Strayed Lights is about rising above what weighs you down. It’s about restoring your inner balance. It’s about overcoming harmful emotions. It’s about… whatever you want it to be, really.
Such is the oft strength, sometimes weakness of opaque storytelling. For Strayed Lights, I found it to be a strength. The game takes a minimalistic approach to storytelling, relying solely on its visuals, music, and animations to tell a story of overcoming corrupting emotions and helping others in their times of need. At least, that’s how I interpreted the game’s narrative – you might perceive it differently, and the developers have commented as such. Strayed Lights wasn’t afraid to have the player do some work in piecing together its story, and this works to its benefit.
Your player character starts as a newborn being of light, barely able to crawl, and gradually grows and evolves into a mystical force ready to conqueror their inner demons. You’ll meet others like you, called siblings, over the course of your 5-7 hour journey, though interaction with them rarely involves more than a wave.
Each level features a boss you’ll encounter throughout, but instead of slaying them in battle, you’ll work to help them overcome the corruption that’s taken hold of them – whether that’s fear or anxiety or harmful curiosity. Once your character’s siblings are freed from their corruption, your character will have an opportunity to transcend (Transcend what? Well, that’s for you to decide.). However, transcendence cannot come before a battle with your character’s own inner demons, and the final sequence is as poetic as it is exhilarating.
Execute your parries at the right time with the right color and you’ll not only steal your opponent’s energy but heal your character.
Strayed Lights utilizes a combat system built upon well-timed parries as opposed to dealing damage to an enemy. Timing is key, as well as parrying with the right color. Enemies switch between blue, orange, and purple light when attacking, and by matching your character’s light when parrying to the attacking enemy’s color you can heal and fill up the energy bar more quickly. Once filled, you can unleash an energy attack to dispel the corrupted creature.
This system feels closer to Sekiro than any other soulslike combat. However, finding a rhythm is much more difficult than in Sekiro. Having to press one shoulder button to change your character’s color and then the other to parry is difficult to get down in such narrow timing windows. Add in purple attacks that must be dodged and sometimes you’ll find your wires getting crossed and failing to parry or dodge entire attack chains with any success. You’ll have plenty of opportunities for practice as there are only a handful of enemy types, and they don’t vary at all level to level. The game’s combat is challenging and fun, but I honestly never found a good rhythm with parrying until the game was ready to end.
Unfortunately Strayed Lights’s gameplay breaks down whenever faced with a pair of enemies. Trying to parry a blue enemy’s strike while a purple enemy – sometimes off-screen – launches an attack you have to dodge is a recipe for disaster. I died way more often to pairs of enemies than I did to boss fights, and during the final stretch of the game I opted to simply run past the duos as they proved more frustrating than fruitful. Multiple enemy attack animations on-screen also hurt the game’s frame rate in those encounters.
The cinematic boss fights are amazing, with every action feeling heavy and monumental.
But Strayed Lights’s saving gameplay graces are the boss encounters; they are awesome, containing just the right amount of variety and difficulty. They emulate titanic boss fights from Souls games as you’ll be on the edge of your seat parrying a giant’s attack chain. You’ll feel there’ no way such a small light can overcome such a behemoth’s attacks, and yet, with the right timing and rhythm, you’ll do just that. The boss fights emulate the game’s themes in a way – no matter how towering the challenge, you can overcome it.
The boss fights get easier on each successive attempt as you learn the animations and how to time your parries. They end with wonderful cinematic QTEs (don’t worry – they’re brief and not annoying) where the boss’s corruption is vanquished, and I love how your character doesn’t end the fights with killing blows, but rather attempts to console the corrupted siblings.
You can pet the cool and cute fox/deer creature — 10/10, A+, perfection.
Most of the game is bathed in a melancholic palette, with an early focus on dark blacks that evolves into lush and somber purples. When your character makes an ascension at the halfway point, there’s a level where the color really comes alive with luscious greens and pretty blues. The art style is gorgeous, though graphically the game doesn’t look much better than an early era PS4 title. Its music fits the mood as well, with rambunctious drums setting the tone during white-knuckle fights. However, there are times when the music and gameplay clashed, with relaxing exploration music playing over chaotic clashes.
With a focus on helping others and overcoming inner turmoil, Strayed Lights is a more optimistic game than its somber look would indicate. You’ll see it get tossed the ‘soulslike’ label because of the gameplay and boss fights, but it never feels hopeless in a way other soulslikes can. There’s a light beyond the darkness, and you’ll enjoy finding it in Strayed Lights.
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