![]() ![]() Lost Ember sometimes manages this, but more often than not its flaws threaten to bury its triumphs. That's okay - games don't have to be thrill rides all the time. ![]() The gameplay is mostly there to enrich the world rather than to provide any sort of challenge. While you will be engaging with some light animal possession mechanics, it's not really possible to fail or lose. As you might expect from that description, it largely eschews gameplay in favor of atmosphere, world-building, and storytelling. ![]() Lost Ember's official website bills it as an "animal exploration adventure game". As it stands, Lost Ember feels like a proof of concept, a demo in search of a central mechanic. Inhabiting the bodies of different animals and using them to explore a ruined world is an excellent idea. On the other hand, its central gameplay mechanics are innovative enough that I wish it went down a different path. There isn't much to do other than explore, discover the world around you, and hunt for hidden collectibles. On the one hand, it's a walking simulator. While the plot ponders some tough questions, the game itself asks if you want to be an armadillo or a capybara, and I’m here for it."There must be more to being a wolf than this." Such was my prevailing thought while playing through Lost Ember. Best of all, and the reason I backed Lost Ember on Kickstarter to begin with: you get to explore this world as a bunch of different animals, and they’re hella cute. The music is great but there’s not enough of it, controls are occasionally tricky and frame rate isn’t always stable, but any issues are more of a nuisance than a deal-breaker. ![]() It’s got an atmospheric and occasionally brilliant art style, a well-written and narrated story, and some genuinely charming gameplay segments. When it works it works beautifully, but there are a few too many gaps in between, where controls feel sluggish or performance issues creep in, and those somewhat spoil the overall effect. These moments build towards the back end of the game, as the plot unfolds and the sensation of reaching the conclusion is hastened by more polished gameplay segments, more wow-factor in the visuals and more depth in the music. There are a handful of stand-out scenes that I’m keen to go back to one day, like leaping over waterfalls and slip-n-sliding into the sunset, or swooping down on a herd of buffalo as they rumble across a desert littered with the wreckage of a ruined aqueduct. The first time you encounter a parrot and soar in company through canyons and waterfalls is wonderful, but you don’t know struggle until you’ve tried to fly up a gentle slope as a duck.Īt times Lost Ember goes all in on creating a feeling of wonder, smoothing a transition from one area to the next by moving you along in harmony with your surroundings. Likewise, the animals you’re able to possess (which range from the humble, default wolf to tropical fish, fireflies, elephants and eagles) are mostly a pleasure to control when in motion, but unwieldy in short bursts and confined spaces. Environments are gorgeous when you’re moving through them but the edges start to fray when you go looking for collectables, or venture too far from the beaten track. The gameplay benefits massively from keeping that momentum too. Lost Ember is a more involved story than Journey’s was, and is much easier to follow if you move swiftly from one beat to the next. This is a mystery with a game built around it, and it becomes apparent fairly quickly that maintaining the natural pace of the story is a far more rewarding experience than dallying to take in your surroundings. The path you follow is a Journey-esque journey, linear but with occasional freedom to explore, though no major control over the direction of the narrative. ![]()
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