The shadow of potential: Contrast

Contrast is humorously unique to me, for a couple of silly reasons. For one, the visual style and core concepts are just subjectively very appealing. For two, I swore off buying non-bundled games last year and Contrast didn't go on a deep enough sale until day 1 of that very same year. So I didn't buy it then, and actually, I can't remember how I bought it this year, and for three that sense of "not especially memorable" manages to permeate everything about the experience of the game.

Contrast apparently didn't do well on a financial and possibly critical level, and it isn't that hard to see why. Superbunnyhop reviewed it back in the day, but he also had an interview with one of the developers, who sounded rather ... Negative about the game's short-term sales. It might have done better in the long term, that proverbial spiky tail of the fictional dinosaur, but I kinda doubt it.

I'm kinda down on this game, if you haven't noticed.


First things first, it is a beautiful game that really surprises you with how it interacts with its core mechanic both in gameplay and in visuals. Shadows are almost a conceit of the medium, a little crooked thing that sort of flop on the floor around a character. They are generally fuzzy, far from striking, just a dull presence you forget about. In Contrast the shadows loom large, they are the landscape but also just sharp lines that rip up the screen.

I really enjoy that element. I like the historical style of the game as well, but the shadows are really quite impressive. Not as shadows, but as as visual element.

Second thing, the main mechanic - the ability to hop between a fully three dimensional world and the two dimensional plane of that world's shadows - is well realized. You imagine it as something gimmicky, something you'd have seen in like a DS game or the what not. Instead it really does work, and even when the game is lame, you're surprised at what it allows the game to do.

But that's about the limits of my appreciation for the game, unfortunately.

Honestly the best way I can summarize my experience with Contrast is that the game doesn't grip me at all, whatsoever, and I keep forcing myself to come back to it to try to find some fun with it. Once you get past how the mechanics work, I just found the game boring. It's not bad, it doesn't crash or necessarily feel unpolished, it just feels ... Boring. The visuals are strong enough, the audio is good if not great at points and the engine does a good job with it but... Yeah.

The first thing is that more than anything the game is story-driven and the story doesn't seem to understand the framework it wants to build around. You are the imaginary friend of a single mother's daughter, and you traverse around with the daughter, doing things in what appears to be a mash up of a hallucination and the real world. The game's landscape is surreal and lived in at the same time, trying to hedge the line between mundane family problems and the game's mechanics. The problem here is that frankly the game slips too far both ways, with a direly serious plot paired with hysterically goofy landscapes. It operates on dreamworld logic, except the scenario is anything but, making it feel either like a nightmare or some preamble to "the big twist" that the main character is in an asylum or hit her head or something.

I didn't finish the game, so I don't know what happens, and as good as the voice acting is - and it is very good, even the little girl's lines are excellent  - I just don't care. When you couple tedium with a depressing story, you just start to think maybe you should go clean the closet out or something. Actually I think I need to vacuum out my heating vents. Which I am more excited to do than play more Contrast.

I honestly fear that the biggest failure of Contrast stems back to the choice made very early in development to make it about puzzles. The core mechanic, of leaping in and out of shadows, leads to a mind-bending element of shifting the rules of reality. Sure. That's intrinsically puzzling. The problem is that you're already going 'whoa' and then it throws up rather mediocre controls for interacting with those puzzles

A puzzle is at its best when you look at it, figure it out, and then you're able to execute the solution without difficulty. Contrast fails at this in the most miserable of fashion, and a big chunk of the gameplay is either trying to figure out what stupid thing you missed, or listening to the help chirps over and over as you struggle with the controls to execute the solution. This might ultimately come down to level design, or might ultimately come down to me just not having patience for puzzle games, but I just finished Primordia two or three days ago and found its puzzles satisfying whereas this just makes me feel like doing something else. I'm getting the vacuum.

Lots of talent went into Contrast, and it frankly does try to do something that feels very different. I wouldn't personally recommend it, but I think there is an audience out there for this game. It just, you know, isn't me.