Pale Night is a simple but deceptively tricky 2D platformer from Simon Andersen, a former machine learning engineer at NVIDIA and the sole developer behind indie studio PrettyFrenchGames based (not entirely unsurprisingly) in Paris. Pale Night is the studio’s first release and the demo is available to everyone through Steam now.
Gameplay
You play as a white cube named Pal who has been cursed, meaning you must navigate the world of Vector in the shadows without touching the light. It’s a simple concept that can be fiendishly challenging at times as light sources are positioned inventively and shadows are cast by static and moving platforms, making timing and precision essential to making it through each room.
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Art Style
Pale Night‘s distinctive art style uses environmental changes of colour very effectively to liven up simple 2D spaces, and executes on the function of both light and shadow in the game world well.
Sound Design and Soundtrack
There is little voice acting to speak of – the characters you encounter speak in murmurs, grunts, and squeaks with the actual communication done through text and dialogue boxes.
French composer Charlie Houlmont a.k.a. Zenibuka is on soundtrack duty, and provides a delightful string and piano focused accompaniment to the gameplay that is distinctly itself while echoing some of Nathan McCree’s work on the first 3 Tomb Raider games.
Weighing in at only 187MB, it’s likely to run very smoothly on virtually all system configurations. If you like platformers, or fancy a simple but cleverly constructed challenge, then give this demo a go.
Pale Night is due to release in early 2022, but you can check it out on Steam by clicking below.
Our Rating
Story
Graphics
Controls
