Shardlight: Adventure Game

The old-school point-and-click adventure game has been experiencing something of a renaissance as of late, but developer Wadget Eye Games takes their devotion to this retro-flavored genre above and beyond. The company is known for creating engrossing titles that not only recall the engrossing settings and compelling storytelling of adventure games of yesteryear, but mimic their look in amazingly detailed, beautifully animated pixel graphics. Shardlight is one of their newest efforts, and it’s already looking very slick.

In a dystopian future, a group of five individuals called the Aristocracy rules the government. In the wake of a bomb that wiped out a good chunk of the population, a plague has ravaged the land. The Aristocracy-controlled government offers the destitute populace, who live in eternal fear of the disease, a chance at hope: do dirty work for opportunities to enter a lottery for a vaccine. Heroine Amy is one such opportunist, who takes a job to fix a broken-down reactor. What she doesn’t expect to find there, however, is a man on the verge of death who gives her a very important task.

The dystopian future aesthetic might be common these days, but Shardlight’s low-res take on the trope is quite stunning: the hand-animated pixel graphics have a life and detail to them that really sets the game apart from the pack. Our demo consisted of a scene where we attempted to restart the broken reactor, which involved finding a numerical code. The developers are making a conscious attempt to reduce the number of “inventory puzzles”, instead bestowing Amy with a crossbow she can use to interact with various objects in the environment. Shardlight’s still a ways off yet it’s estimated to be about 2/3rds complete but that’s all the more time to get yourself excited for it.

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