Contrast is a Canadian-developed indie game that stars Dawn, the imaginary friend of Didi. Didi lives with her mother in the 1920's. A precocious little child, Didi guides you along in a world of shadows. Where Dawn seems to exist in the "real" world and can shift in and out of the shadows, the majority of the game's characters exist only in the shadow world. The story is about Didi and her family and it's hard not to tell you more about that without giving away too much.
On the game mechanic side, you need to solve puzzles by slipping in and out of the shadow world.
The game world shifts from a traditional three dimensional action adventure game to a 2D platformer and then back again. An awesome concept, it requires you to interact with the "real" world to create shadows that allow you to progress further. The idea itself is just great and is executed very well.
In addition to progressing through the game using the shadow mechanic you will need to collect luminaries, balls of light that exist in the "real" world that help power things. What's nice here is that although you need to collect enough to progress in the game, there are more available through side missions. Often you will see a luminary high up somewhere and then have to use the shadows to get up to it. If you choose not to obtain them, you can still progress with the main story.
There are also a bunch of collectibles along the way in the form of letters, posters and so on. They appear small in the game but you can look at them in more detail from the main menu. While they are not necessary to acquire, they make the world more interesting and also allow you to obtain more achievements. That is another thing that I love about this game. If you are a Gamerscore junkie, the game doles out its 1,000 points across 22 achievements which are actually quite easy to obtain overall and I'm happy to report I got each and every one of them. They are not too many games that I can say that about for me.
The Xbox One version of the game is actually the one to get if you are interested in this game. It offers an improved frame rate over the other versions and also contains all of the bug fixes and minor adjustments to the game that were suggested by the community. It's both a benefit and a curse of the indie game. The testing teams are smaller so the bugs are more plentiful, but the companies are often faster to respond with patches, bug fixes, and changes to the game then bigger studios.
This game has charm oozing out of every pixel. From the art style, to the smooth jazz music setting I loved my experience. My biggest complaint, honestly, is that it's over too quickly and there is definitely some unevenness when it comes to the difficulty of the puzzles. Some seem very easy while others are somewhat obtuse.
Overall, Contrast is a game worth investing your time and money in. At times it reminded me of Limbo (another game I loved), and at other times I felt like I was adventuring and exploring like I love to do in a traditional action adventure game. The story is well written and most importantly, playing it is fun. If you were to describe the contrast between a good game and a bad one, this one definitely has the good light shining all over it.- Syd Bolton
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The Good:
- Great story the is full of charm, music and graphics
- Innovative game play mechanics
- Great pacing that rewards you with lots of achievements and feel-good moments
The Bad:
- It's over far too fast
- Some puzzles are a bit obtuse, and will require repeated attempts to solve
- It's not truly 'next-gen' but looks and sounds great on the Xbox One
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Syd Bolton surrounds himself in thousands of classic video games as Canada's top video game collector at the Personal Computer Museum (http://www.pcmuseum.ca) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
