I normally only write positive reviews for games, but i cannot in good conscious recommend this game to anyone, despite it being almost exactly everything I could ever want in a rogue like. After writing a lot of reviews, I hope you trust what I have to say.
Here is a SPOILER-FREE summary of what the game is about:
You play as a stranger wandering a magical forest with floating skulls, with nothing to defend yourself but a glowing sword. You defend yourself from spiders, skulls, witches, and more, with almost every creature and enemy being the definition enigmatic. There is no "end", you fight endlessly against these foes, as you learn subtler and subtler mechanics. The game throws you in with no guidance, just text saying that light is your sword, and darkness shall perish. Everything else is for you to figure out yourself.
Here are my non-spoiler thoughts (the positives section):
The game offers an amazingly oppressive atmosphere, not only in the monochrome visuals, but its entire theme. In contrast to "devil daggers" a game with a similar concept, you are always on the defensive, always the prey, never the predator. The confusion and lack of understanding of whats going on at the start plays exactly into this feeling of powerlessness, and is also what will drive a player forward despite the constant deaths, the need to know whats happening, to get closure and master this forest. Even more so: "leveling up" in this game, while can be done temporarily each run, is arguably primarily done through permanently gaining knowledge of the game's mechanics. I love this concept in games, having tools and abilities that were always at your disposal, but you just never knew how to use them until you have discovered their potential.
But this is where my praise unfortunately ends, I say unfortunately genuinely, since everything listed above is exactly what I want from a game, and is likely what drew you to this game as well. Everything on the surface makes the game seem amazing, but what drags this game down so hard, is everything underneath it, so the negative part of this review will require spoilers.
To respect those reading this, I will put a spoiler warning, and to those who don't want to be spoiled, I hope you can at least see how despite all of my praise I still decided to not recommend this game, and that you will walk away from this game. The only real "non-spoiler" critique I can give you is this: While I love enigmatic games, where you figure out the mechanics, and make game-breaking discoveries, this game takes it way too far, and has absolutely no pay off for the player besides minor improvements to score.
The spoiler containing thoughts (the bad part of this game):
[spoiler]
Ill begin with the first problem you will experience when playing the game:
The monochrome visuals, while great in fueling the atmosphere, make seeing whats around you nigh impossible, especially since at the time of playing this (2025) the sword of light completely blocks your screen with light, meaning you can't see ANYTHING that's happening. I understand that the uncertainty in visuals and small vision radius is meant to play into the feeling of oppressiveness, but it goes so far to the point where fun game play just isn't possible, this problem cannot be changed at all during game play beyond getting the cross or surviving long enough to get the "ring" or "fairy" upgrade which provides only minor benefits.
I mentioned playing this in 2025, as earlier videos of the game show the sword behaving identical to the cross, where you were able to see what was in front of you while attacking, and even being able to see further in fact.
Trees play a massive role into your lack of vision clarity as well, they will block vision of important things that glow in the distance, even when you can't see the trees yourself unless you are RIGHT next to them. While I understand you might say "that's just a feature playing into the oppressive atmosphere", in the later sections, I want you to keep this aspect in mind, because it makes every part of this game's useful secrets into RNG, by deciding whether or not you can see anything based on whether a tree spawned blocking your view or not.
This is already a VERY rough foundation to have your game built on, but if the secret mechanics were strong enough, all of this wouldn't matter and I would be recommending this game to you today. unfortunately, they are even worse than what was mentioned previously.
Lets start off with the first secret you will likely notice playing this game: the "moon".
Eventually, you will notice that the moon has "legs" and is crawling around the sky. This is subtle enough to blend into the stars that pop in and out of the sky until you eventually notice it crawling around in the sky. If you look at the moon, your vision control becomes inverted, you gain blurriness on your screen (both temporarily), but you actually regenerate your light meter faster while looking at the moon!
This might seem amazing, since this will now be your permanent tool in your arsenal after discovering it! However this is not the case. The moon only regenerates your light if you are looking at it in the center of your screen, and since there is not indicator for the center of your screen, you will waste precious time trying to get the moon (thats still crawling around in the sky) to be in the center of your screen to refill some light, when the only time you'd need to refill light is if you were already being attacked. More importantly, finding the moon is almost impossible during the game when you are actively trying to find it. The trees (that you can't see unless you're right next to remember) will obscure it in the sky, and sometimes even obscure it when you are trying to look at it. All of this combined, makes the moon just a distraction rather than tool for any player.
The only other secret you could reasonably figure out on your own is that your sword can help you find crystals (collecting them can give you an upgrade). This can be done by slowly scanning around and looking inside the glow of your sword, as crystals are the only thing that will "shine" through your sword if they are visible. Unfortunately, this secret is also made pretty useless by trees blocking your vision constantly, and taking time to scan for crystals risks you accidentally running into a tree, which unnecessarily and cruelly takes away all of your crystals, or just leaves you wasting your time standing still.
All other secrets can only be reasonably found by searching online. And while this could potentially make the game a very fun internet-wide scavenger hunt for new mechanics, there aren't enough to allow this to happen.
Here are the worst offenders:
The moon ALWAYS moves in a circular pattern around the invisible ring of skeletons, which will attack you and make you float into their ring once its above you. The only way to stop it is by shining you light "into the moon" for multiple seconds. Since the ring is invisible, and the movement of the moon appears so random and it only clearly starts to circle the ring of skeletons once its sucking you in, I always assumed the moon just teleported near the ring and started circling it. Unlike every other enemy in the game (except one other), it requires multiple seconds of attacking it for it to die, and since you can't see ANYTHING while attacking you could never figure this out on your own.
There is an entirely invisible enemy that requires multiple seconds of attacking that can rarely and randomly spawn and hurt you.
I would write more but i'm running out of text space. Please don't get this game. If you are looking for an ending or lore, there isn't one. there isn't a mystery, look in the steam page, the poem there is literally all there is lore wise, the experience is awful and unrewarding.
[/spoiler]
