So, somehow I expected A Light in the Dark to be slightly different although I appreciate the serious topics it describes. Sometimes we just think way too little about people who might have it a lot harder than we do and instead just nitpick about small happenings. Of course, I think achieving complete happiness sounds a bit unrealistic as stressful situations will always come up, yet there is still a difference to just appreciate what we already have. However, during playing, I didn’t exactly agree to every point, yet it’s still pretty interesting to see another point of view, regardless.

A Light in the Dark opens with Hao-Chen Jiang waking up in an unfamiliar area. Since he isn’t at home, he realizes soon enough, that he has been kidnapped. Still processing the happenings, a mysterious girl shows up and explains to him that she is using him to blackmail his father so he would pay a hefty sum to free his son. As Jiang doesn’t socialize a lot with others he isn’t sure whether someone would even notice his disappearance. Later on, it turns out that this mysterious girl and Jiang are living in completely different worlds as she is just trying to survive whilst he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

First of all, I liked the character combination as Jiang and the mysterious girl do have completely different backgrounds. Although the two of them are human, they get treated differently, all because of the social ladder. Of course, Jiang has his own problems, yet he never had to worry about surviving per se. The thing I liked so much here is that this game perfectly displays that both parties, regardless of the wealth, are just the very same. By that I mean that whilst poor people get judged by the wealthy ones, it’s exactly the same the other way around as well. Just because someone is rich that doesn’t mean that he has a comfortable life without any problems at all. They are just different kinds of problems.

Of course, I am not trying to defend social injustice and I think it’s a very serious problem. Since the whole story takes place in Taiwan, it’s even much worse than what I’m used to when it comes to poverty. I, myself, do know that some people really have to struggle with their problems and honestly, I found it very refreshing that the perspective is a little bit different here. The reader is mostly reading the story from Jiang’s point of view and it worked out well since I was pretty confused as he was in the beginning when he suddenly woke up. This way, I could associate myself with him just fine since we both didn’t know a lot about the mysterious girl.

However, slowly, she starts to reveal one and another thing of herself although it wasn’t entirely intentional from her side. After all, when she kidnaps Jiang to gain a big sum of money, it’s understandable that one would try to keep the victim as far away from them as they can. Getting emotionally attached to them would be the last thing they would want. However, from Jiang’s perspective, he just wanted to get to know the mysterious girl better and more importantly, the reason for her actions. Although it’s pretty hard to not get angry at her, he has to keep a cool head and convince her to let him go. At the beginning that was all their relationship was about, yet I felt that there was some change after a while.

Now, I had high expectations for the reasoning of the kidnapping while feeling like that wasn’t the whole story. I couldn’t believe that money was the sole reason for committing a crime. Evidently, there was indeed more into it, yet I wasn’t really satisfied with the whole reveal. I think a big problem here is the length. Whilst a short game is definitely able to tell a convincing story, A Light in the Dark greatly suffered from it. The game kept trying to be mysterious until the end, but there wasn’t enough time for the plot to properly unfold. Although I feel like this game had a great conclusion, I couldn’t really warm up with the reason for the crime and felt like there was still a lot missing.

The only gameplay available here would be observing and talking to the mysterious girl besides choices that do pop up during the playthrough. This game offers their reader a little bit more interaction than visual novels usually do and thus, there are special events where the reader can freely decide what he wants to do. The main goal here is to find as much information as possible to update a notebook with important notes you can look up anytime during the game. This notebook, however, is only available so the reader can understand the plot easier. During observing, it’s necessary to interact with objects in various rooms. On a piece of a side note, all choices are timed which greatly managed to increase the tension.

There are multiple endings available in A Light in the Dark that is influenced by the decisions and gaining information during the observation. During bad ends, the player just suddenly dies and has to start over to see the whole story. I found some of the ends weren’t really important to the plot, especially the so-called bad ends and can be skipped easily. One thing that slightly bothered me is that it’s only possible to save after completing a chapter so I was forced to finish it before turning the game off. On the other hand, however, the chapters don’t last for very long so it was endurable when I had to wait a little bit.

Graphic-wise, A Light in the Dark looks stunning. The downside here is that one can tell that this isn’t a high budget visual novel so there are only three different backgrounds available here and therefore, there isn’t a lot of variety here. However, the few CGs and sprites that are implemented in this game look stunning and I often admired the artwork during playing although it thematizes serious topics, yet I suppose that’s not entirely a bad thing. Animations, on the other hand, aren’t present here. Sadly, there is no voice-over available which would have greatly helped with the immersion, however, I noticed small sound effects such as coughing on special occasions.

A Light in the Dark has a great premise that, however, suffered a little bit due to its length. Regardless, the story managed to keep me interested until the end although I wasn’t too happy with the whole reveal. Overall, it was quite interesting that the main characters couldn’t be more different, yet there were a lot of noticeable similarities during my playthrough which made me warm up to both of them in the end despite the unfavorable situation, but after all, they’re just human. And humans do make mistakes. That being said, A Light in the Dark is a pretty entertaining and short mystery visual novel that revolves around unique themes and is definitely worth checking out.

So, somehow I expected A Light in the Dark to be slightly different although I appreciate the serious topics it describes. Sometimes we just think way too little about people who might have it a lot harder than we do and instead just nitpick about small happenings. Of course, I think achieving complete happiness sounds a bit unrealistic as stressful situations will always come up, yet there is still a difference to just appreciate what we already have. However, during playing, I didn’t exactly agree to every point, yet it’s still pretty interesting to see another point of view, regardless. A Light in the Dark opens with Hao-Chen Jiang waking up in an unfamiliar area. Since he isn’t at home, he realizes soon enough, that he has been kidnapped. Still processing the happenings, a mysterious girl shows up and explains to him that she is using him to blackmail his father so he would pay a hefty sum to free his son. As Jiang doesn’t socialize a lot with others he isn’t sure whether someone would even notice his disappearance. Later on, it turns out that this mysterious girl and Jiang are living in completely different worlds as she is just trying to survive whilst he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. First of all, I liked the character combination as Jiang and the mysterious girl do have completely different backgrounds. Although the two of them are human, they get treated differently, all because of the social ladder. Of course, Jiang has his own problems, yet he never had to worry about surviving per se. The thing I liked so much here is that this game perfectly displays that both parties, regardless of the wealth, are just the very same. By that I mean that whilst poor people get judged by the wealthy ones, it’s exactly the same the other way around as well. Just because someone is rich that doesn’t mean that he has a comfortable life without any problems at all. They are just different kinds of problems. Of course, I am not trying to defend social injustice and I think it’s a very serious problem. Since the whole story takes place in Taiwan, it’s even much worse than what I’m used to when it comes to poverty. I, myself, do know that some people really have to struggle with their problems and honestly, I found it very refreshing that the perspective is a little bit different here. The reader is mostly reading the story from Jiang’s point of view and it worked out well since I was pretty confused as he was in the beginning when he suddenly woke up. This way, I could associate myself with him just fine since we both didn’t know a lot about the mysterious girl. However, slowly, she starts to reveal one and another thing of herself although it wasn’t entirely intentional from her side. After all, when she kidnaps Jiang to gain a big sum of money, it’s understandable that one would try to keep the victim as far away from them as they can. Getting emotionally attached to them would be the last thing they would want. However, from Jiang’s perspective, he just wanted to get to know the mysterious girl better and more importantly, the reason for her actions. Although it’s pretty hard to not get angry at her, he has to keep a cool head and convince her to let him go. At the beginning that was all their relationship was about, yet I felt that there was some change after a while. Now, I had high expectations for the reasoning of the kidnapping while feeling like that wasn’t the whole story. I couldn’t believe that money was the sole reason for committing a crime. Evidently, there was indeed more into it, yet I wasn’t really satisfied with the whole reveal. I think a big problem here is the length. Whilst a short game is definitely able to tell a convincing story, A Light in the Dark greatly suffered from it. The game kept trying to be mysterious until the end, but there wasn’t enough time for the plot to properly unfold. Although I feel like this game had a great conclusion, I couldn’t really warm up with the reason for the crime and felt like there was still a lot missing. The only gameplay available here would be observing and talking to the mysterious girl besides choices that do pop up during the playthrough. This game offers their reader a little bit more interaction than visual novels usually do and thus, there are special events where the reader can freely decide what he wants to do. The main goal here is to find as much information as possible to update a notebook with important notes you can look up anytime during the game. This notebook, however, is only available so the reader can understand the plot easier. During observing, it’s necessary to interact with objects in various rooms. On a piece of a side note, all choices are timed which greatly managed to increase the tension. There are multiple endings available in A Light in the Dark that is influenced by the decisions and gaining information during the observation. During bad ends, the player just suddenly dies and has to start over to see the whole story. I found some of the ends weren’t really important to the plot, especially the so-called bad ends and can be skipped easily. One thing that slightly bothered me is that it’s only possible to save after completing a chapter so I was forced to finish it before turning the game off. On the other hand, however, the chapters don’t last for very long so it was endurable when I had to wait a little bit. Graphic-wise, A Light in the Dark looks stunning. The downside here is that one can tell that this isn’t a high budget visual novel so there are only three different backgrounds available here and therefore, there isn’t a lot of variety here. However, the few CGs and sprites that are implemented in this game look stunning and I often admired the artwork during playing although it thematizes serious topics, yet I suppose that’s not entirely a bad thing. Animations, on the other hand, aren’t present here. Sadly, there is no voice-over available which would have greatly helped with the immersion, however, I noticed small sound effects such as coughing on special occasions. A Light in the Dark has a great premise that, however, suffered a little bit due to its length. Regardless, the story managed to keep me interested until the end although I wasn’t too happy with the whole reveal. Overall, it was quite interesting that the main characters couldn’t be more different, yet there were a lot of noticeable similarities during my playthrough which made me warm up to both of them in the end despite the unfavorable situation, but after all, they’re just human. And humans do make mistakes. That being said, A Light in the Dark is a pretty entertaining and short mystery visual novel that revolves around unique themes and is definitely worth checking out. [code]𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐲 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34470115/]𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞[/url] 𝐚𝐧𝐝 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/5413792/]𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬[/url] 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬!