This beautiful game created by Rock Square Thunder sets the tone perfectly in its new demo.
With vibrant and colourful landscapes, chilled-out atmospheric music, and sleek gameplay and controls, players are immediately immersed in the fantastical world of The Lightbringer.
Here, we take a deep dive into the game’s demo before the full release launches on PC and Nintendo Switch later today.
Gorgeous Graphics & Mellow Music
The first thing that particularly jumped out to us in The Lightbringer were the stunning graphics and landscape designs. Made entirely within the Unity engine, the colourful levels really captured the imagination from the get-go, with a cute 3D isometric design to bridge the gap between retro-looking adventure games and modern puzzle-platformers.
With each level of the demo comes a new theme, starting out with a beachy, seaside vibe in the first level (with the cutest crabs we’ve ever seen in a video game), to the mystical desert aesthetic of the second level, featuring quicksand and additional new puzzles to solve to complete the level. The music also changes with each level, with a quaint atmospheric soundtrack to suit each new environment.
Throughout each level, you can reach flags as waypoints to stop and take in your surroundings and see the rest of the level ahead. We highly recommend you do this to enjoy the intricately detailed design of each landscape!
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Getting To Grips With Gameplay in The Lightbringer
Overall, the gameplay of The Lightbringer is fairly straightforward. You jump straight into the action in The Lightbringer’s demo, with no annoying tutorials or dialogue-heavy interruptions from NPCs to slow down your progress. Regular checkpoints and forgiving deaths mean you maintain the crystals you’ve found along the way so far, so a Game Over isn’t the end of the world.
Find small green crystals and larger red crystals scattered throughout each level, with hidden secrets for true completionists. Solve simple platformer puzzles, and fight slimy enemies with your boomerang (gamers who remember Ty The Tasmanian Tiger, this one’s for you!)
Speaking of combat, the demo keeps combat surprisingly light and chill until the final level, using your boomerang to smash enemies with ease. While we were a bit nervous about the auto-aim mechanic at first, there is also an option to target the nearest vase, obstacle, or enemy with your boomerang to give players a little more control. This latter option definitely helps to multitask as you move through the levels by enabling you to run, jump and hit targets at the same time to keep gameplay feeling fluid.
One of the most underrated aspects of the gameplay was the free movement of camera rotation throughout the levels, rather than any fixed top-down views as seen in some other action-adventure games. This proved to be incredibly helpful through some parts of the 3D platforming that required a change of perspective.
There were some very minor details that needed work – some of the action prompts need adjusting (I was playing with a keyboard and mouse, but the game kept giving me controller prompts), but these are all forgivable and don’t detract too much from the actual gameplay.
The Golem Boss Level
One of the downfalls for The Lightbringer‘s demo was the final level, facing the Stone Golem boss.
Looks can be deceiving, and we found it surprisingly tricky to get a handle of the timings of the golem’s attacks.
The most frustrating part was avoiding the water attack, when the golem spouts water at the player and instantly deals 1 heart of damage, even when you feel like you’re out of range, and can easily do 2-3 hearts of damage in the space of a few seconds due to the very short damage invincibility window.
All in all, though, players can strategically use the stairs at the beginning of the arena to wait out the water attacks, and finally beat the golem through timed attacks to the slimes on the back of each of its hands.
Final Thoughts for The Lightbringer Demo
We loved this demo for The Lightbringer. While it’s fairly short as far as demos go, easily doable within 30-40 minutes (it took us just under an hour while taking regular breaks for notes), it’s still highly enjoyable and packs a lot of energy and fun into each level.
The Lightbringer is released on October 7th 2021 on the Steam Store and Nintendo eShop.
Our Rating
Story
Graphics
Controls
