Mislight is a new indie platformer made by Etherlight, we would like to thank the developers for providing us with a copy of the game for reviewing purposes.
Mislight is a 2D platformer that comes packed with a lot of charm and I really enjoyed playing through the game. The details that the developers included are very good and the gameplay is really fun. I love how the game combines platforming and shooting mechanics that make it a very fun and enjoyable 2D platformer.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Very fun gameplay where you use a magical flashlight
- Interesting upgrades for you to utilize to help with platforming
- Nice cosmetics that reference other anime and games
- Beautiful pixel art that is very nice and detailed.
Cons
- NPC’s you meet in the game have no dialogue
- Finding certain doors can be a bit difficult at times
- In-game map is too small
Story
You play as a young girl who was having a peaceful night, when all of a sudden a being, known as The Forgotten, takes her soul into a forest where shadow creatures reside. The little girl finds a flashlight that has magic tied to it, allowing her to fire magic bullets to fight against them. She must find a way to escape or the shadows will take her soul.
The story for the game is short and simple, it’s easy to follow and that is completely fine. Although I do have one thing I should bring up and that is the NPCs in the game do not speak. They just stand there; they all have names but they don’t muster out a single word when approaching them. There are a few story-based NPCs that the game has, yet they also do not say anything even when they feel like they are saying something. This could be because the NPCs are technically supposed to be a special shout-out to the specific people who are backers.
Gameplay
Mislight is a run-and-gun platformer where you can use a magic flashlight to shoot down enemies. Enemies will have a health bar, with each one having different amounts of health. You could of course get upgrades with the shards you collect and level up your character. You can increase the damage, the amount of fear you can take (which is your health), the number of shards you can get, an extra life that you can use if you run out of health, and light orbs.
There are also power-ups you can get after beating bosses, like a charge shot, and a magic ability to make certain switches go off. Or being able to push objects, move platforms, and jump off of mushrooms (which is my favorite part). Then there is the bubble shield, which I will into small detail in a bit.
These abilities have a few uses and with them you can also backtrack to get collectibles, mainly notes though. These notes just give you lore but going around the map in the game is not too much of a chore so there is that. Plus, farming for shards does help in a few ways as getting upgrades is always good. Except I did not find much use in the bubble shield but that could be because of my skill in platformers and such.
Overall, the gameplay for Mislight is very fun. I really like shooting down enemies and it reminds me of Megaman in a sense. You will also come across some boss fights and they were fun to fight as well. My favorite has to be the Grim Reaper one, it was my favorite boss design-wise as I liked the detail it had on it.
Another thing I enjoyed about the game is the fact that it came with some nice anime-styled costumes for your character to equip. These costumes are references to other anime/games, you can get one that is a reference to Isabella from Animal Crossing, Junko Enoshima from Danganronpa, Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club, and more.
I do have two issues with Mislight though, the first being that finding certain doors can be a bit of a problem. You will find switches around the game that open certain doors and it will show you what door opens but not the location of the opened door.
The last issue I had is that the in-game map that the game has is a little small. I had no issues with looking at it - however, that’s not to say that other people won’t have issues when viewing it. I hope the developers make a patch to make it bigger or allow us to zoom in.
Graphics and Performance
Mislight has a very beautiful pixel art style that I enjoyed very much. I liked the dark theme it had going for it, it’s like you were actually walking in the woods at night. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I experienced no issues while I was playing.
Final Verdict
All in all, Mislight is a very fun short indie platformer that I do think is worth playing. If you are already a fan of platformers, then it is definitely worth checking out. I really liked what the developers did in this game and the references to other anime and games are a very nice touch. It’s a simple game but in all honesty, that’s fine.