One Upon Light (PC) Review

One Upon Light begins with a simple story of a simple scientist making a catastrophic mistake. This mistake leaves him unable to withstand light touching him for more than a second or so. It's a pretty typical story for what it is: part of a slowly growing genre of Portal-esque tales that could be summarised with, "crazy science in a warehouse". Fortunately, most of One Upon Light takes place in what appears to be a sewer, or at least that's the impression it gives off.

The central mechanic, of moving in and out of the shadows, has serious ups and downs. Figuring out how to manoeuvre around the environment is a pleasant experience in most cases, even if it sticks to the tried and true formula of teaching a new mechanic each level and building upon it. There's nothing wrong with this formula. Quite the contrary, in fact; it's the perfect way to teach the player how to work within their environment. One Upon Light excels at this, and while it doesn't innovate in level design, it operates so well that it doesn't have to.

The major complaint one could levy is the light itself. In a desperate attempt to reinforce that light is bad, once the player hits any substantial light patches, they will more than likely die. The player goes from a free-moving individual to a bag of wet sand. This means that rarely the player rarely gets the chance to try and rectify their mistakes without dying. Anyone can tell you that when a game is challenging, as One Upon Light is, death should be quick, to help keep the player interested in that "one more try". Death here is slow, taking upwards of twenty seconds to play out. This includes realizing your character is doomed and hopelessly trying to change course.

Character movement is another spot of concern. Lights in the levels tend to move around rather quickly, meaning the player needs to be able to make quick decisions. While moving is fine outside of the aforementioned lights, it's pushing and pulling that suffer the greatest hardship. It would be fine if this was relatively unimportant, but it's a major mechanic that feels unrefined. Frequent deaths come from your character letting go of a box several seconds after you inform him you'd like him to, and it adds to the level of frustration. Moving around the levels is better, but frequently, moments that try to build tension just feel like cheap deaths.

Artistically, One Upon Light is breathtaking. The black and white colour scheme is beautiful, albeit a little dire for the game's subject matter. It sets the tone that perhaps something very bad is at play, beyond what even the scientist you control understands. This is all complemented by a soundtrack that never feels it needs to go too far overboard. It doesn't need to, and the game benefits from the light, sombre soundtrack that never falls into the clichéd sci-fi realm it so easily could have.