Despite talk of the Wii being a kiddy console that the core could not possibly enjoy, developers have shown that they could care less what the public thinks and just want to get their game on. So here come WayForward with their WiiWare title, “Lit” a horror-puzzle, focusing less on the horror and more on the puzzle.
In Lit you play an anorexic emo teenager named Jake who is trying to escape save his girlfriend of probably 2 weeks from a suddenly evil-creature infested school. Obviously this kid is in love with this girl long enough to risk his life for her... I am so alone; damn you Valintine’s Day. Luckily (or unluckily) there’s plenty of phones in classes that your girlfriend can call you and give you words of encouragement such as “I think everyone’s dead”, and “I’m scared, get me out of here”. Jake, the woman of the relationship, bends to her every will.
What little story you get is fed to you from your girlfriend by these phone calls, which you listen to from the Wiimote’s built-in speaker. Which sort of raises immersive-ness, but lowers audio quality; I would have preferred the latter as the game doesn’t really give a creepy vibe much to begin with, but at least they’re making use of the Wii's capabilities. These moments wouldn’t have been too bad had the voice acting been better, she speaks like a computer that had been taught “emotion” and “tone” but just can’t effectively repeat it. Either way, I always got a small feeling of pleasure whenever I hung up on the vain girl.
Ok so story is done, but before I get to gameplay I’d like to mention the title screen. The first thing you’ll notice is three grey boxes on the top left of the screen, it’ll tell you to change the brightness with the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ symbols till only the middle box is visible, I’d advise against this, as lowering the brightness to this level just makes the game more frustrating instead of creepy, besides.. I could never adjust it how it wanted... either none or all of the boxes were visible. There is also three save slots available, and you can also view the credits.
So what kind of game is this you may ask. At that question I’d tell you go go read the first paragraph again, I already said it’s a horror-puzzle. What kind of puzzle? it’s a puzzle you may actually be familiar with already; remember in elementary school when you played the game where you can only step on certain coloured tiles on the school hallways? Yeah, it’s exactly like that. Only instead of stepping on certain tiles, you just can’t step on shadows; and if you fail then creatures from the depths of hell will pull you into the underworld and feast upon your soul... not really, they’ll just make you restart the level... the jerks.
You control Jake with the Wiimote and nunchuck, with the analog stick controlling Jake’s movement and the wiimote controlling where he’s looking. You can press ‘Z’ to go into a behind the shoulder view which I much preferred to the bird’s eye view as default; but while in this view Jake can’t move so it quickly becomes a rather efficient way of slowing you down. Well since you can’t step on shadows it becomes your top priority to make light to allow Jake to move through the pitch blackness of his school, to do this he must make efficient use of lampshades, windows (by breaking them open with his slingshot, God forbid light come through a window unless its broken.), computer monitors, TVs and... floodlights, you know... the ones in prisons. The spotlights they shine on escaping prisoners? Those are the ones. You’d think he’d just turn on the ceiling lights, but no, that would be too easy. To add some variety to the mix you also find cherry bombs lying around which can also be used to break open windows, but they have a ‘splash’ of damage to if it explodes too close to a lampshade you’ll break it and need to restart the level. The controls are fairly well put together, a fling of the wiimote to throw a cherry bomb, a simple point and click to shoot your slingshot, simple waggle to recharge your shake-it-to-recharge flashlight and a gentle tap of the “a” button to interact with everything else. Though you’ll soon be cursing the context sensitive a button as you’ll find yourself repeatedly killing yourself by accidentally killing yourself by turning off a lampshade that was keeping the ever so evil shadows at bay. You’ll know what I mean when it happens... and it will happen. Also, did I mention you only get to use the ammo you find in a room for your slingshot? And you only find enough ammo to beat the level, so if you miss once you have to restart.
Wow, despite the fact that there isn’t really much to say about the game I wrote up quite a bit, so a few last words and then the run down. This game has 30 levels and 5 bosses, I’ve managed to play through 20 levels in one day (about three hours so says my wii but then again I left the game running while surfing the web and such so the actual play-time may be in the 2:15-2:30 range.) so it’s pretty short, but most importantly its only 800WP, so it is fairly cheap.
Alright the run-down:
Pros:
+ Great new take for a puzzle on the Wii; we’ve had enough Tetris clones
+ Great simple use of Wiimote gestures
+ Good difficulty curve on puzzles
+ Cheap. 800WP is nearly pocket change.
Cons:
- Frustrating context A button
- Very repetitive (you’ll be doing the same level many times either due to missing a shot, killing yourself, or stepping on a tiny piece of shadow in the middle of light.)
- Emo kid. Not only can he not crawl over a table, but getting hit by a dodgeball is fatal to this kid; gym class must have been hell.
In the end you get a fairly mediocre game, but it’s a cheap mediocre game. If you’re looking for a scare then this game isn’t worth a look, but if you enjoy the occasional puzzle, the 8$ could have been spent on a lot worse. Since I hate giving game a numeral score, I’ve decided to take Sessler’s way of doing these things a star rating out of 5.
5 being “a definite buy”, 4- “Enjoyable, probably worth the money” 3- not bad, rent, or buy if you have money to burn” 2- “pretty bad, rent at best” 1- “complete waste of time”
Overall I’d give the game a 3.5 / 5. Which would put it on the “it’s a judgement call” side of things.
P.S. I'll add some fancy graphics later, I've got to go to work soon.
Happy Valintine's day everyone.
- D4rk 
