Oscura lost light is a lot of fun, but boy do I not feel sorry for anyone in this story.
So, here’s the breakdown of the story elements in Oscura. There is a wise old man (he’s not very wise, but I’ll get to that in a second) who is getting too old to continue to keep watch over a magic light tower. Because of this he calls upon a young member of his race to take up his mantle and protect the lighthouse, a lighthouse mind you, that serves as the only light for the people of this world -Kind of an important task.
The old man tells some punk kid to watch over the only thing keeping them alive and then apparently bails to go play shuffleboard on a seniors only cruise. But before he does, he tells this randomly selected kid not to touch the light at the top of the tower lest ye face total doom! Lo and behold this kid gets bored of just sitting around and does the one damn thing he was told not to do.
Grandpa then proceeds to get pissed, because who would have guessed that a kid would go and do something he was told not to do, thus placing the entire world in danger. With the light shattered into pieces and flung across the land, it’s up to this kid (not say, an army of people) to go and get the shards back to relight the lighthouse. Oh, and because the light is out the darkness is now creeping into the land and taking over.
It should also be noted that a former apprentice of super qualified wise old man is leading this army of darkness (nailed it!) which only confirms to me that wise old man is in fact a terrible teacher and is a crap judge of character. Twenty years ago I would not have thought twice about this silly story, but I had thought we had moved slightly away from the story telling elements of 1991. Sure, none of this reduces the fun factor of the game, but it did make me do a double take wondering if the game was just messing with me.
Now you might be thinking that I’m going to crap all over this game after reading the last few paragraphs, but you’d be wrong as I really enjoyed Oscura. The game goes for a very LIMBO vibe, if you know that game, but mechanically differs with how you play. It’s like somebody wanted the dark and ominous nature of LIMBO, but wanted the gameplay to feel more Mario Brothers in tone and mechanics. I know that may sound weird, and it kind of is, but Oscura pulls it off with gusto.
The gameplay is what really shines in Oscura. It takes the very best elements that have graced some of the most revered indie games of the last several years and crafts an incredibly fun experience. Each crystal shard that you collect throughout your adventure will allow you to manipulate your surroundings in a certain way. A green crystal shard can phase in platforms for a short period of time that you can use to reach new areas, or use to block certain enemies and hazards. A red crystal comes in handy to break blow up breakable walls as your character can’t do any attacking. You’ll also pick up a blue crystal that slows down time (or speeds you up?), but my favorite crystal of all is the yellow crystal that manipulates gravity for brief spurts of time. What’s even cooler is that these crystals won’t always effect the entire screen, rather some will have a limited range that can be used to manipulate objects at different times.
You’ll also be able to switch between two crystal shards on the fly as your inventory can only hold two items. The game is structured so that you have to make use of each crystal in unique and clever ways, disarming traps, reaching new areas, and figuring out some neat puzzles. You’ve probably seen these elements before in other games like Constant C, Braid, LIMBO, and others, but Oscura brings them all together so well that you’ll really dig it. I’m a big fan of borrowing elements of great games and adapting them into a project, giving them a new spin. Instead of every single game trying to reinvent the wheel, I like when a game can grow an idea and make me think twice about a play-style that may already be ingrained in me.
The sound and music fit into the larger game world quite well. Deaths are especially “squishy” sounding and you’ll even be able to use certain audio cues to let you know danger is coming, or already here in many cases. The music has some nice melodies that call to mind a jungle environment in the intro levels. It’s calm and relaxing (an important thing when you are dying a lot), but also has this underlying tone of danger which I thoroughly enjoyed. The same can be said when you change level/worlds as the music always adjusts to fit the games areas.
Oscura Lost Light is a solid platformer, but it isn’t without its faults when it comes to gameplay either. Because of the nature of the games color scheme (all black action zones) you are going to find yourself walking into traps and hazards that you didn’t see coming. It’s a frustrating game at times, and while it isn’t on the level of I Want To Be The Guy or Super Meat Boy, Oscura is frustrating in an unintended way. The game will track your deaths in each level, but there were more than a handful of times where a death wasn’t the fault of the player, but because of the way the environment is set up. It never really gets to the point where it detracts from the game, but I did get flustered at deaths I didn’t feel where my fault. Most of these issues I think relate to some finicky hit detection and I once even phased into a wall using my powers, so it could use a little work.
I also had some trouble with the pause menu during the game. I played Oscura with an Xbox 360 controller (like I do with most games like this), but more than once I found myself back at the level select screen, losing progress, because of how everything is set up and mapped. If you hit start a pause menu pops up, but you won’t find any option to resume the game. The cursor is automatically over the”Return to Menu” tab, but hitting the B button does nothing. On more than one occasion I thought things locked up on me and accidentally hit the “Return to Menu” button by mistake. Not sure why the B button isn’t used to take you out of the menu, but it annoyed me a little. This is of course a personal thing, so you may not even encounter it during play, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention it.
These things aside, Oscura Lost Light is a fantastic little platformer that will keep you entertained. It takes the very best elements of games that have come before and creates a really cool world to play through. You can pick up Oscura Lost Light on Steam right now and I recommend that you do. It’s a cool platformer that comes so very close to being great, but is still loads of fun for the $7.99 price that its at currently on Steam.
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