There is no Light is an action-adventure game in a post-apocalyptic modern fantasy setting, as in someone opened the portal to hell, and humanity retreated into the metro tunnels with some eldritch horrors following closely. A few generations later the story starts with the main character’s family being sacrificed to the local deity, while the protagonist makes a deal with a demon to avenge them. The writing and lore are the weakest point - all dialogues and notes feel like drafts describing things rather than the final script, not to mention the occasional typos.

The combat is generally functional - the main weapon is a sword, which can have several different stats (e.g. higher damage and slower healing), a regular attack, a thrust attack, and a special rage ability attack. A throwable greatsword, a pair of breakable gloves, and a shield can be obtained after clearing one of the three main paths. Only the greatsword was somewhat useful, but only situationally. I obtained the shield last, so did not have the time nor the inclination to use it, while dashing was fast and reasonably reliable. The issue with combat comes from the encounter and enemy design - a lot of the encounters are ambushes, where the protagonist also cannot interact with various doors and ledges, thus, must defeat the foes to proceed. A lot of enemies are very fast, have little to no attack windup, and can clip through each other and the environmental hazards (e.g. to stand in the laser that hits the main character for 1 HP per second). On a positive note, there are a lot of diverse and location-specific regular foes, while the bosses also have their own features.

The locations are beautiful (as far as eyes on yellow or on red goo can be) and distinct, with unique mechanics and systems to get through them (e.g. a boat to sail through lakes or a lamp summoning the memories of how the location looked like before), the level design is lacking - it is never clear where or why to go, aside from the few areas with maps (of variable usefulness), and the walkable surfaces are not clearly visible. It is hard to tell whether something is a path, a wall, or a part of the background. Checking by dashing into them costs health on unsuccessful attempts, while the ability to negate might come very late, depending on the path chosen. After the prologue, there are 3-4 paths leading from the main hub. One of them becomes available only after clearing the other three. The exploration in general is not satisfying and there are only a few collectibles and the single-use health-restoring items in the optional rooms.

The character development system consists of weapon upgrades and the souls of the defeated bosses. The latter can drastically alter the survivability, but only one can be equipped per unlocked weapon, while some of them worked only with the weapon they were slotted into. The idea felt novel enough, but barring sprinting behind it was not. Additionally, the only way to increase the health and number of carried single-use health-restoring items was by collecting spider toys and bringing them to a certain NPC. On which path the NPC was, one should guess.

There are side quests. On one hand, it is possible to pick up the quest items before receiving the corresponding quest, on the other, it is also possible to lock yourself out of them accidentally, while the general logic of the quests and how they connect to the main story (the protagonist regaining memories) were lacking. Though, it certainly was funny when I repeatedly led the local military to be slaughtered by me, while they were trying to murder random civilians. The quest giver at no point suspected the MC of killing his subordinates. The karma system overall is more of a guessing game, but the range of dialogue options (yes, no, question) is satisfactory for the genre.

I turned off the soundtrack when it switched to rock during one of the early ambushes, thus, successfully drowning the few audio cues for enemy attacks. There is no VA, the characters speak gibberish, but it is enough to understand the tone of the voice.

The controls are rebindable and the 5-button mice are supported. The game saves progress upon entering areas or interacting with the fast travel/level up point. There are some shortcuts between them, while being defeated in a boss battle usually allows to be reviewed right at the entrance. I have encountered only one minor visual UI bug.

Overall, I would not recommend it.

Hadnt heard of this Game until it was claimable in Humble Choice.

This Game is very atmospheric, the tone it sets dictates the (regular) difficulty.
The best comparison I could draw is maybe Blasphemous, but this game is a lot harder.
Its very unforgiving with fast paced combat and hard hitting enemies.

It has tons of bosses granting you modifiers as unique as their fights upon defeating them.

All in all, highly recommend it for people who like difficult story rich games.