When the Light Dies Early Access Impressions
When the Light Dies is a twin stick shooter that’s also a tough as nails survival game.
When the Light Dies. Credit: Electric Monkeys / Secret Level Studios / PQube
You’re in the wilderness with only an oil lamp, a gun, and what little is left of your sanity. It’s getting cold and you need to find warmth. Then, rats and then other strange creatures begin attacking. This will probably be your end, because this game is very hard.
That’s When the Light Dies in a nutshell. The game combines brutal survival mechanics with a relentless twin stick shooter that has some shades of Vampire Survivors. While you must kill everything around you without getting killed yourself, you also have to contend with cold, darkness, and your sanity. Bonfires you can light don’t last long. The fuel in your oil lamp is finite. Darkness makes your enemies stronger and your sanity plummet. The cold will kill you if you stay in it too long, and the blizzards are relentless.
When the Light Dies. Credit: Electric Monkeys / Secret Level Studios / PQube
The souls of dead monsters earn you experience, and when you level up you’re offered three rewards and must pick one. To make things even harder, many of the rewards don’t just come with stat boosts—they have debuffs, too. This is just one of the things that I think makes the game in its current state unfair and unbalanced.
Your sanity fuels your active ability and it will consume a big chunk with each use. Meanwhile, darkness will also make sanity plummet. Regaining it requires an item like a book that refills it at a snail’s pace, you can’t shoot while you’re reading, and the enemy waves come hard and fast, leaving you little time to stop and recharge. Likewise, the energy meter that drops as you run will only refill if you stand still and won’t start filling for what feels like an eternity.
I didn’t want to play long enough to open up more of the roguelite-style permanent upgrades because I got too frustrated waiting for the second of three upgrade currencies to drop. When the Light Dies is unbalanced enough as it stands to make the game not fun. Still, the mechanics are clever and interesting and make me want to see how the game shapes up during its Early Access period.
When the Light Dies is available now on Steam in Early Access.
Played on: Steam Deck
