Child of Light is an impressively ambitious game, a sidescrolling fairytale world of exploration that suddenly slams into a traditional Japanese RPG structure at the first hint of combat. Tyler got to take a look and described it as such, but it's not until you watch it in action that you see how big a jump it really is. A new video walkthrough with lead designer Brianna Code accomplishes just that, showing us the floaty world of puzzles and mystery.
“The exploration in Child of Light works like in any classic sidescrolling game, except for the fact that you'll be able to fly,” Code says in the video. “Since the game is also an RPG, you are able to explore inside the houses to find oculi to power up your characters. Each oculi has a special effect on your character. You will also be able to combine them to make an oculi more powerful.”
You'll recruit party members and explore like a delightfully innocent color edition of Limbo, but when combat hits the game printed straight off the back of a Final Fantasy box—a description that I mean in the best way possible. It looks like a charming take on a familiar genre, and I hope its ambitions extend to taking as many new directions as possible.
One of my favorite new directions is the writing: all of the dialog rhymes. “The game is intended to be a playable poem,” Code says. I'd like to see more of this, please.
Child of Light will arrive sometime next year.
