Light of the Mountain

I enjoyed this special game, but have a few criticisms.

First off, great job with the mood. The music is very pleasant. Add in the low-polygon, super-saturated visuals, and psychedelic level design, and everything comes together to appropriately capture the dream state of the story.

Some of the puzzles are quite challenging! But it was very satisfying to complete them without a guide. Sometimes you really have to think outside the box.

But... the gameplay can be frustrating. 3D platforming is very hard to do well, and this game does not do it well. The physics are entirely unrealistic, which can be excused for gameplay purposes, but even within the game logic it often makes no sense.

In terms of level design, there are poor indications of what to do next. Changes in the world are driven by events, but you often don't know where the change happened. I found myself spending too much time in "walking simulator" mode, traipsing around the world and trying everything over and over again until finally finding an action that was not available before. There's a certain beauty to the world, so it's not so unpleasant to wander around, but it's still time-consuming and repetitive.

And: bugs. So many bugs. Falling into infinity without dying or reappearing after death up in the sky with no way to get back down... I had to restart the game several times in order to continue playing.

Though I gave praise to the visuals, they also feel under-cooked. The assets are reused again and again, and really the low-poly models sometimes seem just ... lazy. That said, there are a few breathtaking views. Somehow with more work this could have been much better.

Finally, and this might be a quibble: the story is very trite. We've seen versions of it many times in indie games. Contemplating one's own death and the death of loved ones can be important and illuminating, but we get neither depth nor originality here.

I do want to end on a positive note: the world and the premise of the game have understated power and will keep you thinking about it after you're done. I'll never forget the island (if only because I circled it 100 times...).