Child of Light is one of the more unique games I’ve come across. From Ubisoft, comes a story told entirely in prose, a kingdom in Austria soon turns to a fairytale in Lemuria in which young Princess Aurora wakes to find herself in a strange and magical world. It’s available exclusively as a download but if you buy in store you’ll get some extra online content and game themed goodies and art to make it worth your while.
The visuals from the get go are utterly stunning. They haunting in their beauty, pretty smatterings of colour that could be taken from the pages of a story book but with a dark undertone befitting Auroras tale. There’s gnarly and twisted trees, quaint and gorgeous villages filled with wonderfully illustrated characters to delight the imagination.
Aurora makes her way around the world, her first friend is the firefly Igniculus and they soon come across many more weird and wonderful Lemurians. You seek the highest of the high, the lowest of the low – to find your way home and assist those who need it.
While you start walking around the dark and twisted world you are soon given wings. The ability to fly is utterly thrilling and 
giving it to you from the start gets you hooked fast. You can now make your way to the edges of the world, up and down, foreground and background in a unique experience. The more you explore, the more you find and there’s plenty of hidden secrets and corners to uncover. Over your journey you’ll go under the sea, into the sky, through pits of lava and swirling skies.
Each of the companions you meet have their own skills and abilities and a quirky backstory, there’s the circus jesters, a love lorn, economising mouse and even a rock golem. They assist you in a turn based style of combat where you can choose which two of your party fights. It starts to feel a lot like juggling a party of Pokemon with their own skills and abilities to gain the biggest advantage over your opponent. The faster you move the more turns you get, but it’s strategic to the tee, with the chance to manipulate your opponents moves and interrupt their castings or slow them down. As you win more battles your band of misfits begins to level up and gain more abilities along the tree, giving you a chance to shape the progress of their skills and pursue optional quests for their story.
The story is a fairy tale, and therefore largely predictable but that didn’t really bother me. I was so enamoured with the beautiful world and the perfectly executed gameplay that I loved every minute of it. Arriving to the end of the game was the pleasant surprise that I could keep playing to finish the last of my collections for each region but even better I could restart the story but preserve but my hard earned skills and abilities. I had spent too long roaming before the final quest to finish off the skill trees but still didn’t complete them and loved the chance to start again with fresh and experienced eyes.
Child of light is simply beautiful, it’s a straightforward game but it’s finished to perfection and I would highly recommend it for something a little different.
4.5/5
