Deadlight for Xbox Live Arcade is one part Shadow Complex and one part I Am Alive, a combination of sidescrolling action, and a platforming survival adventure. With a little pinch of the “Autorunner” style of gaming thrown in too… Plus zombies! If that sounds like a big pile of gaming genres combined in an awkward smorgasbord…it is.
The zombie apocalypse has struck, leaving Randall Wayne as one of the few survivors of Canada’s West Coast. He has to make his way through a ravaged land infested with zombies, environmental hazards and the occasional human adversary too. The game runs on a 3D engine, but Randall can only move left, right, up and down. Interesting things occur in the distance, such as hordes of undead chasing him but the gameplay is 2D.
Randall can run, jump, climb, sprint, shoot and melee as he makes his way to the “Safe Point” where he hopes to find his family. Along the way he has to solve simple puzzles and masterfully jump through traps and hazards. He fights zombies too, but combat is usually a last resort when players miss a jump, thereby landing near a group of zombies.
Deadlight has a lot going for it; the story is reasonably interesting especially for players who actively hunt down the clues. The platforming is tough for those who like a challenge, and it offers a new way to enjoy the zombie apocalypse. Yet it doesn’t excel at any of the elements that it uses.
The story hits the same notes that other zombie have hit, but no where near as well as the recent The Walking Dead game by Telltale (In fact there are a couple of sequences directly lifted from The Walking Dead TV show). Randall spouts philosophy about the decline of humanity, and the story slowly fills in players on Randall’s grim backstory through a series of dream-like flashbacks.
The platforming is difficult, but often much too hard because it involves trial and error, frequently putting the players in situations that call for repeated deaths before puzzling out the one correct series of moves needed to make it past a particular trap.
It often swings in the other direction, requiring the Player to simply push the action button when standing next to a single object before heading on to the next room.
It is clear that the developers at Tequila Works are trying to do something different with this game, but the project is filled with frustrating sequences and unfair player deaths. One sequence actually had Randall utter a hint about how to avoid a helicopter’s guns, but only has him say it after he had already been gunned down that same helicopter. Deadlight is filled with this sort of situation where players are caught between the need to proceed cautiously, and the need to move quickly.
There are quite a few other situations where the style of play switches abruptly between cautiously avoiding traps, and a madcap dash to escape pursuing enemies. This results in lots of deaths where Randall plummets to his demise, or is devoured by a horde of zombies because the Player has no way of knowing what to do on the first run through on that particular level.
It does have a few levels where the balance of difficulty is just right. In these rare moments, players can sprint ahead of the undead horde, jumping and climbing with perfect timing while genuinely feel that they’re a heroic survivor running for their lives through an apocalypse. Alas these moments are rare over the course of this short game.
There is a subculture of gamers who take delight in speedrunning this sort of brutal game, but that is the only audience for Deadlight.
It is available now on XBLA for 1,200 Microsoft Points (Fifteen dollars).
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