Developer: Tequila Works, Abstraction Games
Publisher: Deep Silver
RRP: £8.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 21stJune 2016
Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam
Played Using: An Xbox 360 control pad
Approximate game length: 5 hours
The humble zombie, a classic horror monster that sadly due to a huge amount of overuse in the media has become something of a joke. But when you actually stop to really think about what a zombie is and I mean really think on it, they still retain all the things that made them so scary originally.
Deadlight is a 2.5D platform game set in 1986 in the city of Seattle which is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Although perhaps it would be better to say that the apocalypse has happened and this is all part of the aftermath. You play as a man named Randal who is trying to find his family. Which is a pretty standard motivation for a game such as this.
So as I mentioned this game is a platformer, although I should add it has some minor puzzle elements as well such as pushing boxes to reach higher areas and draining areas of water. The game also features a stamina meter (represented by a bar in the top left of the screen) that comes into effect when you perform any sort of strenuous task such as running, jumping or climbing. If you run out of stamina you immediately stop whatever it was you were doing meaning if you were climbing a ladder you’ll fall off. Attacking shadows will also use up stamina. It recharges when you stop moving for a while.
Hidden around the world are lost pages of your diary that will fill ion some of the blank spaces within the aformentioned diary. You’ll have to read to get the full story (which truly is the horror of this game… reading).
On the whole this game isn’t too bad, there are far worse that you could get within this genre. By far the most interesting part of the game to me was in finding the lost diary pages so I could get a feeling for the world that Randal inhabited it. Really for me this whole game was just a vehicle for that.
