Strayed Lights is an upcoming action-adventure title from developers Embers. In fact, the game was just announced to release on April 25. LOGNET was invited to test out a demo of the game. The hour long-demo gave players a good idea of what the game is going for. To my surprise, I was taken aback by Strayed Lights. Its simplistic, yet beautiful, art style and engaging and unique combat system took me by surprise.
About Strayed Lights
The game is an atmospheric action-adventure with fluid combat and an intricate world imbued with mystery. Players assume control of a tiny, growing light seeking transcendence. In Strayed Lights, players will explore a land of otherworldly ruins and glowing trees, where entities of flickering lights and luminescent shadows reside.
Mysterious Presentation and Vibes
One of the first things that stood out to me was the game’s art style. Strayed Lights features an art direction to one of my favorite games Ori and the Blind Forest, except it was rendered in 3D. It has a dark whimsical aesthetic that lends itself well to creating mysterious overtones that the game is clearly going for.
The game’s soundtrack also helped set the atmosphere just right. Its instrumental score complemented the game’s ambiance brilliantly, evoking feelings of mystery and intrigue. Best of all, the music would kick in at precisely the right moments to add vibrance to the game’s presentation.
Satisfying and Unique Combat
Strayed Lights features fast and fluid combat, but with a unique twist. Similar to Sekiro, parrying is essential to combat. However, in order to land a successful parry you have to change colors to align with the attacker’s color.
Enemies shift between blue and orange attacks. In addition, they can switch to purple attacks which you cannot parry and instead have to dodge. This was a smart design decision as it helped break up fight rhythms a bit to keep them fresh in a way.
The concept of switching colors to parry is so simple yet brilliantly implemented and I was immediately hooked. Switching between colors became somewhat rhythmic and in no time, I was in sync switching colors to parry attacks as if I was in a melodic trance. I can’t wait to test out the different enemies and bosses to learn their attack patterns.
During the demo, I had to fight off multiple enemies at one time. Despite being challenging at first, I quickly got into the swing of things again. The only tricky bit is the game has an aggressive auto-target feature during combat. So, when battling multiple enemies, you have to mind which enemy you are targeting.
The demo concluded with an epic boss fight that had multiple phases. It was not too difficult but highly engaging and enjoyable.
Wrap on Strayed Lights Impressions
The hour-long demo was enough for me to know that I wanted to continue playing the game immediately. Its whimsical art style and unique combat were captivating and piqued my interest.
Take my word for it, don’t sleep on the game.
Strayed Lights is scheduled to launch on April 25 on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms.