Today we are going to take a look at Light Fall. This engaging 2D platformer promises an innovative approach to platforming, wonderful graphics and an interesting story. Whether it can deliver on this promise is the question we will try to answer today. Light Fall is available on Steam for 14 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

I’ve always considered platformers not really to be my favorite genre. Well, in the past. But then I fell in love with Hollow Knight. Then Cuphead and Celeste came and only cemented my new found love for great platformers. So let's take a look at one that is claiming to take an innovative approach to platforming and see whether it holds up to those platforming gems.

Gameplay

And as always, we will begin with the most important thing for every single game. The gameplay. And let me be straight. The gameplay of Light Fall is amazing. Really. It’s one of the best platformers I’ve ever played and as I mentioned already I’ve played some really good platformers last year.

Light Fall gets the praise from me because of its main mechanic. The ability to create your own platforms. This relatively simple looking mechanic allows you to pick and choose your own way through the levels, something that is very hard to do in a platformer and I just love it. It creates the feeling of almost playing an open world platformer compared to your more traditional approach.

So, how exactly can you create platforms for yourself? Actually in a few different ways. The one you will use the most just creates a platform right under you and you can jump off it. Obviously, you can’t create an infinite amount of platforms, otherwise, the game would be a complete joke and super easy to finish. So, here you have the ability to create four platforms in a row. If you do create for you will expend your resources and will have to regain power by standing on solid ground. This limits the amount of “ground” you can cover and the height you can reach with your own platforms.

The second way you can create platforms is as movable blocks. These mostly get used to block lasers that would otherwise kill you on contact. But they are also sometimes used as sort of engines in machines, you put them in and then you can rotate them, opening new paths for you. This use is limited to a single block and has a timer attached to it, but not before it disappears, but before it is no longer movable.

The third way you make blocks is sort of similar to the first way you create blocks. It shares the same limit of four blocks created, but instead of the block being created under you it gets created in front of you. This allows you to use them as sort of a ladder because you also have the ability to jump off walls. And if used correctly, in combination with the platforms that are already existing in the world you can climb incredibly fast. This way also has another use, as if you create the block in front of you and continue holding the button that created it, it will continue to follow alongside with you.

And the last way you use your “power” is as a weapon. You can throw the block in a straight line in front of you destroying obstacles and enemies, making a path for yourself or clearing the way respectively.

Apart from this very unique mechanic of being able to create platforms for yourself, Light Fall is a pretty typical platformer with all the things you’d expect like platforms that last only for a short period of time until they disappear. The ability to hold on to walls and to jump off them. Enemies that block your path and either need to be avoided or destroyed. You know… all the stuff that’s been in platformers almost since they were first introduced as a genre.

The last thing I that I loved about Light Fall that I want to talk about is the fact that is often offering you several different routes to finish the level. Giving you options is something I feel is almost always a good thing and it only heightens the feeling of almost playing an open world platformer.

But not everything is fine and dandy in Light Fall. There were a few things I didn’t like when it came to the gameplay, but you can probably guess from my enthusiasm at the beginning that they weren’t that big of a deal. But let’s talk about them anyway.

In terms of the gameplay I really only had two issues. The first and the less irritating one is a somewhat inconsistent approach to difficulty. By this I mean the fact that the vast majority of each level is pretty easy to be completely honest, but then you get to a segment that just ramps up the difficulty by an insane amount and you spend 20 minutes just going through that one single segment to go back to pretty easy gameplay once you pass it.

The second and honestly more irritating problem is the fact that the movement of your character can sometimes feel a bit … sluggish. But only when moving at low speed. Once you reach a high speed the control you have over him is great. But, there are parts of the levels when you need to move slowly because you need to avoid things. On the other hand, I can definitely see this being intended by the devs as the game has a pretty big focus on speedrunning so moving slowly is disincentivized even by how sluggish it feels.

And since I just mentioned speed running let's talk about that for a moment. Apart from the story mode, which I definitely recommend you tackle first, Light Fall also has a dedicated speedrun mode. Here the point isn’t just to finish the level, but to finish it as quickly as possible, obviously. You get a stopwatch measuring your time, a ghost of your previous best time and even the option to see ghosts of other people giving the game sort of a multiplayer component but only a small one.

So… a little mid-conclusion about the gameplay. It really good. It has its flaws, especially when you are not aiming to finish the levels as quickly as possible. But the game, in general, is just great. The block creation mechanic is great, the almost open world feels just amazing and once you get used to the inertia of your character the platforming itself feels insanely rewarding.

Graphics

I do believe that that was enough about the gameplay and it is time to talk about another aspect of Light Fall – the graphics.

Light Fall uses one key feature to create nice graphics. Contrast. Whether it is the contrast of color or the contrast of light and darkness. And I did like the graphics. Quite a lot. I don’t really have anything to complain about when it comes to them but I do feel like you guys can make your own impression from the video footage itself.

Story

Another, surprisingly large, part of Light Fall is the story. And here I do actually have a few problems. First of all, I do think there is a bit too much of it.

The game presents the story in two ways. First, there is the narrator. Your companion, Stryx, an owl, the last living member of an order of protectors of the realm. And he just keeps on going and going with exposition. A few times I honestly managed to beat the levels before his dialogue ended. That just seems ridiculous. And when it comes to him, I have one more issue. His voice. It just doesn’t fit with the theme at all. He is supposed to be an old grumpy companion but he sounds soo positive all the time. It just doesn’t work. I’ll be honest, he sounds like a cheery gnome. And as my girlfriend pointed out when I asked her what she thinks of the voice, he sounds almost exactly like king Bumy from Avatar the Last Airbender. Almost exactly the same. And Bumy was a crazy optimistic guy, not a serious old grumpy person.

Then there is the second way the story is presented to you is by collecting these golden crystals that are usually hidden in some corner of the map and are supposed to be incentivizing you to explore the map to its full extent. And that part is actually fine. But the amount of text in them is just freaking ridiculous. When I came over the very first I thought to myself, okay, I’ll bite, I’ll read. It took me several minutes to read it. That just too much. And I think I would be more okay with it if the game started you with little tidbits of lore and as you were going through it it would expand the length. But just starts with several paragraphs of text.

But on the hand, if you want, you can just ignore these. Both of them. You can just mute the voice over and never search for the text lore. But the lore is actually somewhat cool. Thus my personal suggestion would be to listen to the narrator, even though his voice doesn’t fit the theme, and collect the lore and read it once you finish the game if you found yourself being interested in it.

Music

The last atmosphere building tool is the music. About which I can’t really say much. Not because its bad. But because it’s also not particularly outstanding. It’s just normal. On top of that, it gets quickly overshadowed by the voice-over taking your audial attention away from the music to the voice-over making it not really important.

Performance

Last off all, there is the performance. And here everything worked well. I did at first experience a few frame drops, but those weren’t caused by the game but by my computer deciding to go through a virus scan at a time I didn’t expect it to and once I disabled the virus scan it worked flawlessly.

Conclusion

So… in conclusion: Light Fall is a great innovative platformer. If you have even the slightest liking towards platformers I highly urge you to take a look at it. The platforming is just great in it. The game has its flaws, but mostly they are centered around the way the story is presented to you and if you play games purely for the gameplay and you can just ignore it completely. Thus, Light Fall get a definite recommendation from me.

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page