Lost Ember (2019)

I grabbed Lost Ember after it was recommended by a friend and devoured the game in a mere 3 hours. A lower time slot than sites like HowLongToBeat clock the game in as. If that doesn’t tell you what I think of the game, then let's elaborate a bit more.

Lost Ember is a third person narrative game that follows two companions as they discover the history of a fallen world. The game is linear. Meaning that exploration outside of the main storyline is very limited which is a bit of a shame for those looking to really explore the wilderness. However, despite this the world still seems full as you bounce from one memory to another. It embraces many viewpoints through the eyes of a wolf with the ability to inhabit other animals and a Yanren spirit who hopes to find his way to the City of Light. With these two, we discover the story of Kalani and follow her through her memories of the Yanren Society before its fall. With beautiful graphics and a soundtrack that fits the tone, it was overall a very positive experience for me.

As someone with limited time, I found this game to be just the right fit for my days off. I personally didn’t invest time into finding all of the different relics and inhabiting all of the animals. Simply enjoying the story was enough for me to feel that the game was a positive experience. If you are someone who likes to spend hours completing a game to 100% or exploring every nook and cranny; this game may come off as short with not enough to do. Those that want something with more challenge in the form of puzzles, combat, or anything else will also find this game lacking. Since these are things that the game does not have.

Overall, I would recommend this to someone who needs something simple that doesn’t take up a lot of your time IF you do not mind a bittersweet story that will likely make you tear up by the end.

Video Format of my Review here:

Well, that was a quick turnaround. I wanted to like this game, but it's just not very good.

It's a walking simulator in which you play as a fox that can also posses other animals. The graphics are the high point, with a lovely style that almost feels like a world made of clay. The lighting also works really well to bring out the beauty in the environments.

Everything else is various levels of disappointing. The novelty of possessing other animals wears off quickly because the game does almost nothing with it. It's mostly used as a gimmick to advance. There's a small opening that your fox doesn't fit into? There's a small wombat next to it. A big rock you need to go below of? There's a few armadillos in front of it.

So possessing turns into "press the button to solve the puzzle" and nothing more. Which is a shame, because that's basically all there is to this game, gameplay-wise. The rest amounts to pushing the stick forward while holding the right trigger to sprint and occasionally hold Y to activate a memory.

The storytelling is also a bit lame. The game features this flying sphere that follows you around and it's the main mode of exposition, and the thing talks incessantly. It seems that eventually the developers realised that the thing was annoying and destroyed the mysterious mood of the game and added an option to disable it. The problem is that while the thing is now mute, the cutscenes don't change so you get long scenes of the fox looking at the orb and doing nothing instead of interesting visuals that convey the gist of what's going on.

Finally, exploration doesn't really work because the only rewards are meaningless collectibles, mushrooms that don't do anything, and "legendary animals" that are just white versions of animals that don't do anything different.

And finally, finally, the game is kind of buggy. A few times I got caught in the geometry, and the camera clips all over the place in tight spaces.

So, yeah. A disappointment all-around.

@Quietly's status reminded me that I wanted to play this and that it had a VR version which seemed to do what I wanted other games to do: have a traditional game but enable 3D using the headset. But the implementation in this case is pretty bad. In fact, it's so bad that I wonder if the developers even played the game in VR.

Just from the start the the intro cinematic is too close to your face and impossible to focus on. Then, during cutscenes the camera moves around a lot, which is terribly disorienting and nausea-inducing in VR. Finally, the game looks quite blurry and jittery; this might me a problem with my setup, but some users with other hardware also complain about this, so I think it's might be a fundamental problem.

The VR version is a bust, so I'll try the flat version instead. I can see that the game has some issues, beside the VR, such a very annoying narration (that you can mercifully turn off).

Beautiful game but also a bit of a buggy/glitchy mess. Camera issues, animals/objects floating, getting stuck on walls and having to restart the last checkpoint, the glowing orb narrator disappearing when he's supposed to light my way, suddenly having a clone after a cutscene and so on.

What a shame, this game could have been amazing but the frequent bugs/glitches really pulled me out of the immersion and started to annoy me a lot.

Not for everyone, but for some this will be a little piece of magic.

It's definitely not for those who want a hardcore or true "gaming" experience in any shape or form, it's the exact opposite. With not a single puzzle or challenge to be seen, it's basically a walking / flying / swimming "animal possession" simulator, with a story thrown in for good measure.

Being honest, I was going to give it one or 2 stars at the beginning, everything about it seemed a bit rubbish. The story seemed a bit lame and the voice acting annoyed me (please, why the Northern English accents in a Aztec type setting? No! and this is coming from someone who's English!)

...but bit by bit it all grows on you and you realise that this game has a lot of heart, made by a small indie studio (a core of about 5 people I believe) who clearly have put a lot of effort into it. It's flawed, yes, (it's easy to get stuck in the environment), but who cares, by the end the soul of the game won me over.

It's only 3-4 hours long and ridiculously overpriced, but the escapism for me was worth it.

I came across an article the other day which listed some games / virtual worlds to escape into (with regard to the current lockdown / global meltdown that's currently consuming us all).

It's basically an animal walking simulator with a story attached. Apparently its a bit buggy with technical hitches, but it's made by a small indie studio, and I think it's exactly what I need at the moment.

And I want to be that wolf.