It’s rare that I introduce something new in action combat. In games that feature it, you’re likely to use either guns to kill enemies or melee actions to take them down, and I’m not often surprised how that can work. Of course, I can still fall in love with familiar fights, but it’s always exciting to experience something I’ve never experienced before, and Strayed Lights accomplishes that.
I relied almost exclusively on a unique parrying system that required you to switch between two colors to match your enemy’s attack, and I couldn’t get enough of Strayed Lights’ action, even when it was repetitive. That this battle was set in a beautifully realized alien world and backed by a dynamic and musically varied score by Austin Wintory (the composer of Journey and The Pathless) made my time with the game all the better.
Strayed Lights begins with a kind of birth. You start as a spark of light – an ember – on a journey to transcendence. To succeed, you must confront your inner demons – the darkness – with a defense-oriented combat style, while also exploring more of this ethereal sci-fi world to learn more about its existence. In my first hour, I felt overwhelmed because developer Embers does little to hold your hand or even point you in a direction, but the game’s openness is more linear than it first appears.
Walking around this world is great, but the platform is less than stellar at times. Jumping feels strange because your character often hits the ground with a thud and you have to wait a few moments for him to recover and get back up. This design choice makes larger jumps, of which there are many, feel onerous. Platforms are rarely the star of this show, however, as they’re more of a quick means of getting to the next battle arena.
When an enemy is nearby, a shadowy substance will smudge the edges of the screen, a rocky monster (sometimes two) will appear, and Strayed Lights will begin to glow. By pressing the left bumper I can change the color of the fiery light burning inside my character from blue to orange and back. It’s important to nail this down shortly after the game starts, as each enemy changes color that way too. And you have to parry with the right bumper which color matches yours. This mechanic starts off easy, but a third color you can’t combine – purple – is thrown into the mix, requiring you to dodge. At its peak, a fourth color is added and enemies quickly switch between them while charging you with three, four, and sometimes five hits. I loved frantically matching my colors to theirs with a save, dodging when necessary, and landing hits with my limited offensive skills.
Parrying is the only way to regain health during combat, which resulted in me having to play more dangerously as my health dropped. There are abilities and special moves you can unlock for your combat repertoire, but ultimately, learning Strayed Lights’ parrying mechanics is crucial – you can’t get to the end if you don’t get the timing right. I love a good parry in a game and this stayed satisfying until the end, but those who prefer dodging in melee action games may struggle.
Collecting shards from enemies to spend on abilities is satisfying, as is exploring the open areas to collect items related to lore, leveling up, and more. Luckily, it takes little effort to stray off the path to find these collectibles, which is good because it allows you to get back in the fight. The action is simple but satisfying, and while the instances where I had to fight more than one enemy at a time were more frustrating than anything else, I still enjoyed almost every combat scenario I stumbled into.
However, the game lacks enemy variety. At first it seemed like each new area had its own enemy composition, but halfway through the game I realized that Strayed Lights only had a handful of monsters to throw at me. Learning each attack pattern was a fun mental exercise and I wished for more.
No matter what I did, my eyes and ears feasted. I entered each new open area in Strayed Lights delighted with the visual design in front of me. Suns and moons burn overhead and landscapes are painted in beautiful shades of green, blue, neon pink and purple. My glowing light of a character shone in front of these backdrops and my hard drive contains a few dozen screenshots as a result. Matching the tone of each location, Wintory’s score dances between ethereal wind instruments and ritualistic percussion that seemed to speak their own alien language. Even when the gameplay falters, as in two-enemy combat scenarios or the game’s not-so-great platforming, I enjoyed being in that world because of Strayed Lights’ score and visual design.
Strayed Lights is short, sweet, and mostly excels at what it asks of the players. Its unique parry-required combat brings something new to the table, and I’ve enjoyed almost every instance of it, especially in the larger boss fight sets scattered throughout the journey. Exploring it doesn’t require a lot of effort, which is a good thing since moving through areas doesn’t feel good for the most part. However, its failures are easy to put aside when what I see and hear throughout the game is such a delight. A strong debut from Embers in almost every way, Strayed Lights serves to emphasize the importance of a game’s foundation. At its core, Strayed Lights revolves around a simple, intuitive, and unique combat system, and with such a strong foundation, it’s no wonder the game shines so brightly.