the entire screen, rather some will have a limited range that can be used to manipulate objects at different times.
You’ll also be able to switch between two crystal shards on the fly as your inventory can only hold two items. The game is structured so that you have to make use of each crystal in unique and clever ways, disarming traps, reaching new areas, and figuring out some neat puzzles. You’ve probably seen these elements before in other games like Constant C, Braid, LIMBO, and others, but Oscura brings them all together so well that you’ll really dig it. I’m a big fan of borrowing elements of great games and adapting them into a project, giving them a new spin. Instead of every single game trying to reinvent the wheel, I like when a game can grow an idea and make me think twice about a play-style that may already be ingrained in me.
The sound and music fit into the larger game world quite well. Deaths are especially “squishy” sounding and you’ll even be able to use certain audio cues to let you know danger is coming, or already here in many cases. The music has some nice melodies that call to mind a jungle environment in the intro levels. It’s calm and relaxing (an important thing when
you are dying a lot), but also has this underlying tone of danger which I thoroughly enjoyed. The same can be said when you change level/worlds as the music always adjusts to fit the games areas.
Oscura Lost Light is a solid platformer, but it isn’t without its faults when it comes to gameplay either. Because of the nature of the games color scheme (all black action zones) you are going to find yourself walking into traps and hazards that you didn’t see coming. It’s a frustrating game at times, and while it isn’t on the level of I Want To Be The Guy or Super Meat Boy, Oscura is frustrating in an unintended way. The game will track your deaths in each level, but there were more than a handful of times where a death wasn’t the fault of the player, but because of the way the environment is set up. It never really gets to the point where it detracts from the game, but I did get flustered at deaths I didn’t feel where my fault. Most of these issues I think relate to some finicky hit
detection and I once even phased into a wall using my powers, so it could use a little work.
I also had some trouble with the pause menu during the game. I played Oscura with an Xbox 360 controller (like I do with most games like this), but more than once I found myself back at the level select screen, losing progress, because of how everything is set up and mapped. If you hit start a pause menu pops up, but you won’t find any option to resume the game. The cursor is automatically over the”Return to Menu” tab, but hitting the B button does nothing. On more than one occasion I thought things locked up on me and accidentally hit the “Return to Menu” button by mistake. Not sure why the B button isn’t used to take you out of the menu, but it annoyed me a little. This is of course a personal thing, so you may not even encounter it during play, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention it.
These things aside, Oscura Lost Light is a fantastic little platformer that will keep you entertained. It takes the very best elements of games that have come before and creates a really cool world to play through. You can pick up Oscura Lost Light on Steam right now and I recommend that you do. It’s a cool platformer that comes so very close to being great, but is still loads of fun for the $7.99 price that its at currently on Steam.
C. Whitley
@gothams_finest1