Finding Light Review: Drowning in the Past

Finding Light is the newest game in a trio of games called The Ambrose Saga  from indie game developer Joshua Keith. There is no website for the game (just the Steam page), nor could I find a Twitter account for the developer, which was a bit discouraging for someone like me who is looking to learn more about the game’s development and the developer in general. The developer has made one post to Finding Light’s Steam page and it’s a rundown of some known bugs and the advice to email the developer (at their personal Gmail account) if you have any problems with the game because they do not actively monitor the discussions on Steam. Interesting.

First impressions matter, and Finding Light was already making me a little apprehensive about the quality of the game, just based on the developer’s lack of presence. If it weren’t for the publisher’s brief email, I would have never known that Finding Light existed.

Ignoring my instinct to just dismiss Finding Light and move on to another game with more engaging developers, I opened the game and began the adventure as Mari, a little forest fairy creature.

Since Finding Light is the sequel to Knight Bewitched, the game doesn’t start at the absolute beginning of the story. Instead, the story begins after Mari’s friend, Abbie, has gone missing when a giant citadel appeared in the ocean and displaced enough water to flood most of the world. Mari is upset when she realizes that Abbie is missing and so she follows a series of clues that she hopes will lead her to Abbie, or at least reveal her fate.

Finding Light is interesting in that the game’s art style took a step back from the style of its predecessors. Knight Bewitched, for example, looks like a Super Nintendo game. Finding Light, looks more like a Game Boy game, with pixel art reminiscent of the very first Pokemon games. Every player has their own tastes when it comes to a game’s art, so I try not to comment too much on a game’s style unless I find it’s inconsistent, absolutely fantastic, or absolutely terrible. In Finding Light’s case, what you see is what you get and the game was consistent with that presentation.

The sound design is on par with Finding Light’s graphics. The game uses the same sort of music that you’d find in a Game Boy game. So expect lots of sharp, beeping and chirping sounds in place of musical instruments. Finding Light’s soundtrack reminded me just how poorly Game Boy games used to sound. Within a few moments of playing the game I had the entire game muted. For some reason though, the victory jingle still played when everything was muted, but that was only a minor annoyance.

Following suite, the gameplay is also as simplistic as the Game Boy games it emulates. Players walk Mari around an overworld and are occasionally interrupted by attacking creatures. When a battle occurs, the game shifts into a turn-based mode that will either be familiar to anyone who grew up playing RPGs or be easy enough for newcomers to figure out in a few moments. Characters in your party (including an animal you can shape shift to provide different abilities) take turns exchanging damage with the enemies. Victory nets some loot (including materials you can mix to make potions) and experience points that grow your characters’ powers.

Everything in Finding Light is very shallow and straightforward, there is very little of a learning curve because there is very little to learn.

The story is a matter of finding someone who has a clue about Abbie, tracking the clue down, which leads to needing to find someone else who directs you to someone else and so on it went. Finding Light wasn’t an amazing story to follow, and at times its humor shot itself in the foot. At one point some witches make a “What does the fox say?” joke that would have been outdated years ago, let alone out of place in a medieval RPG.

It was about that point in the game where I decided I was done. After navigating menus more than I was actually playing the game, the warm nostalgia I initially felt when I started the game had cooled to a mild annoyance that served as a reminder of how far things have progressed, design-wise in the game industry. The small dose of nostalgia was simply not enough to cure what ended up being a mediocre gameplay experience.

A retail copy of the game was provided to Epic Brew by the publisher.