game - in useful or obstructive ways. The ultimately coolest thing about this game is the core mechanic - lights; as in Night Lights (the title of the game) small spoiler: tricks of light can be used to solve problems, the way this element is implemented is actually quite graceful, as are the graphics - though by no means are they as beautiful as the graphics in Fez and Limbo. I think this game still stands alone as a cool puzzle/platformer that can entertain for a few hours, but I think most people would eventually become bored as there is no real motivation to keep going; to keep solving problems. When you succeed at solving a problem, you usually get these little shards of light. Shards of light unlock teleportation booths. Which allow you access to upper levels with more problems. The ‘problem’ is there is not much satisfaction in solving problems because they aren’t very sophisticated. It feels more embarrassing that it took you so long to solve the problem. And when you get to new levels, you just find more problems. There is no real motivator to provide momentum through this game - for the player to want to continue. In the beginning the problems are ridiculously simple, and so is figuring out your controls although they were (designed to inform you based on what type of controller you have plugged in - which is a concern for a few players; If you have more than one controller plugged in, it might confuse the game into giving you the wrong controls) Even if you didn’t have little helpful in-world tips, the keys for controls are intuitive. Map is M, Action is X, the only blaringly different control on keyboard, from console is space bar as jump. Which us old-skool gamers will be very used to. Since the pacing of the game is slow, getting used to the new-ish keyboard controls is something you have time to do. It’s not like Super Meat Boy where running and jumping, moving and sliding all rely heavily on your hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. At least not in the beginning. It is a slow game (more like the pace of Limbo) which fits nicely with the game’s other elements. All the elements (controls, strategy, mechanics, graphics) are very much synchronised with the shadows and lights of night, dreamy theme of the game. They somehow manage to make blocky graphics look elegant. It’s like some really emotionally effective pixel art, but it’s not. It’s using illustration-style art, with a theme of simplicity in shape, but complexity of light and movement, to show this brick character moving through this world of mechanical problems and forcing his way through, using tricks of light. He wades through this world, almost effortlessly (the effort is up to you to solve the tricks) and certainly gracefully. Deceptively simple solutions to complicated puzzles are the highlight of this game, but at times solving these puzzles can feel a bit dull, as the rewards are pretty much non-existent. You solve a really tricky puzzle and you get access to more diamonds, which open more portals. That’s great, but that’s the same thing you gave me last time and I have a ton of portals open, lots of puzzles to solve - but why exactly am I playing this game? You can play this game now on steam. 2 stars Pros Clever puzzles Graceful integration of puzzles into theme/world Easy control system to learn and master Cons No real reward for solving puzzles No motivation to keep playing beyond “solve the next puzzle” Slow pace at times can feel dull https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This is a game where you control a blocky character who walks through a dark world at night. His cure for the darkness is altering any lights he can find. Light can actually alter the state of reality - allowing him to sidestep problems that block his path. It is a platform/puzzle game with the pace of a creeping crawl. I’m getting a real Limbo meets Fez vibe from this game, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a platformer in the same way that those games are and yet it doesn’t look anything like any platformer I’m used to. Night Lights relies somewhat on memory recall skills. You need to remember where certain things are, for future problems - ala navigating around Fez and remembering where you went before. You also explore a 2d world and encounter clever logic/exploration-based (similar to Limbo) problems you need to solve before you can continue. One of the cool things about this game is the way it uses both of those elements together. When you meet a problem you can’t solve, you can actually teleport to another area to work on another problem - instead of pausing the game and doing something else, to come back to it later. But you have to remember what it was you were doing before, and where certain things were and how they reacted to the world of the game - in useful or obstructive ways. The ultimately coolest thing about this game is the core mechanic - lights; as in Night Lights (the title of the game) small spoiler: tricks of light can be used to solve problems, the way this element is implemented is actually quite graceful, as are the graphics - though by no means are they as beautiful as the graphics in Fez and Limbo. I think this game still stands alone as a cool puzzle/platformer that can entertain for a few hours, but I think most people would eventually become bored as there is no real motivation to keep going; to keep solving problems. When you succeed at solving a problem, you usually get these little shards of light. Shards of light unlock teleportation booths. Which allow you access to upper levels with more problems. The ‘problem’ is there is not much satisfaction in solving problems because they aren’t very sophisticated. It feels more embarrassing that it took you so long to solve the problem. And when you get to new levels, you just find more problems. There is no real motivator to provide momentum through this game - for the player to want to continue. In the beginning the problems are ridiculously simple, and so is figuring out your controls although they were (designed to inform you based on what type of controller you have plugged in - which is a concern for a few players; If you have more than one controller plugged in, it might confuse the game into giving you the wrong controls) Even if you didn’t have little helpful in-world tips, the keys for controls are intuitive. Map is M, Action is X, the only blaringly different control on keyboard, from console is space bar as jump. Which us old-skool gamers will be very used to. Since the pacing of the game is slow, getting used to the new-ish keyboard controls is something you have time to do. It’s not like Super Meat Boy where running and jumping, moving and sliding all rely heavily on your hand-eye coordination and muscle memory. At least not in the beginning. It is a slow game (more like the pace of Limbo) which fits nicely with the game’s other elements. All the elements (controls, strategy, mechanics, graphics) are very much synchronised with the shadows and lights of night, dreamy theme of the game. They somehow manage to make blocky graphics look elegant. It’s like some really emotionally effective pixel art, but it’s not. It’s using illustration-style art, with a theme of simplicity in shape, but complexity of light and movement, to show this brick character moving through this world of mechanical problems and forcing his way through, using tricks of light. He wades through this world, almost effortlessly (the effort is up to you to solve the tricks) and certainly gracefully. Deceptively simple solutions to complicated puzzles are the highlight of this game, but at times solving these puzzles can feel a bit dull, as the rewards are pretty much non-existent. You solve a really tricky puzzle and you get access to more diamonds, which open more portals. That’s great, but that’s the same thing you gave me last time and I have a ton of portals open, lots of puzzles to solve - but why exactly am I playing this game? You can play this game now on steam. 2 stars Pros Clever puzzles Graceful integration of puzzles into theme/world Easy control system to learn and master Cons No real reward for solving puzzles No motivation to keep playing beyond “solve the next puzzle” Slow pace at times can feel dull

from GameDev.net https://ift.tt/36wgEig