Child of Light. A 2D, Side-Scrolling, Turn-Based RPG? Yes, Please!
The credits are rolling on Child of Light, a unique mix of 2D side-scroller and turn-based RPG. You don’t see those too mix very often. I don’t know why. Maybe video games are racist.
But more likely, you don’t see side-scrolling, turn based RPGs because the side-scrolling nature restricts the player’s directional choices. What fun is an RPG if you are forced to battle every single enemy? No fun, that’s what fun. Child of Light handles this by giving the player character, a princess named Aurora, the ability to fly. So, essentially, Child of Light is a top-down game in that you can move in any direction and choose which enemies to engage. That’s either very clever or its cheating.
Also, Aurora is dead. You play as a dead person. But you have a health counter. That’s weird. Or clever. Or cheating.
A couple minor annoyances is this otherwise gem of a game. Boss battles appear without pomp or circumstance. You’re just flying along and, boom, boss fight. So, the fights lack narrative power, justified simply by the rationale, “it impedes my progress so I guess I’ll murder it.” This is even stranger considering how altruistic and simple Aurora’s motivations are. She’s helping other characters with their problems most of the time, so fighting otherwise disinterested monsters is not only mean but sociopathic.
It’s also annoying that characters level up a lot. Seriously, every couple of fights leads to a level up, and when you have 6 people in your party, suffering 6 cycles of the on-screen celebration of green arrows and increasing numbers is annoying in a fair reward for fair work sort of way. But, it is gratifying in a casino slot machine sort of way.
Overall, it’s good. There’s a child. There’s light. There’s of between those two words. That’s called tension, you plebeians of narrative. Child? What about the child? Is the child of something? I hope so…oh, the next word is of. Thank God. But of what? Of darkness? Of the clock? Of a mother who maybe didn’t make all the right choices in life. Maybe she didn’t give her the best food, or send her to the best schools, or hug her enough, but you know what, it’s hard to take time to hug when you’re working three jobs and going to evening classes on the weekends and are trying to get child support from that deadbeat father of hers, and maybe she just thinks Aurora has a small chance in this horrible world to be something great, to be something special, to be better than her mother dammit!…Oh, no, it’s child of light. That’s actually a bit disappointing.
Learn more about Child of Light
Credits:
- Pump Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- 8bit Dungeon Level Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
