Absence of Light Reviews

Delightful schmup + metroidvania combo. Short but very sweet. Can get pretty challenging in the end. But still highly recommended.

Shoot-em-ups are not my go to game. But I've been looking for a time killer that doesn't pull me in too much. Tried this one and I'm really enjoying it. It's engaging, challenging and satisfying! The killer soundtrack really adds to the vibe too!

First Thoughts after only the First Play through: First Boss is a newby challenge, then The other bosses are awesome! Some were to easy to beat if you had the right amount of power-ups, and the others were pretty Challenging, gonna try for the other trophies!

A fun twin stick shooter with good music, great art, and a dash of Hollow Knight thrown in for good measure. I dug the weapon switching / upgrading system, which added some good variety to encounters. Enjoyable combat, and the bosses have some great bullet patterns. One to check out!

It's fun and fast paced. Perfect to drop in and out of quickly, but even better in extended sessions. I can't wait to start speed running it.

The game looks very zoomed in which irks me, despite having a lot of space to operate in on the screen. I think it's because of the large geometry surrounding you. I didn't like that after a boss fight, if you want to go in with the best chance you need to farm mobs for XP to max your weapons again. This system only worked for me during the exploration portion of the game because it is otherwise tedious. With that caveat, I enjoyed the boss fights more than I did the exploration. I was not really immersed in the games world (In part due to the basic graphics style). The map system: You find the vendor for an area and purchase the map. This reveals an entire areas map and marks the location of any secret items that you haven't collected yet. The game has a death penalty where you lose gold. But you can bank the gold so it isn't lost on death. I don't see the point in this.. All it does is create a risk of needing to farm later to buy things, and forces you to decide whether you can be bothered going and banking your money all the time or not. I don't see this as a fun system in any way. It's otherwise a solid little bullet-hell microvania that looks to take 2-2.5 hours (I got bored and frustrated and put it down at what I think was the area with the final boss).

Early impressions - really enjoying it! Controls feel great, solid map, nice paralaxing environment and some moody ambient music that is different in each biome. To the Dev - can you please add a completion tracker? Either a % indicator in each area and overall %, or a x/4 secrets found kind of thing? Will update when I finish!