Today we talk about Strayed Lights an indie action adventure video game.

Strayed Lights it is the first small creation of the studio Ember Games. The game has a particular peculiarity. In a very short time, he manages to convey to those who play the emotions of every being that our protagonist meets.

The game premiered on March 17, 2023 for a large number of platforms, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Nintendo Switch. But also Xbox One and Series X/S and Microsoft Windows.

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We put the spotlight on Strayed Lights

The protagonist is a light that we called "Light" in the game.
The game does not have an actual written or narrated story. However, the images and the events give the gamer countless ways to read this little game.
We are happy to tell you what this story is for us.

A bit of history

Light was born in a small den full of his fellows who sleep locked up inside transparent spheres. All these lights are waiting to be strong enough to face the outside world. This great shelter has always been a safe place, but some big storms are slowly destroying it.

We manage to get out of our sphere to be able to walk in this world and look for a safer place. Being a small light, in this huge world we don't know where to go or what to expect. We only know that we have to find shelter!

As soon as we enter a cave, we find crystals in front of us that shine with a wonderful light. It almost seems to see the sky full of shooting stars. However, as we approach the larger crystal, we are able to see our reflection for the first time. This awareness makes us grow suddenly, but not only. Our exact half has also grown in our reflection, but with a different light. This dark and gloomy anti-light that came out of the crystal sucked us into its darkness!

From now on we have lost our light and we have to find it by fighting dark monsters animated by the spark that has been stolen from us. Darkness feeds on emotions, the stronger these are, the greater the influence of darkness within us. All the bosses we face will be corrupted by their own emotions, driving them insane and making them vulnerable to darkness. 

What is Light's goal?

Light, corrupted by his own shadow, must be able to help all his fellows, purifying them of their emotions in order to regain the light lost in the darkness. Every time we manage to appease the emotions of each boss, we will get a light that we can use to empower ourselves in our inner world.

Light has the possibility, meditating, to enter his being. He will thus be able to enhance his light by increasing his life, skill points and combat upgrades.

These are some great details, which we obviously loved right away! We also noticed that as the story progresses, thus acquiring more lights, our darkness is slowly diminishing. Eventually we will be able to see our protagonist slowly return to his original state!

Strayed Lights: Combat System

One thing we really liked about this game was the combat system. In fact, in order to beat all the enemies in front of us, we must parry their blows and, in doing so, absorb their light. The parries must all be perfect, you can also attack but the damage is really minimal compared to the parry!
There are three types of attacks:

  • PURPLE LIGHT. They are the corrupted and unstoppable attacks, so we will absolutely have to dodge them
  • RED LIGHT (warm) and BLUE LIGHT (cold). They are both parryable colors and, if we too change color based on the enemy attack, we will even be able to heal ourselves during each parry

Cinematic graphics and combat are the strong point of this game. They immerse themselves perfectly in this world now immersed in shadow and sadness. We will be the ones to bring back the light, absorbing enemy energies and then unleashing our fury against them.

As you progress the combat system starts to get monotonous and repetitive. There aren't huge changes and they will limit us to parrying usual attacks with usual enemies. We also ran into some errors in the management of the camera in the game.

Some advice

We will definitely have to search the map for all the purple energy eggs!
Thanks to these we will be able to unlock many photos that will show us how beautiful the world was before the dark!

Then there are two altars in two different areas where we can deliver these eggs. The first is the cave where we can see a very large crystal of light embedded in the ceiling. The other area, however, is located above this cave. Here we will explore a huge pantheon and we will be able to admire the wonderful settings of this game. Under this majestic pantheon we find the door to the other shrine where we can get more collectibles.

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Strayed Lights: Conclusions

We finished Strayed Lights in more or less four/five hours, so longevity is not one of its strong points. We were however delighted by its fantastic atmospheres combined with the bright color-based cinematic combat.

We decided to give this exciting light game developed by Ember Games a 7, despite a few negatives. But this is natural for a debut film!