Retrace the Light

Kram (streamer): Play Doppl (streamer): Watch Chat (community): Pass A refreshing take on 2.5D combat and traversal mechanics. This is a little bit bastion, a little bit zelda, and a little bit prince of Persia sands of time. A well executed debut title they should be proud of. The retrace mechanic feels self consistent, even as the applications expand. A+. Story and dialog leave something to be desired. We see the nier references and the stakes are somewhere floating out of sight in the first couple hours, but we'd like them brought into focus. If you're looking for a novel little action title, give this a go. Review recommendations are an aggregate of the streamers and the community. We do live community reviews of new games with 1 player and 1 host. Duet Comedy meets live game reviews on twitch.tv/demoduo. You can also find us at demoduo.tv

Yet another Mixed review. I was so close to recommending this, but the final boss rush at the end of the game and the complete visual and mechanical fustercluck that it was destroyed all the love, patience and goodwill the game had built up to that point. 75% of the game is fantastic. The puzzles are clever, the combat is mostly satisfying and the ui is wonderful. But there's a ton of typos, a total lack of focus on player understanding in boss fights, no explanation of multiple boss mechanics and just too many instances of the game not giving the player the needed information before a puzzle that can kill you starts. Far too often critical information is offscreen, including but not limited to interactions, progression, hazards, and teleports, meaning that the game slowly devolves from a really slick puzzle focused ARPG to a trial and error head-bashing session. Made even more frustrating by the fact that the game has a wide-view interaction, it just forgets to use it to show the player what to expect half the time. This is all exemplified by the game's last four bosses. All style over substance. Ridiculous VFX that make it impossible to track your location, 100-0 damage combos, poor damage, low health and low trace conveyance in combat, and a core damage mechanic that is irrelevant in nearly every boss fight. Blink is an awesome idea, but it's just too bad it's not usable in every boss fight. The game is so damn close to being incredible, but it all just felt so rushed and undercooked at the end. Clean, well telegraphed puzzles go by the wayside for hair trigger instadeath puzzles, retrace is blocked in some states and those states show up in retrace puzzles. And combat just devolves into a visual mess of particles where you can't see yourself. I was able to sequence break several levels at the end due to having ranged attacks which was great except for tying to use those same ranged attacks in boss fight, really love having an attack where you have to build up the charge just not hit the boss cus the auto-targeting failed. If the game updates with accessibility setting that make it so you can actually see what's happening in fights, actually tutorializes boss mechanics, and about doubles the number of overview interactibles that are in the game, it'd be such an easy game to recommend. But it's just too messy in the last quarter of the game to say I had a good time. Love seeing Chinese games that question dictatorial leadership though, so that's cool.

Retrace the Light is an interesting game with unusual game-play mechanics. I especially enjoyed the puzzle parts of it. Think part Tron, part Portal, part action RPG. The strange thing is: I liked the design, the mechanics, the story, the brainier approach to an action game and still, despite things to discover in each level, it didn't really grip me. I completed it and I enjoyed most of my 13 hours in it - but something was lacking to make it truly great and I can't quite put my finger on it. It's a rare case of a game feeling quite polished but not yet completed. E.g. the bosses are creative but more often than not you don't really understand what is happening, what is hurting you and what not - you beat them because it's not a very difficult game but it's not also not satisfying due to the fact that you don't really feel like you mastered it. The few types of smaller enemies in-between are no challenge at all and the late (extra) puzzle levels suddenly have a difficult spike that is not really earned - or to be precise: the mechanics required are poorly taught, as if time ran out on development. Same for the abrupt ending(s). So, there's a lot of potential but it's not fully realized. It's worth playing nonetheless: 7/10