Shardlight

I liked the story of Shardlight. For at least the first part of the game, the story exists in a moral grey area where both sides make compelling arguments and neither is portrayed as completely righteous or evil. However, the actual game was far too easy. I got stuck in around three different places total, but otherwise just breezed through the game. There needed to be more puzzles. A lot of the time the next move was just too completely obvious. I had a good time, though.

My first Wadjet Eye game has been Primordia, who's been literally a blast to me. Then I read very good reviews about the Blackwell Bundle, so I bought it. It's a solid game, but not that masterpiece I was anticipating. In fact, Primordia is still better (at least in my opinion). I had Shardlight on my radar all along, it had the same post-apocalyptic settings as Primordia, same Wadjet Eye quality, it looked like the perfect pick, but I was held back by the mediocre ratings. I mean, Primordia has a 4.7 (which is well deserved), the Blackwell Bundle has a 4.5 (a bit overrated, if you ask me), so the 4 given to Shardlight was a recipe for delusion. Now that I've finished it, I wonder if I was playing a total different game. I mean, guys! What's wrong with you? This game is fantastic, how could you possibly give it a 4? The story is beautiful. As I said, it's set on a dystopic world where everything is basically hopeless. I don't know, maybe it's too much nihilism for the average people, I personally love that stuff. I really don't see any negative point on this game. Ok, some puzzles are meh (sometimes you get stuck only because you didn't talk - yet again - with some NPC that has a new line of dialogue for you), but even the best adventure games have some lame puzzles. In the end, I really loved the game, it's even better than Primordia (so if you liked that one, you can buy this blindfolded).

Another Wadjet Eye entry. Good quality game, but not as good as their best ones. I really liked the game's setting. From the first scenes the game makes it clear - it's not nice and it won't get any nicer. The world is in ruins, everything is pretty messed up and people are just trying to survive. So should you. Which makes most of the characters more relatable - they're not heroes, nor they are archetypes. Most of them. Sound design and art contribute to that. Soft grey-brown-greenish palette of long dead landscapes, bearing marks of the devastating conflict, make you feel that's not the place you'd love to live in. The score is mesmerizing, not particularly memorable but adds to the gloom as well. The story is a bit on the nose though. It's your typical "rich people bad, poor people good" narrative, which might be appealing considering the time we live in, but it's so bluntly black and white with nothing in between it gets rather dull. The rich are always bad, and the poor are always good. And even if they do bad things, hey, they're poor, get off their back. Considering the setting it could be much more than that. Mechanically Shardlight plays quite well. The puzzles are very logical, I had to look up the walkthrough only once and even then it made me wondering why I couldn't figure it out myself. Not too difficult, but it was plenty of a-ha moments for me. Only one thing that left me frustrated - the game features a couple of drawing puzzles, that make you, well, draw things. While I enjoyed the concept, the technical execution was pretty bad. This kind of puzzles was making the controls very laggy and unresponsive. Good luck drawing when you barely control you mouse. To add salt to injury, I discovered it's a well-known issue that hasn't been fixed, the devs just offered some workarounds instead (turn the window mode, you can do that in additional executables in Galaxy). I know software development is hard. But it destroys the immersion nonetheless.

This game is good but by Wadjet's own high standards it's not the best. The main issue for me was the story. It starts off interestingly enough and does have elements of social commentary, who is really bad and good or is it all just shades of grey, but as it goes on the story starts to get pretty far fetched even for its own fantasy setting and at the end you're forced to make a choice which has quite unexpected outcomes and the "good" choice really didn't feel all that good but of the multiple endings it was about as good as it got. That said it's still a great game and well worth playing hence the 4 star rating.

Shardlight is a short adventure game with a mildly interesting setup and story. The story develops well with some plot twists and not falling on being too static or dull, even if its not one of the best stories out there it is good. The puzzles were mostly simple and straightforward, just 2 or 3 demanded me to think more than a minute, but this isn't bad for me, since I find annoying adventure games with crazy puzzles without logic or that keep me a lot of time blocked. Still just 2 or 3 were remarkable as great puzzles. Then the voice acting is nicely done, making the game more engaging. As a summary, a short and nice adventure, maybe not one of the best adventure games out there, but I still have fun and really enjoyed it.