Green Eggs And Ham

I thought it was funny when Brandon brought up Child of Light last week. To answer his question in short, yes I did hear about Child of Light prior to its release. In fact, I've been anticipating its release for the last couple of months. 

There was just something about this game: Child of Light looks and feels like an indie game, but actually has a big studio and budget behind it. Budget aside, Ubisoft did have an indie approach to the development of this game, at least in terms of team size. If you look at games like Assassin's Creed, those games are all made by tiny villages, numbering around 300-600 people. Compare that to Child of Light, which was produced by a team of about 30 people, you can definitely make the case that it feels more indie just by the sheer difference in staff size.

I won't bother going into the overall details about the game as they've already been covered, but I will try to elaborate on a few ideas that Brandon didn’t completely cover.

The combat is pretty fun. There is enough strategy involved just by the addition of Igniculus that makes you actually think about whom to attack, who to slow down and even for how long. It's very reminiscent of the original Grandia on PS1 (a game I will eventually get to on a TBT). The biggest comparison being the time scale at the bottom, and that each individual friend and foe has a unique speed to their character—the latter of which really changes the tempo of combat when you fight different enemies.

One mechanic they added that really pushes the strategy and timing of the combat is the fact that anyone can have their attack interrupted. However, both you and your enemy only have a small window to interrupt one another. You have to slow down enemies with Igniculus just right to take advantage of the mechanic, and be careful to not mess up the timing and end up having the enemies interrupt you. This mechanic isn't huge, but plays a pretty pivotal role in the enjoyment of the combat. Instead of it just being a game of waiting for your turn and hitting X, you can have an active role in effecting some of the flow.

One thing about the game that doesn't really seem up to par is the main character's combat role. As it stands right now, I have two of the side characters—I don't know how many are in the game mind you, but that is beside the point. At the moment, one of the support characters is strong physically, while the other is strong magically. Now that is all fine and dandy, but they are both better at these individual tasks than the main character is at either. 

This wouldn't actually be a problem if the game was designed like Paper Mario, in the sense that you always control Mario in combat, and you have to choose which secondary character to use at any given time. In Child of Light you are actually able to just swap out the "Jack of All Trades" main character for both "Masters" of a single skill. This isn't exactly desirable from a design stand point considering you would want the player to actually use the main character, since most of the time developers spend a lot of time on them. There is also an added bonus doing it this way because now you give the players a decision about which supporting character is best to use at one point over another. It was originally a decision I thought I had to make until I discovered I could just swap Aurora out.

Personally, I have this really silly notion about using the main characters in games; I have to use them all the time even when it might seem detrimental to my cause. I'm compelled to make them the best I possibly can. Maybe I am nitpicking a bit too much; the game does allow you to change your fighters mid-combat, whenever you want, without having to reset their attack timer. Even with this flexibility though, unless my character is on the verge of dying, I have a hard time finding a reason to do so.

Regardless of that last fact, the sheer presentation in Child of Light, from the Dr Seuss type dialogue to the whimsical music, makes me want to play this game every spare moment I get...which I am sad to say is far and few between, at least until the NHL playoffs are over.