Strayed Lights Preview

Developed and published by Embers S.A.S. and Embers, the first thing you will notice in Strayed Lights are the beautiful visuals. The lighting effects look amazing! You start as a child, covered in what looks like flames, though the child isn’t burning. Here the game tells you how to move around with the left thumbstick and how to control the camera using the right. It looks like you are on top of a rocky cliff encased with ice. The dark blues and purples of the rocky terrain provide a nice contrast to the ice and how it reflects the orangy red colour of your flames, with rays of sunlight sneaking through the trees and gaps in the rocks. Once you understand how your character controls, you will learn other skills like jumping and dodging. This will lead you into your first battle.

A mysterious dark-coloured character shows up, they definitely resemble the main character but they are larger. The main difference is instead of having warm-coloured flames, they are covered with their own blue fire. They attack you and steal some of your red-coloured flames, but you are now able to switch between the two colours. Your first task is to change your colour to match your enemy. Dodging will be the best way to avoid these corrupted attacks, but if you can’t dodge it, you can parry the attack in the matching colour. Every time you successfully parry, the gauge at the bottom of the screen will fill, and you will also recover a small bit of health. It would have been nice to have a tutorial on how to parry properly as it was pretty tricky to figure out the timing to successfully repel the enemy attack. I had to try the first fight multiple times before I filled my gauge to defeat my opponent. Once totally full you can unleash a big attack and finish the fight. Parrying the attacks will also damage your enemy and deplete their hit points. Once they are down you can do the final move to expel your stored energy and end the fight. There is a quick time button combo that you will have to perform to successfully defeat your opponent. Once the fight is over an energy orb will be dropped that you need to collect.  

Obtaining the orb will open an area called the Inner World, here there is a skill tree where you can spend these orbs to learn new moves like:

Balance 1 — press Y to parry both colours without having to change for a short period of time.

Shock 1 — press Y to stun your enemy.

Blast 1 — press Y to leap forward and do a powerful attack to interrupt them and steal energy.

In battle, it will cost you one ability point to use this move, once the enemy is defeated, you will recover one ability point to use in your next fight. You will also recover some health so you are ready for the next opponent you will face. 

As you explore the world you will find energy orbs that increase your Energy Affinity Level, which will increase your energy gains when you defeat opponents. Who these enemies are and why they want to attack you, I have no clue. The story never tells you, everything feels like a huge mystery. Maybe as you progress further into the game, what exactly is going on may be revealed. At least the great visuals and tranquil music will keep you invested!

In the beginning, there is no map in Strayed Lights, it felt as if I was wandering aimlessly and it was hard to keep track of the areas I have previously explored. Most of the time I would just head to areas that had pretty lights and colours. I did make the mistake of trying to go swimming in a pool of water that I had discovered. At first, it seemed like I was able to swim, unfortunately, my character was just wildly flailing and they drowned. The screen went black and I assumed I would restart back at the checkpoint, but sadly, the game glitched and even though it was still playing music, the screen display was stuck on black so I had to hard restart the game. Luckily when it restarted up again, I was placed right by the water, so I made sure to turn around and avoid that area.

Strayed Lights is one of the most impressive-looking games that I have played in a long time. I am incredibly interested in learning more about this mysterious world, who this main character is and why these corrupted beings keep trying to attack. The visuals alone make this a game to check out!