Gleamlight

Game'scover

About the Game

Game:Gleamlight
Genre: 2D Adventure game
Consoles: Ps4,Xbox One, Switch PC
Published:D3 Studio
Developers: DICO
Released: August 2020

Gleamlight is a 2D adventure game developed by an Indie studio called DICO .The game was published by D3 Studio for all available consoles. Gleamlight was first teased in E3
with a release window of 2020. When the trailer was shown, there were plenty of concerns that poped online, due to the fact that the game looked extremely similar to another indie game, and that was
Hollow Knight developed by team Cherry. After plenty of articles,videos and discussions surrounding this topic the Developers of Gleamlight responded to the concerns
claiming that the knew of Hollow knight, however, Gleamlight will have nothing to do with it. There was nothing to worry about. In fact team cherry, the developers of Hollowknight often claim that
games may look like their game but it's mainly because of the Unity Engine and nothing else. Upon it's release, the game didn't live up to the expectation and an outrage began on how Gleamlight
was a "terrible and a lazy effort" of cashing in on the success of Hollow Knight. The critisism were mainly Negative with the game scoring bad reviews and bad scores. BUT is the game as Bad as they make it out to be??

The World and story of Gleamlight

Game screenshot
Similar to other indie titles released nowadays such as Little Nightmares, Abzu, Bluefire and ofcourse Hollow Knight uses little to non dialogue in order to tell it's story. In other words
it's another one of these Wordless Games. During the game, the player get's to control of a nameless red hatted knight who picks up a sword and light up the area. The Players don't get to know
what happened to it and how it ended up up there or what is it's purpose.( Since the game doesnt specify the knight's/ Kids Gender , it will be refered to as It.)
The game begins, by allowing the player to walk through their world made of glass "freely". The Game is pretty Linear by allowing the players to walk straight in an area. All the areas are inhabited by hostile enemies
who will attack the player the moment they 're spotted. The goal of the player when entering a new area, is to open the gates by breakin the seals. Once all the seals within the given area are broken the player may proceed
to the next one.
As the players proceed the game will show a cloacked figure and the players assumed task is to follow it. After changing certain location and facing certain boss encounters, the cloack figure and the knight meet eachother.
Based on the actions taken prior to reaching this point, the figure will either raise it's blade or open a path for the Knight.

NOTE:The Following paragraph is my inteprretation of the Game's story. It's Neither TRUE and neither False.!

Our knight arrives to this glass Kingdom. The Kingdom seems to be under an attack of a certain virus within the atmosphere. The knight tries it's best to move around in order to find out what went wrong. It notices the cloacked figure who seemed to want us to follow it. The knight approaches the cloacked figure.

If the players killed plenty of enemies on their way to the cloacked figure, the enemy will raise it's blade and attack. Upon defeating the enemy, the credits roll. Restarting will replace the one blade with two, the knight's blade and the shadow kid's. The player then should go all the way backwards to where their journey first began. A new area with a boss is hiden behind it. The knight and the boss fight each other. Upon defeating the enemy, it releases a gas that slowly kills the knight and rolls credits. This is the bad ending and the player will have to open the save file, press square to revive the hero, delete their current save file and restart a new. A new game+ file will be created and the player will have all their abilities earned before.
If the players didn't kill alot of enemies on their way to the shadow kid,the enemy won't raise it's blade to the knight and will instead open a new path for the knight to proceed. Once the path is opened, the kid will dissappear leaving the player alone. Once the knight proceeds onwards it will eventually come across the final boss of the game for one last battle. Defeating the boss, will spawn two kids similar to the knight but white who wants the player to follow them. They drive a Drill vechicle and take the player all the way up to the starting area. This time, unlike before all the enemies that enhabited the land are dissappeared and also there are flowers growing up. Once the player reach the starting area(Where the other boss used to be in the bad ending), they come across more children and a happier atmosphere that indicates life is comming back. The only available option for the player is to click Start/Options and select release the kid. This Action will cause the knight to place his sword in the middle alongside all the light force within him making him from red to white. The credits roll once more, and upon restarting the file the player will see a town build in the background, plenty of white children moving around, and the swords of the hero in the middle for the NPC to pay respect. Pressing Square will allow the player to delete the file and restart the game from the beggining of a new game.

Gameplay

As mentioned, the player moves around in a 2D environment breaking switches in order to proceed on their Journey. Upon first starting the game, the knight's only abilities is a single slash with the blade and a single jump. When the knight defeats an enemy it gains a new ability for him to use in either combat or manuver ability. The player moves around with R3, slashes with Square and jumbs with X. These two skills are updated when defeating certain boss encounters. For example, tapping Square will now cause a triple slash attack instead of a singular whilst pressing X again and again will cause double and triple jump. Circle is used to launch the knight up in the sky. Triangle is used to turn the world Upside down, the moment the player is hit everything goes back to normal. R1 is the ability of the knight to use the second blade it gets from the cloacked figure. Holding it down will result in a more powerful blast. Square and R1 will allow the knight to use both attacks at the same time. Last but not least L1 is used to dodge, hoever holding it down will cause the kid to first dodge and then build speed momentum that the player can use to their advantage by pressing square for a powerful tackle attack.
The game has an interesting mechanic for healing. It's not something new but it does feel fresh. the idea is that dealing damage to enemies restores health while on the other hand beeing striken down by enemy will cause them to heal on the knight's expense. This concept is mainly used in Soul-like games to restore a part of the health lost and in games like Hollow knight to restore Soul which is then used for healing. Life is indicated based on the gleam of the character. The brighter the light the closer to the max the HP is, and the darker/Shadier the Character the closer to death they are. The same rules apply for all the enemies and the player. Dying will cause the player to restart from last checkpoint by simply taping square when the sword appears on screen.
The enemy variety is decent for the size of the game and they re all unique to their own, whether it's their appearance or the way they fight. Some enemies require the player to strike them from behind, other's shoot the player from distance, other's through the walls and others have one shot explotions upon their defeat. Some of the bosses have unique attack patterns that the player will have to notice in order to take advantage of them.

Problem with the Game.

Although Gleamlight's gameplay sounds fun, in reality it has some major fundemental flaws. The main one being the combat resulting to it's difficulty. It is understandable that hard games often are missed from "casual players" but Gleamlight opposes zero to none difficulty. The enemies are design to have certain weak points that the players re required to break in order to attack HOWEVER, the mechanic is so unbalanced that the knight can literaly tap square to attack and ignore dodging any incomming attacks. The enemy will at some point hit the knight but the damage dealt won't be enought to kill as the player will deal way more damage to heal almost instantly. Gleamlight has concepts but it never really polish them. Moving on, each time the player kills a boss, the game freezes and the player gets a tutorial of the new skill earner. This happens when the player first kills that certain boss,neverheless this game freezing thing occurs every time the player kills a boss even after the first time such as in a new game+. It's annoying and pointless. A single patch could have easily removed it.
The world although it looks gorgeous at the end of the day is boring and very linear. In fact the game has 0 collectables for the players to want to explore and discover and also zero hidden rooms. The enemy variety, is decent with really nice designs but as mention the combat is a weak point so it takes away from them. They had clever build ideas as mentioned above but they never stood out. To elaborate, certain shield enemies, require the player to move behind them and strike them, however the knight can easily kill them when the enemy removes the shield in order to attack. That open window is more enough for the knight to triple slice the enemy that may die from it. The one shot explosion from a certain enemy is no longer one shot within the new game+, it's not even 50%. Last but not least the enemy Bosses also fell in the same category of staying still and tap Square and R1. There is no need to dodge any of their attacks, as once again the knight deals way more strikes than any of the enemy boss encounters.

This is a video with my Honest review close to when i played the Game