Strayed Lights

It's often been said that "offence is the best defence" - and with Strayed Lights, it's quite the opposite. Strayed Lights is an action-adventure, the kind where the action unfolds without words and where it is up to the player to interpret what is happening before your eyes.

You start out as a glowing child figure and after some strange ceremonies, you are suddenly an adult, albeit still a glowing one, and you must now embark on an adventure in various mysterious worlds to cleanse them from possessed and dark creatures. As you may have noticed, my description of the story is somewhat superficial and that's simply because it can be a bit difficult to figure out what's really going on. Unfortunately, this also contributes to the fact that it can be difficult to really get involved in the game's action, which is also a little bit convoluted.

The gameplay is somewhat clearer and it's all built around an exciting combat system, and it works better than it sounds. The whole thing is built around the fact that you overcome the enemy's attacks with a well-timed block and thus make yourself stronger, so that you can eventually launch a single deadly attack. Each time you block, a small amount of energy is poured into a gauge, and when it is full, you can launch your deadly attack. It's simple and it works well - but it takes a while to get your brain to realise that you shouldn't attack directly.

In addition to that, each enemy can change between three colours; orange, blue and purple - and your own character can change between two of those colours, namely orange and blue. So that means that if an enemy attacks as orange, you have to block the attack as orange. And the same goes for the blue colour. The purple attack cannot be blocked, so you have to dodge it. The enemies change colour all the time and you have to do that yourself, and it brings a kind of rhythm to the battles, if your blocks are successful that is. However, it gets a bit complicated when you fight several enemies at once, which constantly change colour and sometimes attack at the same time as well.

It may sound like an exciting concept - and it is, but unfortunately it all gets a bit monotonous pretty quickly. Once you crack the code of changing colours at the right times and learn how to block, the challenge actually disappears, because the game hardly introduces any new elements to the concept at all. The boss fights are a bit more interesting, but they're more or less built on the same principles.

While the gameplay may be a bit lacking in variety and development, the magical world that Strayed Lights takes place in continues to be exciting and interesting. The paths may be somewhat linear, but the design of them continues to impress and you get through some worlds that exude mystery and magic. The mystery is backed up by a great soundtrack from Austin Wintory, who has been responsible for the soundtracks of Journey, Abzü and Flow, among others.

Strayed Lights is a mild disappointment. I may not have had high expectations for it, but it seems like there's some unrealised potential hidden in there somewhere. It tries to be Journey with a mysterious wordless narrative, it tries to shake things up a bit with an exciting combat system, but it doesn't seem fleshed out enough and it all becomes a bit monotonous, which isn't helped by the fact that the game can be completed in 6-7 hours.

I would actually like to be able to recommend Strayed Lights, but it's a bit difficult to do so, unless you really enjoy games that are just a little bit like Journey. And that's a bit of a shame, because there are some really good ideas here that, given a little more time in the oven, could have helped create a really exciting and different adventure.