Walking simulators make some people cringe, but for me they’ve have always existed as some kind of comfort food, a slice of entertainment that demands very little except for an agile left thumb and the notion to be lost in a story. Where others demand twitch reactions and god like precision, Story Perambulators will often only want your undivided attention and occasionally your tears. They are definitely the genre that regularly push the notion that games can be art. With examples like ‘Everybody’s gone to the Rapture’, ‘What Remains of Edith Finch’ and ‘Firewatch’ that have all claimed special places of admiration in my heart, when I was given the chance to play Radiolight, lets just say the work and the moon on a stick was already cut out for them.
It doesn’t make sense to explain too much about the story in Radiolight for fear of spoiling the game, but in simple terms, you’re trying to solve a mystery in the local forest park, after the disappearance of a child. On the way to discovery you’ll unveil some secrets of the forest area, and moments about your good self. During the adventure you’ll engage with one of the other park rangers over a walkie talkie radio which serves to provide some backstory, as well as give you gentle pointers in how to proceed with the game. There’s an expected conversation choice as you chat to your faceless companion, and the voice acting for the most part is very strong and serves the game extremely well, trying to walk the tight rope between two people trying to navigate a situation and also provide some exposition at the same time. The choices that you make don’t have any effect on the game itself and for the majority you are really just expanding on the overall arc.
Radiolight offers mild levels of interaction with the environment, where items can be read to find more back story, drawers opened to discovered lost tins and bottles and first aid kits. Some items can be collected for future use and then accessed through a tool wheel, while others come into play when you are at the right place at the right time. It suffers a bit from the ‘hand out in front regardless of what I’m doing’ when you are carrying at item, something which I’m surprised at in such a new game. While the parts where you are holding the radio and walkie talkie seem to have been developed to look better, the object holding can just look a bit strange. I wish that the windows for item interaction were bigger than a simple dot, as I found it trickier to highlight them using the Steam Deck than it would be using a mouse, and it became annoying when you were trying to search through drawers and cupboard that you needed pin point accuracy to do so.
One of the features I do like is the use of the radio frequency to carry out certain tasks in the game. It’s a novel mechanic that I can’t remember being used before and it is used effectively in certain parts to heighten the overall mysterious back story. As a game, Radiolight isn’t going to take you more than five or six hours to wander about it before you reach the rather interesting conclusion. As an overall experience, just like Firewatch, the conversations between the main characters do really well in serving up a coherent story that doesn’t offer too many unexpected surprises, with one exception, which I’ll leave you to discover. I wish there was a conversation log somewhere within the game, just to allow you to read back on what you had been previously discussing. While a map isn’t always necessary in these games, it would have made sense in the context of the game to understand where you might be heading to next, as there were a couple of places that the lack of log and map meant I wandered about until I stumbled upon what I was meant to be doing next.
Radiolight’s occasionally highlights the limitations that the development team had with their skills. Firewatch dealt with the lack of realism in its characters by avoiding having anyone present to be mocked. Being kind as possible, Radiolight could do with learning that lesson, as the opening scene does make you wonder if you are back in 2016. It’s a strange one because the overall environment of the forest at night time is rather beautiful, and I’ll admit I did stop on a number of occasions to admire the moonlight lit view. The cartoon like style employed doesn’t really work for me, and takes away from the overall story, where I feel something simpler might have worked better, or the presence of no characters at all. There’s the occasional graphical issues in terms of clipping and sometimes with how the backgrounds load in. In the final level there was an entire ceiling missing for me which gave me the best view of the night sky.
Radiolight isn’t at the same level as Firewatch for me, however there are moments in the game where there are sparks of inventiveness. There’s a strong story telling mechanic, there’s very much the beginning of something very good, which makes me rather hopeful for what the team might do next based on what they learn here. If you’re looking for something to while away 5 or 6 hours, and fancy wandering around a forest in the moonlight and don’t take things too seriously, maybe Radiolight is for you.
Designer – Krystof Knesl
Publisher – Iceberg Interactive
Platform – PC
