The Deeplight Expedition

[Play The Deeplight Expedition] Game Description: Explore 38 rooms spanning 135 screens of platforming challenges as you search for the lost Deeplight stone to restore the light of the sun to the land. Find and collect the 10 keys and 4 runes to open the path to the Deeplight stone, activate the 4 warp gates to quickly move around the labyrinth, and uncover all 20 hidden tablets to learn the story of the Deeplight stones and the tyrannical mage, Syal. You’ll need to avoid devious traps, spikes, lava, and acid along the way, as well as traverse moving platforms, rush across crumbling bridges, and master the skill of wall-jumping if you expect to succeed. Go beyond just reaching the Deeplight stone and collect every key, find every tablet, and explore every inch of the labyrinth to unlock all 5 of the game’s achievements.

This is a game based all on skill, like most platformers. I saw a coupler of flaws, no actually, just one that made the game more difficult, (whether or not this flaw is on accident or acts on purpose, I do not know, though I will address it nevertheless) the wall-jumps seemed off, I had noticed that the developer had updated the wall-jumping mechanism, but it wasn’t enough and the wall-jumps seems extremely confusing to do. I get the bracing yourself against a wall, that works for me, but the fact that you then have to hit the opposite arrow to wall-jump seemed to make no sense to me, largely due to the fact that most platformer, stick with the spacebar or some other key to wall-jump. That fact, makes me confused on these game mechanisms, but I’m sure that after practice that the controls will come more to me, on a more natural level, but for the now the control choice may have just been the most difficult part of the game to learn and then to utilize in the game. Another small flaw I saw with the controls is that, in my case, on several occasions I’ve wall-jumped on accident when moving away from a wall in mid-air, which seems to me another controls flaw. Overall, difficulty was fair (vast array of moving spikes, interesting levels, lava pits, ect.), but the controls seemed to mess everything up in my case and I believe that by tweaking the controls a bit that the game could be a tad bit easier and more welcoming to newer users.

The Deeplight Expedition seemed to produce/make me go into an extremely concentrated mode (whereas I have to constantly concentrate and focus on what I’m doing, which is a good thing in my mind), but didn’t provide much besides that, almost emotionless is what I’d call it. I never did really become connected to the stroyline, as awesome as it is, it didn’t make me feel the urge to complete the game (even though I did) like some storylines in the past have made me do, it seems to have just tossed you into this world, without a proper welcoming party, nor introduction to the intriguing storyline. I feel a short prelouge is necessary. Besides that, the game also held some techno-rock-ish music, I’m not a music addict, so I have no idea what you would call the music that appears in-game, but either way, it produce this kind of urgent or frantic feeling, that made me want to complete the game, in some weird way.

The Deeplight Expedition

This is game was beautiful inside and out; I loved the visuals! The graphics were pulchritudinous and simple at the same time. I know that all of us could probably draw these graphics on a piece of notebook paper, but the whole execution was perfect, graceful and most of all, simple! I liked the retro look, one thing that really caught my eye was the lava pit effect, just seeing those bubbles pop always gets me, no matter what game it is, whether it’s realistic or not. All in all graphics were beautiful, intriguing and simple, I admire them!

The Deeplight Expedition’s sounds were excellent, I loved the varying background musics and the indivisualism of each one, providing their own theme for each zone, setting a tone on the surrounding environment. One thing that I disliked about the background music was that it seemed to be extremely repetitive and after a while I can’t stand it any more and go straight for the mute button, I think the main reason for this is that it’s “game music” which usually does not have climaxes, therefore, that is my interpretation of boring. Tone down the music a bit and the music wouldn’t annoy me as much and then let the sound effects take over, then that in my opinion would further the quality of the game, but there was hardly any sound effects, I think at the least, I heard two different sound effects, one for hitting the ground and another for dying. Expand on the sound effects, tone down the music and you’d have a perfect music department for your game, in my opinion.

I don’t think you can define this game with a certain difficulty ramp, the game was practically free-roam, think Oblivion or Fable (for the Xbox-Xbox360) when I compare this, you can almost go anywhere you want at any stage of the game, you can visit places that you left, you can visit places that are meant for a later part of the game and have control over the game. Therefore, I cannot claim that this game indeed has a difficulty ramp and all I can say, is that this game had perfect execution on one of the harder forms of game development or gameplay, whereas you can allow the user to free-roam.

The game has a strong replay factor to it, in my opinion, but obviously that is based on if you would go back back and play it again, at least in my opinion I thought that, that factor of the game was a strong point for it. The five achievements seemed to sum up the entire game, even after you have complete the main storyline events, I would definitely go back and collect the remaining achievements. The game itself was addictive, to say at the least, and I would mind speed-running through it again or go through it again to obtain some of the achievements. Even though the game is terrific standing alone, I wouldn’t mind to see the Kongregate API introduced to it to further increase the incentive to play again. All in all, the replay-ability was tremendous and was a strong point for this game.

Overall, The Deeplight Expedition was sublime, I loved the easy-going graphic style and how simple they were, but also held a powerful presence that lit up the screen and made them beautiful! One thing that I didn’t like about the game was the controls, or at least the wall-jump mechanisms, which were quite hard to get used to and disagreed with my mindset on how wall-jumping should be utilized or controlled. Storyline wasn’t the strongest point for this game and seemed to have just tossed you into this strange world with no guidance on what was really happening, I believe a short summary of why you are actually there would be helpful and more welcoming to newer users. The background music was beautiful and I loved the varying pieces, but they seemed so repetitive, that I could listen to them for long periods of time. On the other hand the sound effects were nice and I believe the developer should capitalize more on those, instead of the music at hand. Replay-ability was a great factor for this game, which included several tough in-game achievement, which made me want to come back and further complete the game! In conclusion, The Deeplight Expedition was an epic game and if you have the time, you’ll want to spend it playing The Deeplight Expedition [Play The Deeplight Expedition]