Discovering A Light In Chorus’ Pervasive Neon Pointillism

It’s rare that I find it difficult to write about a game, but A Light In Chorus is such a beautifully crafted title that you should really be seeing it rather than reading it. With that in mind, there’s a video I’d like you to watch:

It looks amazing, doesn’t it? When you’re exploring this beautiful world, which is made entirely out of tiny particles – even tinier when you zoom in – it’s just mesmerising.

Some of the best visuals of this generation so far were to be found with the neon powers from inFamous Second Son, and A Light In Chorus feels like an evolution of that. That’s naturally not the developer’s main goal or source of inspiration, but the tiny emissive lights (in chorus) which make up the world are a similar effect, lighting the world up like stars in a clear night’s sky. When far away, things glow like neon signs, but get up close and you’ll find thousands of tiny fireflies buzzing around an invisible object.

It’s truly a beautiful sight, with plenty of variety in the colours. The entire world is black aside from these particles, which range from white, to blue, green, red, and even pink. Even more fantastical is the locations they create – a lonesome forest, a bustling fairground, or even a stretch of an empty town, complete with neon bar signs which naturally fit in very well with the effects present.

The gameplay, too, is rather intriguing. It’s nothing groundbreaking – we’ll leave that to the visuals, else it would be an overload of ingenuity – and you’ll essentially be exploring the environment in the first person, clicking to switch one item with another until you get the desired result. You can hold one item in your inventory at a time, and switch this with another item in the environment. For example, when I found a giant, orange coloured C on the ground, I could then progress by placing this on a large sign which said “CIRUS” to make the word “CIRCUS” appear, and have the fairground light up.

Beyond this, the gameplay seemed quite random however; there isn’t much signposting aside from a literal signpost that informs you that white cannot be switched, and once I reached the Ferris wheel, things got even more confusing. Soon, I was switching carts on the ferris wheel for trees in the environment, creating a strange hybrid of a fairground attraction and a natural formation. It’s definitely something which needs a bit more explanation and is quite basic at the moment, but since they’ve treated the visuals with such care, the gameplay is hopefully where they’ll look to next.

The sound is another element which really adds to the game, dialling up the mystery and making the experience all the more enigmatic. It’s all very calming, soothing, and just the right sound for exploring a world such as this, where it’s like nothing you know and has a truly otherworldly feel.

Perhaps the reason that I found it so difficult to get the words about A Light In Chorus out is because it’s truly like nothing I’ve experienced before; the gameplay may have a bit of a way to go, but it’s a beautiful, reactive world which I can’t wait to explore once again.