Closure

Developer: Eyebrow Interactive
Steam Release: Sep 2012
Hours Played: 2
Similar To: Colour Symphony / The Floor is Jelly / Hue
Rating: 1/5 Parsnips



GAMEPLAY
Any platform puzzler that wants to stand out from the crowd needs a quirky little USP. The eerie Closure steps up to the plate with its monochrome world and offers a simple premise: step on the white area and you're on solid ground; step into the black area and it's down into the abyss with you! After completing the first tutorial levels with the spooky four-legged character, you don a helmet and change into a more human form. Then you start solving more challenging levels. A level throws you into a pure black and white world and challenges you to exit at the door. Anything glowing or white is usually solid ground and can be stood on. Anything black is the abyss and, unless there's a safe white area to land on, will cause your character to go into freefall and die, forcing you to start again. 


BALANCE & PACE
Closure relies heavily on transporting or activating sources of light to traverse areas of darkness. This light source comes in the form of orbs that can be carried, dropped or placed in sconces that can then teleport those orbs. Also, hanging lamps may be manipulated to cast that all-important light source onto dark areas. Complications arise and the difficulty gets hoiked up once those sconces start moving on conveyerbelts and the like. At a third of the way through I have just looked up the first walkthrough clip to figure out my first really tricky level  - and this is a bit of a worry. I'm all for a challenge but a difficulty spike that renders a game next to impossible for your average gamer is not a positive.  

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
With an ambient and industrial type soundtrack that resembles white-noise, the game conjures up a spooky and disturbing atmosphere throughout. With the addition of controlling an unnerving, spider-like, four-legged creature from the beginning, there is no doubt that the makers went for a creepy setting. Add all this to the fact that you may get sucked into the deep and dark abyss at any moment and you have a game that rivals Limbo itself for sheer weirdness and success in unsettling the player. 

  


PROGRESS SYSTEM
There are 82 levels hiding behind four doors that you see on the primary level-select screen after you have hit the Continue Game path in the sparsely done main menu. Three doors house 24 levels each while another securely locked and chained up door further on holds 10 levels. Opening one of these doors with your spooky four-legged character leads to the secondary level-select screen where you choose which level to do by entering another numbered door. Those that haven't been done remain locked until you've completed the previous one. All this is unravelled as you play the first few levels. Unfortunately, there is only one profile.

CONCLUSION

Like Braid, Closure treats the player to a promising concept and grabs our attention from the off. Unfortunately, it too became very hard about a quarter of the way in. Now we all like a game that can hold our attention from the beginning with a unique mechanic but I also like to feel absorbed by a game and to make steady progress. However, drive the difficulty in too strongly at too early a stage and that lack of progress can cause resentment and players to lose that love for your game prematurely. There really is nothing wrong with feeding the player reasonably easy levels for a reasonable time so they feel that they're accomplishing something. I have no closure with Closure just yet; I'll revisit it later but if it means more time spent on YouTube than I'd like, it'll remain outside in the dark.