Demo Review 39: LIT

In this survival horror / puzzle game, we follow a student on a quest in his almost entirely-dark school. Something happened. But nobody knows what exactly. What’s more, this student has a friend, and she’s in danger. But wait, how can we go from room to room? Merely stepping into the darkness is an instant life lost! Using a flashlight to see what’s on the way doesn’t always help. Thousands of little bugs… and vaguely human-shaped things… are roaming in the darkness. Though, the flashlight may help in finding tools required to go across each room…

You move with the analog stick on the Wii remote’s Nunchuk. You can interact with objects by pressing C, whether that’s to light up a lamp or open a toolbox to find ammunition for your slingshot. You can switch between your tools by pressing B. Yes, you have to fend off the forces of darkness with a slingshot. Poor protagonist. You can also pick up TV remotes here and there. How can you move through each room? You find ammo for your slingshot, then you break a window. After which you can move in the newly-created path of light (wait, is it daylight outside? And… is it daylight behind every window, even in rooms that have windows on three out of four walls?). Find more ammo, break windows, disperse the darkness… also, find a remote to turn on a television and create a zone of light. Or you can turn on lamps that create arcs of light, and then move from one to the other until you reach the door at the end of each room.

The demo ends after five levels, thus about ten to twenty minutes of gameplay. This game turned out a lot more enjoyable than I thought. Adding to the ambiance is the few telephones here and there, which you can answer to hear the protagonist’s friend as she waits for him to help her out of this horror story. And when you answer the phone, the voice comes from the Wii remote’s speaker.

My first issue is that you'll usually have only one stone for your slingshot, so if you make one mistake, you have to try again – but there is no option to try again, so if you make a mistake, you have to step into the darkness and see the character get dragged down by lots of grey hands. Creepy. Thank God we have reserves of protagonists. Also, after you’ve used your slingshot ammo, the item currently used reverts to being the flashlight, so every time you pick up ammo, you need to press B to equip your slingshot again and prepare to shoot with Z.

But all in all, a really good idea, well done. I strongly suggest that you try this one. The demo ends before the first boss, however… it would have been nice to see what boss battles are like in LIT. Oh well. I know Halloween is long gone, but give it a try anyway.