Candle

"Candle"

Reviewed by: Carless Yen

Developer: Teku Studios

Publisher: Merge Games

The first thing you notice when starting up "Candle" is the beautiful art style. Colourful watercolour art just brings the game to life, and almost puts you inside of a story book especially during the wonderful cutscenes. The narrator helps this drastically with some really well written , and delivered story and voice acting. The story and the lore are just so interesting, aided by great characters and enemies along the way as well. I was really drawn in to this game. Even though I was really not feeling this well this week I kept playing to make sure I met the release date on this one. Mainly because I wanted to get the word out there about a truly incredible title. This is one of those platformers you really don't want to miss if your a fan of indies.

The puzzles are really challenging as well. I got stuck on some parts for a lot of time. Some of the clues are really well hidden, and some of the puzzles we leave you in thought a long while. That's why this game may take you awhile on your first play through. It took me around 5 hours i'd say, but if you know the routine could see you knocking it out around the 3 hour mark. I really loved the puzzles though, you will to if your a fan of a game with a decent challenge.

Now for more about the game I kind of done this review backwards didn't I lol? Candle is about Teku a really cool character in an amazing world called Earth where the gods created it the use of light. Once life was established they stepped back and let evolution run it's course. Everything was perfect until greed and hunger for power came into the hearts of the tribesman and chaos began causing the gods to destroy the Earth. They have destroyed it four times, and so far this time it isn't going very well either. Yet Teku lives peacefully amongst his people until one day he returns home to see his village in flames. The Shamen is missing, and Teku goes on a quest to find him, and so your journey begins. With only a candle in hand you must solve all the puzzles and avoid water throughout the map that turns your light out making it impossible to solve some clues.

The gameplay and controls were very smooth for me except a few times it lead to my death. I experienced zero glitches. I played the game from start to finish with out a single problem which is rare these days. Only problem I may have ever had was solving a puzzle, but that is part of the fun. There are many ways to die from enemies, to traps. They don't kill your progress though there are many of save points , as well as auto saves. So your journey picks up right where you died.

You know me I have to talk achievements now. They are fairly easy most are made up of story progression. Some come from doing something wrong in game, like doing a puzzle wrong. I highly recommend this title. I can say there is no doubt that this is one of my favorite puzzle games this year. I enjoyed it from start to finish, and think you will as well.

Pros: Game is Beautiful

Story and Narration Perfect

Difficult Puzzling

Fun Achievements

Great Characters especially the lead one

Cons: Controls can be clunky at times.

Overall: 9.2 Candle is without question a great puzzler that everyone should experience. Rather if for it's beauty alone, for their love of puzzle solving. or just because they enjoy a wonderful story. Def pick up Candle today.