Divinest light is an atmospheric, puzzle platformer developed and published by Gleb Mirolyubov. You guide a child of light across a monochromatic world in search of redemption.

Having been thrown down to Earth by the divine light, you must travel across the land to uncover secrets and fulfill your purpose, although the game doesn’t actually tell you this, awkward. I ended up having to read the description the devs provide on Steam to get any of this information and without reading about it I was continuously confused during my play-through of this game.

Now, in saying that, I was definitely intrigued, there was no context of what was happening in-game or why I was doing what I was doing, but I was very curious. Why was I here? What am I? Who are these people that shy away from me when I approach? Why is everything trying to kill me? As I played on and completed the story all these questions remained unanswered and it left me with more questions to be asked.

The game had very little/ next to no written dialogue which is great for immersive purposes but the story wasn’t easily understandable and that immersion was ruined by me constantly asking myself what is going on. This is a popular trend in games such as ‘Limbo’ or ‘Inside’ but these generally have some sort of implied meaning or a twist but the Divinest Light misses that mark in trying to emulate this style.

As you venture across the land you have to watch out for the various hazards as well as the darkness. Spend too much time without light and you will perish. There were only a handful of puzzles within the game and they weren’t anything special, I wouldn’t really call them puzzles myself more like actions that need to be done to progress. To fulfill those actions you need to do everything until something works. The character control felt super janky, and jumping up some objects was extremely frustrating.

The game was also super short, I completed it in 10 minutes my first run without knowing what to do, then only 5 minutes my second time as I found a shortcut. I’m not sure as to why it is so short, maybe it is an episode, I don’t know, another enigmatic question to add to the list.

The audio in the game was incredible, the level tracks were extremely eerie and lonely which gave the game a gloomy horror vibe although it’s far from it. The level design was pretty standard across many side scrollers and the areas ranged from a forest area to a mountain range. The visuals were also a stand-out point of the game and the use of darkness and light was well implemented which really added to the gloomy feel.

All in all the game wasn’t bad, it just lacked in content and any real depth in the story which really let the game down in my opinion. Although, it is very cheap on Steam at the moment, probably due to its short run time.

Written by: Bigfoot