Developers: Compulsion Games
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360
Contrast – Review
We’ve all played with light before, haven’t we? Making rabbits, pigeons and scary wolves on a wall. We made quite some imaginary stories with these projections. What if we were capable of jumping into the wall and become a shadow ourselves? Experience this thought in Contrast and let the light guide you.
Story
You play the story as Dawn, an adolescent with quite some nice abilities. Next to Dawn, you have another main character: Didi. This young and courageous girl is the only one that can see Dawn.
We’re back in the thirties and Didi’s parents have quite some problems. Our two friends are bound to help them because they’re the only ones that can change their situation. Dawn’s help is really necessary whilst there are quite some obstacles that only our protagonist can solve. As you help Didi and her family, you get more information about her background and the difficulties playing in Didi’s household. Solving problems and puzzles will get you to a variety of places as well, like the circus and some fancy hotels. How the story ends and what plot twists the game holds, that’s something you’ll have to find out on your own.
Graphics
Contrast uses a specific and pronounced graphical style. The developers tried to create a shady and dark environment to play in, although it doesn’t give you the creeps (and I get the creeps quite fast). The quality of the graphics is very high and it’s finished quite well. It seems like there are some items and buildings that reappear several times, which makes everything look the same and you sometimes get the feeling that you’re running in a maze.
You can change fullscreen to windowed mode, adjust the gamma and you can change the resolution if you feel the need to.
Sound
The music in Contrast was hard to evaluate as there are some good and bad points. The quality is very decent and the music fits the game because they are mostly in the thirties, jazzy-style. The cutscenes have a variety of sounds, but the tracks during the storyline are very similar and repetitive. While this isn’t very disturbing at the beginning, it starts to bore you after a while. There aren’t a lot of sound effects implemented, but the voice overs are done very nicely. Each voice fit their character and are a real surplus for the game.
You can alter the volume of the sounds, SFX and dialog volume. Next to that, you can change the language of the voices and turn the subtitles on and off.
Gameplay
Contrast is a combination of a 2D/3D puzzle platformer where you have to solve the puzzles by shifting into the light on a surface and become a shadow. This is the main objective of the game. Dawn has the possibility to become one with a flat surface as long as there is light. Her path is defined by the shadows from objects around her. You get the option to dash through a small area of shadow by pushing the B button on the Xbox controller or by pressing Q/right button on your keyboard/mouse. You can also jump and dash through obstacles by pressing the previous buttons as well.
The game consists of several acts in which you have to help out Didi in her quest to help her parents. Each act takes some time to complete as you have to walk to several places and you have to solve the puzzles. It would’ve been nice that you got the option to save whenever you want to, because there aren’t a lot of checkpoints.
One other aspect is that you can interact with the environment. These special spots are well indicated. You can collect collectibles or you can pick up several object. You can use these items to solve puzzles, like creating a shadow when you need a ramp, … . Next to your regular puzzling, you also need to gather Luminaries. These little balls of light are scattered across each zone you have to venture and are sometimes an requirement before you can start a puzzle. The Luminaries are used to power devices that are used to light an area for your puzzle.
There are some downsides to Contrast as well. Firstly, you can’t change the controls and the keyboard settings are set for a qwerty-keyboard. As I play with an azerty-keyboard, this was quite a pain. You can always change your settings of your keyboard with the ALT + SHIFT or for Windows 8 users the Windows-button + SPACEBAR. What I liked the most was to plug in the Xbox controller. It felt like the game plays more smoothly then.
Secondly, the game had some minor bugs in there as well. For example, if you put an object too close to another interactive object, you can be sure you can’t use one of them and you can try that in any position you want. All I can say the is: GG and restart from last checkpoint, wherever that was.
Conclusion
Contrast is a 2D/3D puzzle platformer where you have to play with light and shadow to complete the and help little Didi out. The graphics are decently shady but repetitive sometimes and the music is jazzy good although it might start to bore you after a while. The gameplay is nice and the concept is really good but this game might be something to play when you feel bored or when you have nothing better to do.
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