There are many ‘Vampire Survivors’ clones out there and ‘Striving for Light: Survival’ is yet another one joining those ranks. Developer and publisher, Igniting Spark Games, haven’t done just a straight-up carbon copy though. They are taking the basic premise of the time survival genre and adding their own flare making for a very addictive game.

The only exposition you get is a short cutscene when you first boot up the game. I’m not 100% sure I know exactly what is going on story-wise with Striving for Light: Survival, but I am confident I am close to the mark. An entity called ‘The Aeodra’ tempted mankind with wealth to create an alliance to attack ‘The Monumental Light’. The Monumental Light lost the battle and was scattered. Those who did not join the alliance became wanderers, striving for light in this era of darkness. Gathering fragments of light, they are left with an ultimatum of either recovering the light or offering it up to The Aeodra.

Striving for Light: Survival plays out on a small two-dimensional field where you can move in any direction. Controlling your character can be done with either a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad. Movement is standard using either the control method via the WASD or the left stick. The space bar or right trigger will activate your dodge, and viewing your character stats can be done with the Z key or the top button press on a gamepad. The mouse allows you to navigate menus using the left mouse click to make selections, whereas the right stick and bottom button press will accomplish the same task on a gamepad. All these commands are remappable so if they aren’t to your liking, you can change them up.

However, no amount of change took away from how one control scheme was excellent for one task and not the other. Navigating the menus was a breeze with the keyboard and mouse, but terrible for controlling your character in the game. Where the gamepad shone in the game but was incredibly lousy with menu navigation. I found myself swapping between the two constantly to maximise enjoyment.

There are 16 maps to play on, all with different themes. The enemies you challenge are also themed to the map and are just as diverse. Each map also comes with four different game modes and five difficulty settings. With each map lasting 20 waves and culminating in a boss fight, Striving for Light: Survival has a massive amount of content that will have you playing for hours.

The available content doesn’t stop there though, there are 20 melee weapons, eight characters, 17 ranged weapons, and 51 skills. Though only a tiny portion of this content is unlocked from the beginning, each one tells you the required criteria to unlock it.

Now this is my favourite part of Striving for Light: Survival that sets it apart from all other timed survival games, a skill tree. I know what you’re saying, “So what, it’s just a skill tree”. Striving for Light: Survival’s skill tree is expansive. As you make selections the skill tree randomly grows new skills. The skill tree becomes part of the tactics you will employ to reach the final waves of your run. Powering your skill tree is also a risk versus reward scenario.

To power your skill tree, you need to defeat enemies and collect the light fragments they drop. So, the more aggressive you are the more skill points you will earn. However, not all the skills have exclusively positive effects, as some will come with some drawbacks. So, to counteract those drawbacks you need to offset them with more skills, thus requiring more light fragments. Beware your hubris and greed, because any light fragments you fail to collect go to the enemies. This will make elite monsters spawn in the following wave, so if you’re not prepared your run will be over.

All the graphics for Striving for Light: Survival are hand drawn. It is very beautiful to look at and never feels cluttered when all the animations are being triggered on screen. The hit

detection is also superb, allowing actions like your dodge to pass seamlessly through enemies and attacks, but still maintain strong distinct borders of hitting targets and collisions.

Sound effects are good with both attacks and monsters being unique enough to not feel repeated. The music on the other hand was not the same. Though the music is of an epic scale that matches the gameplay, it is very repetitive. Not as egregious as some other games I’ve played, but annoying enough to have me turn it down.

Striving for Light: Survival may be entering a market saturated with timed survival games thanks to the success of Vampire Survivors, however, with its hand-drawn art, superb hit detection, expansive skill tree, sheer volume of content and very addictive gameplay. I believe Striving for Light: Survival is unique enough to warrant your attention.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove