Oh, what a heartbreaker Projection: First Light is. It starts off so well. The opening sequence is a marvellous showcase of intelligently-crafted, dialogue-free storytelling, utilising the game's striking shadow puppetry art style to brilliant effect as your heroine, Greta, chases an effervescently glowing butterfly through the streets, bringing accidental ruin to all that she passes. Ignorant of these trespasses, she returns home only to be grounded. From here, she escapes her room and heads off on a grand adventure that aims to play cleverly with light and shadow. But, almost instantly, the game's controls get in the way. We'll get to it. Let's praise what it does well, first. Unfortunately, it won't take long.
The central premise of the gameplay is strong. Using a free-floating ball of light, you must cast shadows from objects and scenery in order to create platforms for Greta to walk on. You move the ball around with the right stick while Greta is controlled with the left, and it's all fairly intuitive in concept. The visuals throughout are clever and charming, and the game doesn't betray its lightbox theatre aesthetic to force puzzles – it's a world that consistently makes sense, in a game that runs very smoothly and utilises its shadow-casting mechanic for both traversal and smartly-designed challenges... and then asks you to solve them using the digital equivalent of a pair of soaking wet seal flippers.
The light-casting is finicky, awkward and irritating from the very start – even something as basic as creating a small slope usually requires a ridiculous degree of micro-adjustment. Yes, you can hold ZR to slow the light down, but it barely makes a difference. Climbing is always a pig, and you'll get frustrated when you once again overestimate the shadow's projection, or clip through it and get stuck. In principle, it's a fun, fresh system, but the execution – the way it feels in practice – bring the whole thing crashing down.
It's truly disappointing because as we've noted, there's undeniably stuff to like about Projection: First Light. The storytelling maintains its quality and charm from beginning to end, wordlessly communicating its major plot points and themes seemingly effortlessly. We were grinning from ear to ear at times, so brilliantly realised was each little conversation, each plot-advancing action. You know who everyone is and what they're up to, without a single word spoken. It's brilliant, and it hurts so much that most players won't be driven to see it through because they'll get sick of the twitchy, demanding gameplay less than an hour in.
Is that harsh? Perhaps a little, but it's such a bummer when there's so much good stuff here and all of it is massively obfuscated to the point of bitter irritation by a fundamentally awkward, confusing, inconsistent-seeming mechanic. You'll frequently run into situations where the intended solution is utterly obvious, but you'll struggle so much to execute it that you'll second-guess yourself into trying something more awkward. The kicker is, this clearly isn't a bad game – thought has gone into the puzzle designs – but we can't stress enough the impact that the shaky-as-hell light projection system had on our enjoyment.
We persevered, of course, and yes – there are instances where it seemed that we may have finally had a handle on how to play this game properly and effortlessly. These moments were quickly followed by crushing disappointment when yet another platform flickered out of existence when it really ought not to have. You're never cruelly punished by death, here – just sent back a very short way – but even early-game puzzles seeing you manipulate rolling boulders can be maddening when they seem to constantly ignore your shadows. When the rules seem inconsistent, the game is generally destroyed. That remains the case here. And goodness, it's sad.
Aesthetically, it's the bee's knees. The music is wonderfully evocative, the lighting follows your right stick impressively. Performance is usually great, with just a couple of drops in the largest areas. And if it wasn't for this single, crucial flaw, it'd be lauded as yet another brilliant indie experience. There's a good amount to do – there are bonus collectable butterflies to locate and our clear took around seven hours, but we'd wager three of those hours were spent slightly nudging shadows around the screen, wondering why the rock we were trying to push was simply clipping through them, and going "oh come on".
Conclusion
Let's be clear – this is no disaster like Gleamlight. This is a well-crafted, carefully designed and fantastic-looking game. It's just such a damn shame that the central shadow-casting mechanic is so fussy, so irritating and so downright broken that we can't recommend it without the strongest of caveats. It's very clear that the developers put their heart and soul into Projection: First Light, and that effort deserves to be recognised. Unfortunately, we suggest you recognise it from afar. We don't think that a patch alone could solve this game's problems, and if there's ever a Projection: Second Light, we'd be surprised.
Comments 13
I can feel the writer's frustration. I love a good story telling through video game medium, and it's horrifying when bad gameplay gets in the way of more people having the amazing story experience
wait.... if they are reviewing it why not show a actual game play clip video bit to highlight the issue? But instead they use screenshot? This makes the review suspect here why not just give readers a video clip of the issue for all to see what the issue was? There was another game I don't recall where play can switch from a character to the character shadow but I don't recall it itself was review as badly as this one???
Good job I waited before buying! Had this on my wishlist and my purchase finger was getting twitchy!
Thanks for the review. Shame about how it turned out as it looked like it had promise
Damn... I was looking forward to this!
ouch, and I already picked it up on sale ahead of time...guess I'll see how I fare and enjoy the music and graphics as much as possible...
@SwitchForce I think this is the game your referring to.
https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/wii/a_shadows_tale
Looking around the internet, this seems to be a love it or hate it game. Most of the reviews are around the 7-8 range, it's only this review that's so negative. I think this is one of those games where the mechanics click and work well for some players, but are confusing to others. This reviewer happens to be one of the latter.
@BoFiS You might enjoy it more than I did. As I say, I found the central mechanic so finicky that it pretty much negated any joy I took in the rest of the game. Hopefully you will disagree and have a good time!
Also that game genre looks more like folks from India looks and that might also be a reviewer bias against such games to make it have a low review as well. I suspect this much is why it go such low ratings.
@BoFiS Did you give Projection a shot? It's on sale again now, and I'm so tempted in spite of the negative review.
@SwitchForce Do you mean Iris.Fall?
@kirbygirl it's not bad, really, perhaps updates have fixed the shadow casting a little, though sure, it takes some getting used to, and so you may have to fuss with it before making your next jump, but the game isn't timed, so no rush! Visual design is fantastic and so far it's a fun take on a Limbo-like game, esp if cheaper
@BoFiS Thanks! I'm going to give it a go.
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