The independent scene has been gaining weight over the last few years and it is more and more common to see indie titles appear in the big media in the sector or even get recognition at prestigious award ceremonies. In that sense, the game we are dealing with today takes elements of other well-loved low-budget works and makes them its own. We tell you everything in our silt analysiswhich comes from the hand of the debutant British study Spiral Circus and that, at first glance, is very reminiscent of Limbo for its aesthetics and crudeness and Abzû for offering us a one hundred percent underwater adventure. Join us in the following lines to discover what we thought.
To the abyss and beyond
Silt puts us in the shoes of a Diver anonymous with the ability to possess sea creatures and that he is looking for goliaths, huge underwater beings with a powerful source of energy that our protagonist wants to obtain at all costs. The Spiral Circus title opts for the narrative technique of letting the game do the talking through its settings, its surrealism (this is how those responsible have defined it) and the situations that take place. Beyond a couple of lines of text at the start of the game we don’t have any more written or spoken information, so you’ll understand why we previously compared it to titles like Limbo, beyond its aesthetics.
It is precisely this black and white aesthetic that gives Silt a superior category. The backgrounds, hand drawn all of them by their creators during the confinement due to the pandemic, they are absolutely mesmerizing. Not because it has been done on other occasions it ceases to amaze that drawings end up becoming a video game and we can swim on them. However, the elements of the levels that are not drawn and that have been made with the game engine Unity they look much simpler, far from the finish and the majesty of the backgrounds. Be that as it may, the truth is that the visual section of Silt feels luxurious to a proposal that bets, in fact, on the dark and gloomy.
More than aesthetic
To return to the point of comparative reference on which this analysis pivots (it is impossible not to do so taking into account all its similarities), if Limbo became a cult game back in 2010, it was because the situations that occurred in the game accompanied in quality to its aesthetics. To Silt it is difficult for him to live up to his preciousness. The possibility of possessing different aquatic species seems interesting at first, but not all the juice that this idea could have given (an idea that was also executed by Abzû, which we have referred to previously), has not been fully exploited.
The situations that Silt proposes are simple, which is fine; but they lack wit and interest. Quite affordable small puzzles, except for those that are hampered by one of the main problems of the game: the lack of precision in the control of some of its mechanics. We will give an example without involving any major spoilers. One of the creatures that we can possess is a manta ray with the ability to perform a small teleport forward in the direction in which it is facing. To overcome one of the puzzles we need to execute a series of actions with the precision of a surgeon and with perfect timing. Impossible precision, because this manta ray offers all kinds of limitations by the game design itself.
It also does not help reduce the feeling of frustration the fact that each death or failure (it’s a game that relies heavily on trial and error) forces you to repeat the stage from the beginning, losing a couple of minutes of progress on some occasions. One level in particular we had to do it a dozen times, with their respective three or four minutes in duration, from the very beginning because the game does not help the player to accurately execute what he has in mind.
Conclusions
Silt is a game with good ideas and, undoubtedly, a beautiful title. The gloomy and gloomy aesthetic of its hand-drawn settings perfectly matches the theme and tone of the Spiral Circus title. However, the most important thing in a puzzle work is that the puzzles are enjoyable, ingenious and attractive to the player. Unfortunately they are not and they are not for two reasons. The first of them is a poor control, which frustrates more than it amuses. The second, one lack of originality in the proposal. These are situations often seen and that do not improve the clear references that Silt tries to emulate. Recommended for fans of puzzle indies and environmental narratives, although taking into account all these problems.