Semblance is a game that
relies on your enjoyment of the satisfying feeling that comes with the act of
reshaping objects and environments. The game's world and its unnamed blobby
protagonist are as malleable as playdough, and it's up to you to restore this
world after it is infected by another harder, sharper race of blob. It's thin
on plot justification, but that's fine--Semblance is a solid puzzle-platformer
with a great hook and well-designed levels.
The game has you solve
level-manipulation puzzles to collect numerous scattered orbs floating just
outside of your reach. When you come across an orb, the camera will zoom out so
that every piece of the landscape you need to solve the puzzle fits within a
single screen, and it's up to you to figure out which platforms and walls to
bend and shape to reach the orb. Levels are decorated using limited color
palettes, but if a platform or wall has one consistent color tone, you can
squish and deform it with your body.
Your character, a small
indistinct blob, can move, jump, dash, and "reset" shifted pieces of
the environment. Dashing allows you to shift or reshape platforms and dig
crevices into larger parts of the level. You might need to dash into a
suspended platform from below to push it up, creating a hump you can use to
reach a higher ledge; alternatively, you might need to dash into the ground to
create a hole so that a dangerous object moving on a set path through the level
will pass over the top of you. At several points you can wall-jump by dashing
into the platforms around you, creating little crevices to move between. It's
all about finding ways to bend the environment into the shape you need it, with
some mild platforming elements thrown in.
The puzzles in the game get much
more complex over time with the addition of new obstacles and mechanics. In
later levels, you're able to squash yourself flat, horizontally or vertically,
which allows you to jump higher or further (like you're a frisbee being thrown
around) and fit through narrow gaps, which leads to some great puzzle designs
but also highlights the game's slightly fiddly controls. The blob's inertia is
hard to come to grips with, and it's a little harder to move sideways in the
air than it is in most platformers. It's easy to dash in the wrong direction
during a jump, and on a few occasions, a platforming section seemingly became
more difficult than necessary, because during a dash I'd deformed the platform
I was meant to land on. Thankfully there's an option to reset the screen, but
this can mean repeating a lot of steps during the more complicated puzzles.
Semblance is often frustrating,
but solving a puzzle, and figuring out which step you've been missing in your
process, can be very rewarding. Mid-way through the game you'll start to
encounter lights that can snap objects back to their original form if they
touch them. These lights are used for several clever puzzles; for example, you
might need to press a platform down so that it touches a light below you,
causing you to shoot into the air when the platform springs back into its
original shape like you've just jumped on a trampoline. The game finds lots of
inventive ways to deploy this trick throughout the game. There are a few
moments where puzzle solutions are immediately obvious, or ideas get reused,
but most screens require lateral thinking from the player. Insta-kill laser
beams and fields that block your dash ability are also used to clever effect
throughout.
Semblance is a charming
experience, with a cute protagonist and nice sense of visual style, even if it
never quite tips over into being properly beautiful. The art and sound design
are both perfectly fine, but also quite repetitive over the course of the game.
The game also tries to deliver story through vague cave paintings scrawled throughout
the world, but there's not enough sense of place to make them worth paying
close attention to. I also encountered a few glitches--I once got stuck inside
a wall, and on another occasion I fell through the floor, hurtling through an
endless void. A quick reset fixed these issues and I did not lose much
progress, but there's a general pervasive stickiness to some of the game's
surfaces that feels inconsistent, and this can be frustrating.
Semblance is a short game--you'll
likely be finished within two or three hours, with the final area feeling
particularly brief. This is a length that works perfectly well for some games,
but Semblance feels like it should have more to offer--the ending arrives much
faster than you'd expect after some build-up in the final level, and while the
puzzles are clever and fun it feels like more could have been done to diversify
the experience. Upon finishing the game it felt like something was missing.
Because it's so short, and the
puzzles never get particularly fiendish, Semblance is an enjoyable but light
experience. This isn't necessarily a bad thing--it's a relaxed game, a good one
to clear over a few sessions in bed or on the train if you're playing on
Switch--but it also means that it doesn't feel like the game realizes its full
conceptual potential. But the fact that I desperately wanted more, and that I
was disappointed when Semblance abruptly ended, says more about the game's
strengths than its weaknesses. This is a good idea realized and executed well,
even though you're likely to come away from it wishing for just a bit more.
0 Comments