Strayed Light’s demo gives a dim look at the upcoming game

destructoid.com:

I’m not really sure where to begin with Strayed Lights. It’s visually striking. It kind of has the vibes of 2012’s Journey or 2015’s Ori and the Blind Forest. Both of which are great inspirations. Designed as the first game by French developer, Embers.

I’m not sure I can spend that much time beating around the bush. From the time I’ve spent with Strayed Lights demo, I’m significantly underwhelmed. I want to stress that I’ve only played a small slice of the game; maybe 45 minutes. However, during that time, Strayed Lights failed to grab me. Beyond that, its core design is just kind of flat. So while there’s definitely a lot of potential that things could pick up, I can’t say I’m feeling optimistic.

You play as a light, I guess. You wake up as a light baby, then venture forth into a dark world before becoming a light lad. From there, you fight angry lights. There’s some indication that there’s a sort of corruption going on here, but the whole narrative unfolds without the use of dialogue. Which I love! However, I still need to know what I’m doing here. There is very little that suggests the scale of what’s going on, or even what your purpose is. I imagine this becomes more clear as things progress, but typically you need some bait to set the hook at the beginning.

To its credit, Strayed Lights does look pretty excellent. It’s not necessarily that it has a lot of fancy effects and lots of polygons, but rather it features a lot of detailed movement. The animation is very expressive, and there are a lot of fluttering leavings and swaying fur, which look great in the high-contrast visuals.

The environment in which the demo takes place is a little monotonous, but further trailers show some nicer-looking places. Again, I kind of