Reviews on White Shadows – Turn on the lights

Ah, another two-hour cinematic background. White ball doesn’t do anything else with most of its ilks. At least, not structurally. It’s a familiar monochromatic experience of walking left or right while occasionally pushing boxes, pulling levers, and dodging the spotlight. However, it tries to handle some topics more heavily than most. On top of that, it has the most intricate, expensive background detailing that I think I’ve seen in a game like this. It’s a worthwhile experience if you like cinematic performances, but don’t expect anything out of the ordinary.

White ball tells the story of a crow girl. There was an apocalyptic event before the start of the game that destroyed last year’s animal society, and everything was slowly rebuilt. But the wolves made scapegoats for the birds, who were then placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Now, all animals are equal, except birds (but not really, even). Society seems underground and everything is dark due to the lack of available light. But the lights themselves are all made from batteries that run on dead birds’ batteries, which are passed through machines in bulk. It’s pretty grim, although humans obviously treat animals in a semantically identical way, so it’s not that cruel.

The story is very clearly an allegory of human racism in the use of animals, built on references to the writings of George Orwell. It’s pure Animal Farm and 1984, belonging to the group responsible for lighting is the Ministry of Light. Wolf-generated propaganda to demonize crows can be seen throughout the game, but it doesn’t really try to say much with any of its commentary, which is a missed opportunity. The theme’s presentation isn’t overly authoritarian, however, and the massive, sombre structures stand out against the game’s beautiful backdrop creating a suffocating picture for the tone that blends seamlessly with the story. about the game’s class conflict.

A lighthouse in the night

If you’ve played a cinematic platformer before, you know exactly what to expect from White ball. You walk left and right to progress. The game consists of a prologue and five main chapters, all brought together through 20 checkpoints. You will jump on platforms, push boxes, levers and solve occasional puzzles. The controls are perfectly fine, although the game isn’t demanding enough for more than that. There’s a moderate engagement where you have to dodge obstacles which I quite like, but it’s brief.

However, progress has been mostly smooth, with just a few curious check-ins keeping things steady. One part asks me to use a box to keep a door open, but the box is on the opposite side of the area and I can’t see it due to White ball black and white in color. This resulted in me going to the other end not knowing what to do, until I ended up going back to the beginning of the section to see if there was anything I missed.

There are also several different gameplay sections. The protagonist quickly gets a parasol that she can use to slow her descent, which makes for a nice change of pace. At the end of the game she can spread her wings and start flying, which makes for a very nice movement upgrade. Of course, White ball again, it’s only about two hours long, so there isn’t much time for any game to develop or leave too many impressions. However, I feel that the pacing is quite good and the game lasts as long as it should.

I will burn non-stop until my juice runs out

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any memorable setups. I don’t want to spoil it, but my favorite part of the game involving the surreal TV show segment ended in a fun way. It does a great job at bringing the player to a conclusion, which I like. I really have to mention the art direction and level of detail in the world. White ball played on a 2D plane, so there is no 3D motion. But that doesn’t stop the developers from putting a huge amount of love into the background details.

The camera moves flexibly, and there are even some fun options that have a bit of fun with camera orientation. Way White ball handling all of this is probably its biggest asset. The city itself feels massive, with the player character feeling like a real small piece of it. The number of characters on the screen at once is also impressive. This is especially true when crows harmlessly wreak havoc on the player, as dozens, if not hundreds, of them appear on screen at once. Even so, the way you have to use them (and sometimes get them killed) to progress seems pretty much the opposite of the game’s story.

However, there is a large fee to be paid for the large number of models and the huge structures in the distance. White ball Runs pretty awful. For me, it’s completely playable, mind you. But I played it on an RTX 3090 and still see fps drop to the 40s. Perhaps this will improve at launch, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself having endless fps issues logic when running this game. The optimization is really hard and I haven’t even tried raising it to 4K.

I had a pretty good time with White ball Overall. It was like watching a movie and it had some really impressive aspects that many of its contemporaries didn’t qualify or budget for. I wish it tried to say something more about its subject matter, but the concept of wolves hoarding light created from dead baby birds while subduing the animals beneath them is interesting enough. taste. The game needs some serious optimization, but if you like cinematic performances, yes much here to make it a play worth your while. Unless of course you really hate it when the games are black and white.