When it really comes down to it, how much more geometry is actually needed than the standard cube? Granted, pyramids have four faces of equilateral triangles but they don’t stack particularly well, as opposed the cube’s nice and regular six sides and ninety-degree angles everywhere. Throw a couple million cubes on the screen and you can do practically anything, although in the case of Endlight that can feel a bit overwhelming. Each level has a straightforward goal to fly through ten glowing gold square hoops, but the hundreds of thousands of cubes making up the mesmerizing level geometry all pulse and undulate in new patterns for each area.
Endlight is a pure abstract arcade game that in concept would have fit in with the gaming cabinets of the 80s if they wouldn’t spontaneously explode trying to render a single frame. You’re a cube flying forward but otherwise able to move freely, like Space Harrier except without a fixed camera. Each gold hoop you fly through gives a few seconds of invincibility while also adding a shield, up to ten total, and when you go through one it spins into the distance for a second chance to pick it up again. The second pickup slows you down for a bit, making it much easier to steer and pick up other hoops, so when coupled with the invincibility each pickup is a chance to ram through chunks of the level with temporary wild abandon. Flying clean or dirty is a choice, and frequently it’s the most fun to bash everything to smithereens even when that’s tough on the shield. Most levels have a ten-hoop goal, although some are more, and the first-person areas only need five to clear.
The level structure of Endlight looks simple at first glance but there’s actually a lot going on there. The game launched with one hundred levels total divided up into four “seasons” of twenty five levels apiece, and the seasons are sub-divided into sections as well. Each section is a collection of levels that ends in a first-person area where you can fly around freely, invulnerable to all damage and able to relax while taking in the scenery. Other bonus areas pop up unannounced with a bit of instructions or narrative, letting you drift gently forward and plow through the text. It creates a constant cycle of sustained intensity broken up by relaxation levels, making for a pattern that can easily see a full season cleared in a sitting. There is a major However!, though, in that each level can only be played once.
Once you clear a level, that’s it, it’s over. you’re able to die a bunch of times, although if you die too much the level gets put to the back of the current section to avoid a frustrating cycle of failure, but once cleared there’s no going back. To make up for this the one hundred levels of the initial launch will be joined by updates of one new season a month for the next sixteen months, adding another four hundred to the current count twenty five levels at a time. Topping it off, on December 9 there’s a chance to earn the ability to replay, although what that consists of is as yet undefined.
Endlight released today as a thing of chaotic beauty. The release trailer doesn’t really do it justice thanks to compression, but when you crank up the in-game settings it’s crisp, clean madness. I’m not saying it’s an unparalleled arcade experience (it’s too easy to drift off the course containing the hoops and not be able to find your way back in, for example, especially when the level transition points you in slightly the wrong direction at the start. The game isn’t meant to be a hardcore challenge but it can still feel frustrating to die flailing about with no idea where you should be, especially when the restart sets you right back at the beginning but properly oriented this time.) but it plays and looks like nothing else out there. It’s cubes all the way down, and the visual madness is alone makes Endlight a journey that shouldn’t be missed.
