Game EXP: Bright Lights of Svetlov (NS)

   [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Bright Lights of Svetlov through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Bright Lights of Svetlov
Systems: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Windows, Linux, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: September 4, 2021 - August 11, 2023
Publisher: Vladimir Cholokyan, Sometimes You
Developer: Vladimir Cholokyan, Sometimes You
Time Spent: 4+ Hours*

Bright Lights of Svetlov is a non-linear first-person exploration, point-and-click slice-of-life walking sim taking place in a fictionalized city of Svetlov in 1980s Soviet Union.  I don't have a lot of knowledge about Soviet-era Russia although I was in existence for a while before it dissolved in 1991.  All I could tell you extensively was that Reagan was in his own grandiose Star War with Gorbachev, that Neil Diamond wrote a song about the USSR**, and that it was a huge deal when Mr. Rogers visited Moscow.  I visited St. Petersburg for two days back in June 2019 but that was with a highly regulated and government-organized excursion through a cruise ship company; we also visited Tallinn, Estonia, Riga, Latvia, and Klaipeda, Lithuania where there was still some lingering Soviet-era architecture.  I've seen some of the apartments/housing units (brezhnevka) depicted in BLoS, but only from the outside and from a distance.  I mention this here because I am not going to be able to comment on the authenticity apart from how I feel it captured the essence of the 1980s, albeit a 1980 that was on the other side of the world from my 1980.

The first thing I noticed, and feared upon starting the game, was that there was no option to invert the y-axis for the right joystick.  There weren't even any option menus to make any kind of alterations, so I just kind of went with it.  My first playthrough (because I did a couple while gathering additional pictures for this article and YouTube videos) started out awkwardly as I often found myself looking at the floor or ceiling while walking.  I also found it difficult to click on certain objects like light switches elevator buttons, and faucet knobs as the hitbox was painfully tiny, and trying to make minuscule movements with the joystick was not always easy.  For your consideration, the video below is from my third start-up of the first level after coming back from playing The Outer Worlds (where I could invert the y-axis).

This was one of only two major complaints about Bright Lights of Svetlov and the other had to do with what felt like should have been general knowledge for the characters that were unknown to the players.  There are several times in the game where you have to perform a task in an area that is unknown to the player.  In one of the chapters, you are tasked with searching the garage but are given no indication as to where the garage is located.  Because this is a brezhnevka, would the garage be located under the main apartments?  Are they even attached to the brezhnevka complex?  As it turned out, the garages were a separate structure that required the player to walk around a small park across the street from the brezhnevka, because there was no direct path through the park.  In an earlier instance, you are tasked with throwing out the garbage but are given no other indication on where to throw it out than the game telling you to figure it out on your own.  Had I not tried to go up to the 9th floor from where the unit is located on the 8th floor at the beginning of the game, I likely would not have found the garbage chute;  also never having lived in an apartment or housing unit where a garbage cute existed, this concept is completely foreign to me, but I guess that's part of the learning experience.

The gameplay is focused on everyday tasks that you complete depending on which of the four characters you play as, be it taking out the trash, dusting, or preparing dinner for the rest of your family.  As you play four different characters, the required tasks vary in what you have to do, but they often end up requiring multiple steps to complete, which is something that I love about this game.  In my real life, I often think about how some tasks end up taking a lot longer to complete because of other things getting in the way.  Cleaning the cast iron pot used for dinner for example.  It's not as easy as "clean the pot" and that task is done.  It might include several other tasks that crop up along the way, such as:

• Clean the cast iron pot
• Clean and put away dishes already in the sink to make room to clean the pot.
• Empty the clean dishes out of the dishwasher to make room for the dirty dishes.
• Scrape food bits into the green waste bin.
• Finish cleaning the cast iron pot in the sink.
• Dry cast iron pot with a paper towel.
• Dispose of the green waste bin because it's full.
• Take out toters to the curb because garbage is picked up in the morning.

Thankfully the developer had the foresight to not require labor-intensive tasks that couldn't be solved with a single click.  Taking out the garbage only requires you to click on the garbage pail once to pick it up and once to dump it; you don't even have to put the pail back.  Putting sheets on a bed only requires you to click once to pick up the sheet and once to put the sheets on the bed.  The point isn't that you do the exact task step-by-step, only that the task is there and then you complete the task to move on to the next one.  It creates the sense that you've completed a series of tasks without actually having to do the task.  There's a difference and I appreciate that that distinction is observed here.

Something else that I loved was how the game created a feeling of isolation while living with two other people in a small one-bedroom brezhnevka that was part of a larger building that housed ~100 people.  There is an interaction with a neighbor at the beginning of the game, but you never see the person as they chuck the keys out of their door.  You can see cars driving on the street from the balcony, but never any actual bodies in the car.  It's not until the daughter Nadia actively ignores her father Anatoly in the fifth chapter that we see another character and even then it is only her silhouette.  The entire game you play as each member of the family (as well as an inspector in the years after the family moves out due to an unresolved mystery presented halfway through the game) and each time you are performing tasks, you are alone in the apartment (except Chapter 5 and sections of Chapter 6).  There is a connecting story throughout the game, part of which is based on the real-life events that happened in the city of Kramotorsk, now eastern Ukraine and this is the fictionalized account of eight of those years.

What I find interesting about this narrative mechanic is that I never felt that this family was falling apart, that they're not intentionally avoiding each other, but we only see snippets of their lives at times when they are home alone.  Regular family everyday kind of things.  Like finding out that your daughter has taken up smoking.  That there is a boy your daughter likes.  That your house needs dusting.  That your wife was able to snag a free lamp that another neighbor wanted.  That your husband has been accused of industrial espionage and is profiting from those potentially traitorous acts.  You know, typical USSR family life.  There does seem to be a benign amount of tension between Anatoly and his wife Tamara as evidenced by the letter Anatoly receives about his folder at the beginning of the game, but that could also be chalked up to frustration and not a deep seeded source of marital strife.

I really enjoyed Bright Lights of Svetlov both in its narrative storytelling, the length of the game, and how the game handled the activity of tasks.  The only things I would change are being able to invert the y-axis, and making the garage location more intuitive, especially since it's supposed to be a location that the characters already know about as opposed to a mystery that the player needs to solve.  I would definitely love to play another similar game, either in a similar fashion or another game from Vladimir Cholokyan because from what I can find, this is his first game, and it definitely left a very positive impression on me.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

You Can't Catch Time, It Doesn't Exist

*I don't have the actual time on how long my initial run was because of Nintendo Switch reasons, but I apparently have 4+ hours clocked in which includes playing several times after completing the game to get additional gameplay footage and to check on further details for the article.

**P.S. Oops.  That was actually a parody song that I and one of my neighbors came up with circa 1989 to the tune of Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" and we called it "Coming to Russia."