#DiscoverIndies: Fall of Light: Darkest Edition (NS)

Fall of Light: Darkest Edition by RuneHeads for the Nintendo Switch is the game that I decided to select as my #DiscoverIndies title for March.  Presently, I have put in 6 hours 23 minutes, I have died 35 times (the game keeps track in an interesting manner), and I still have three main artifact-like objects to collect before finishing the game.  I purchased the game through Nintendo's eShop on Friday March 1st when it was on sale for $4.99 instead of its standard MSRP of $14.99.  While I played the game on the Switch, it is also available through Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

The research I did in the days leading up to Friday March 1st, consisted of scrolling through the eShop while on the Switch and sorted the games by cost, specifically the $0.00 - $9.99 range, mainly because I am not made of cash, and I feel that indie games that are independently published in this price range could possibly use some market share; although you could argue that higher priced indie games need more word of mouth because they are more expensive.  Either way, that was how I set my initial search perimeters.  I then did searches on YouTube, Metacritic, GameFAQS, Wikipedia, Google, and HowLongToBeat in order to help determine its "under the radar" factor, and after that initial search for Fall of Light, I thought that despite the fewer than 10 ratings on Metacritic, that there might already be enough people out there talking about this game; I was also looking at four other games that I decided against, so it was not just a one game search fest.  Then on Friday, being the start of the #DiscoverIndies weekend I looked at what other games people were playing (or at least posting about).  I am in no way going to shame anyone for their choice of game as I know there would probably be people shaming me for my choice, but I did see some games that I have seen posted (semi-frequently) about before.  Then my brain went right back to Fall of Light and thought that I would still like to play this game for this month's event.  So I did.

I knew a bit going into the game, even by the trailer, that Fall of Light felt like an isometric Dark Souls, which was something that I was perfectly okay with.  The developers, RuneHeads, readily admit that Fall of Light was inspired by Dark Souls and ICO (although I was not familiar with the PlayStation 3 game before writing this article, although the name is vaguely familiar) and thankfully they do so because if they did not, then this game flies way over homage and into the realm of sad hilarity.  This is not to say that game comes across as a parody or attempting to steal assets from either ICO or Dark Souls, but there are a fair amount of similarities even if the games themselves are fairly different.  Everything from a cryptic lore-laden introduction that leaves a lot of unanswered questions, to tflaming text on the ground giving in-game help about kindling bonfires as safe places.  RuneHeads seems very aware of their target audience, but while the game is heavily speckled with references and homages to Dark Souls, the player is not expected or required to have any of that knowledge going into the game.

Hokay, so all of that aside, let me briefly talk about the game, what I have played, what I like, and what I do not.  

As mentioned above, I have played for 6 hours and 23 minutes and have, at present, died 35 times.  What I like about the way the game keeps track of your deaths is through cycles; the screenshot to the left was when I died for a fourth time.  What really intrigues me is the choice of wording here.  What exactly do cycles have to do with the overarching mythology and lore of this world?  Am I thinking too hard into the wording here?  Will something happen when I hit Cycle 50, or Cycle 100.  I am a little afraid that if I do hit either of those milestones, and having played Dark Souls I can say that this is a real possibility, that I may have to start over from the beginning, although there is no hint that that will be the case.

Lock-On Targeting is not required for the crossbow, but it certainly helps,
but it does reduce range.

One mechanic of the game that I do like, although it first took me by surprise and now I appreciate.  When you start the game, you find a standard long sword and a round shield.  As the game progresses, you do find other weapons to equip yourself, but that was when I found out that you only have two weapon slots in your inventory.  So by the point in the game when I found a dagger that glowed red presumably with a poison ability, I already had the beginning long sword, and a crossbow.  I told myself that I liked the reach of the long sword coupled with the defensiveness of the shield (which could also be used with the dagger), and I loved the ranged option of the crossbow.  So I left the dagger on the ground.  Then a few hours later, I found a two handed bastard sword.  At this point, I told myself that unless I switched my weapon, I would be relegating myself to what essentially was the starter set.  At the moment I have now moved on from the bastard sword and taken up the halberd (thinking again about my Dark Souls character using the Black Knight Halberd.  I am very excited to see what other weapons the game offers.

One interesting mechanic (interesting if you are not familiar with ICO like me), is that you can take the hand of your daughter to lead her through the areas.  At first I did not see the benefit of this since she follows you anyway, and whenever there is a battle, she hunkers down in the fetal position and, for the most part, is mostly safe.  Then I came to an area that included traps, and hand holding all of a sudden made sense.  But, it did not immediately click because as I avoided the shooting dart trap, the daughter was hit.  Thankfully though, her ashes/spirit (see below) respawned outside of the area of effect for the trap so I did not have to time the trap along with the animation in order to still be safe.  I also thought it was pretty cool that when you sprint while holding her hand, she will eventually lose her grip on your hand and fall, so constantly sprinting away from danger is not always an option.

Lastly, the game makes great use of particle effects, used most of the time when you go to resurrect your daughter after she is killed.  And the clip below is from the very beginning of the game, so there are not any spoilers here, other than the advice that you can fall off cliffs and die.

At the moment, I cannot think of anything about the game that I specifically do not like.  Sure, the game does get pretty pixely when there is a lot going on on screen, and you can notice in the above clip that the text does appear pretty blurry, but not so much that it is illegible.  I have also noticed some frame-rate drops, which could either be from me playing in hand-held mode (which means I should probably give docked-mode a try before I write the Game EXP article), but neither of those two factors make the game feel unplayable.  Maybe it is a result of Digerati's porting to the Switch? The area I am currently in is pretty big and I am a little afraid of getting lost/confused/turned around, but that will just end up being more familiar with the area/world.

So for the most part, I have been very happy with my selection and will find the time to complete it, hopefully before the end of the month.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental