Step Out Of The Light In Just A Pixel’s Minimalist Stealth Game

Peel back the graphical sheen of many a big budget title and you’re left with the core mechanics which are what really defines the game. With Light, coming from Brighton-based Just a Pixel, it’s that gameplay which really makes it shine.

The game plays out from a top down view, as your simplistically stylised square has to stealthily navigate the levels. Though the graphics are rather minimalist, there’s an interesting blueprint-like twist to the look of the game, with a soft grid set behind the thick hard lines of the walls and the detailed wire frames of all the world objects that depict everything from chairs and desks to keyboards, wastepaper baskets and potted plants.

Speaking about the visual style, Roberta Saliani explained that “it is due to the fact that it’s just me and Danny [Goodayle], just two people, and we’re both really crap at actually taking a piece of paper and doing any drawing. That’s probably the main reason behind that.

“We wanted to create a kind of sleek vector art, which is pretty easy when you don’t have an artist behind it from the very start. Also, having the square is easy to prototype with, and all these things. The main point of it is keeping it simple, keeping it focused on the mechanics and just working on how the game plays and not having a lot of clutter that probably doesn’t need to be there.”

After the quick tutorial, the main level I played set me the task of finding all of the intel in a kind of office level. My blue coloured square was never bothered by the regular white squares, but it was the red guards who I had to be wary of. As they patrolled the level, I was privy to their sight cones, allowing me to try and avoid detection. Objects in the world will disrupt their lines of sight, so that you can hide in the slimmest of shadows at times, but if I was spotted it was generally game over, as they would rush over and knock me out.

“We had to add an element of predictability,” said Roberta of the AI, “because people were going ‘I can’t predict where the guards are going.’ That was a bit unfair, so we had to reintroduce waypoints and make them go from this point to that point.”

Learning their routines wasn’t all that tricky, though I had been watching the player before me attempt the level which helped, and so I was able to quickly get to the task at hand of hacking computer terminals to gain the passwords to unlock doors and switch off various security cameras, depending on what password those terminals held.

With interactive objects highlighted green or blue, it was quite easy to know where to go, but with the guards patrolling, the security camera moving back and forth and the few seconds that it took to open a door as a sight cone washes over me and starts to focus were nice and nerve-wracking.

But sometimes, everything will start to go wrong, and it’s nice to know that there is a slim chance of making an escape. My penultimate attempt saw me accidentally kill someone, triggering a two minute timer before the police would arrive and I failed the mission. After I stole his clothes – I failed to jot this down, but I’m pretty sure this is what I did – I went on a madcap dash through the level, coming up behind guards, bopping them on the head and trying to quickly discover the last few pieces of intel before reaching my exit point.

“The AI is not the normal AI that just goes round and round,” explained Roberta. “As soon as you disturb the AI, they will actually start to look for you and communicate with each other. The same for if you kill anybody, a civilian for instance, and someone else notices, they go into a panic and start running away from the body.”

With a body on the floor, the edges of the screen become fuzzy and noisy, the guards actively hunt for me and the civilians panic and run around as they try to escape, but even so, I was agonisingly close to completing it within my accidentally imposed time limit. Doubtless my finishing score would have suffered, but my next attempt was practically flawless as I was now armed with much greater knowledge of the level. The game will also feature further possibilities to stun rather than kill guards and then drag them away to a safe hiding spot, as well as the aforementioned ability to take another’s clothing, adding to some already well-rounded stealth gameplay.

Behind this, and gradually being pieced together as you collect the pieces of intel in the level, is a fairly standard story. Your square wakes up one day with no idea of who or where they are. Finding a note that mentions “Synthesis Futuristics”, you embark on a journey and investigation to discover what exactly it is and uncover the mysterious Project Light.

Roberta revealed another facet of the game that they’re looking to improve upon. “The intel brings up the narrative, where we still actually have to work out if we’re going to keep it as a narrative delivery, or have it narrated to make it a bit better. It can be quite a big amount of text sometime.”

That march of progress and improvement is key and as Light heads to a release later this year for PC, Mac and Linux, it’s a pleasure to see how it has progressed from the teasers that were shown even just a few months ago. Within just the minimalist graphics, what was shown at Rezzed has a more polished look to it, but it’s great to see how deep the gameplay goes, with more features and improvements yet to be added beyond Rezzed’s short teaser.