After Lights Fades by developer Orchid of Redemption and publisher Lamplight Forest is a Sokoban–style box movement puzzle game about love and loss, an unexpected narrative/mechanical combination. We play as Alice, who goes on a journey through the stages of grief via ritual destruction of artifacts that remind her of her departed lover Aura.
Alice comes home to find her home burnt down, killing her lover Aura and destroying everything in the home save seven mysteriously unharmed “artifacts” that remind Alice of Aura. She takes these items and embarks on a journey to cast them into various abysses as a way to process her grief and say goodbye to her departed love.
The gameplay style of After Light Fades‘ puzzles is something known as Sokoban, which is a type of puzzle defined by pushing and pulling boxes within a grid to get one or more to a specific spot to solve the puzzle. They tend to have fairly simple controls; often times just the directional pad, while still allowing for devilishly complex puzzles. As far as simple controls go in After Light Fades, most levels you can get by with just the directional keys, the rewind and reset keys. Some will also involve a button to activate a special tile, but those inform you what that is on the level itself.
Now, it’s not a block pushing puzzle game without items to move around, so what does Alive have to work with? Lots of things, actually. There are boxes to push, burn or break, stones, statues, mirrors, crystals, and keys to pull, blocks to push keys you can otherwise only pull, magnets, stone tablets, blocks that swap in and out of existence, ice blocks that slide until they hit an immovable object, bridge tiles, torches, braziers, blocks that you can only break from one side, rivers, electrical sources and pylons, tiles you can only move one way on, grass tiles that burn forever if lit, river tiles that move you along with them, and tiles that become impassible after moving off of them once. One fairly common object in the game, a clump of dirt that can fill holes and turn into another tile when touched by a crystal, has a unique property in that it can only be ‘pushed’ if Alice can move away from it, meaning you need a tile free for Alice to move to in order to make it move. I cannot tell you how many times I thought I had a level solved only to realize I had softlocked myself with an immovable pile of earth and needed to rewind or even reset. Rewinding was something I did a lot in the game, ironically because of how quickly and smoothly Alice can move; it’s easy to accidentally send her a little too far and push or pull something where it’s not supposed to go.
Being a puzzle game, the variety and complexity of the puzzles is important. You don’t want too many of the same puzzles, and you typically want a steady escalation of difficulty towards a conclusion. And especially in Sokoban-style games, a clear presentation of elements such passable and impassable squares should be easy to determine. Most Sokoban games are top down or have an adjustable camera for this very reason. After Light Fades has a three quarters isometric view, which can make it difficult to see every space, especially in the more atmospheric levels, which there are a lot of in the first world. The game does include a help function that lets you scan the entire level to see what each item is, does, and how they might interact, but it doesn’t distinguish walkable tiles from unwalkable ones or point out permanent fences that might block your path. In short, the aesthetics sometimes get in the way of clearly communicating gameplay. In the first level, several times a tile appeared to be impassable because of foliage, but this was decorative, and in another, the mood lighting made me not realize a certain block was changing state. The help feature showing if a tile was walkable or an obstacle and the state of certain items might not go amiss.
That said, I am very much enjoying the gameplay. It’s the sort of game you keep coming back to for another go after setting it down because you think you’ve figured out the solution to a puzzle. In addition to all the levels to solve, there are also collectables in the form of skulls which require alternate solutions in certain levels to unlock, and scarabs, which are gained by completing specific challenge levels.
As for the story, it is told piece by piece, at various signboards and at the start and ends of levels, explaining Alice’s journey through various lands to find abysses in which to cast her artifacts and with them the lingering feelings for Aura. There’s no voice acting or visuals, just text, but the story is engaging.
After Light Fades is definitely a game that benefits from being able to jump back into it quickly, it’s a perfect game for a Steam Deck or other portable device. If you like very complicated Sokoban games, it’ll be worth your while.
Tim reviewed After Light Fades on PC with a provided review copy.
