Saira is yet another stunningly beautiful game from Nifflas.
Saira stars the titular would-be photographer as the game's heroine. The game takes place in the future where mankind uses portals for interstellar travel. It's not 100% safe, but it's a lot faster than standard travel with a spaceship. Saira attempts to make photographs of rare animals throughout the universe, but she gets stuck after a failed warp to Mars. She discovers that there is no one left in the entire universe. Saira then tries to build a teleportation device herself so she can attempt to warp back to her normal universe.
Just like Nifflas' previous games, Saira focuses on exploration and platforming. Only this time, there's a larger focus on solving puzzles. Saira needs to find component scattered around the galaxy to create a warping machine. All of these items are protected by puzzles. The solutions to these puzzles require both common sense and the ability to scan through environmental hints. Saira has a camera to make photographs, so you can keep track of all the clues you find while travelling around the planets. The puzzles are often very large and span multiple planets. They can be quite hard at times, but they are very satisfying to solve.
Unlike Knytt or Knytt Stories, platforming is relatively basic. Saira can hop around, scale walls if she has enough speed, but you won't find any double-jumps here. This might be a little disappointing to some fans, but rest assured that it's for the better. Saira is still a very focuses experience, and Nifflas obviously made the decisions to perfectly fit the combination of puzzle solving and exploring.
Because Saira spans multiple planets, you have a spaceship at your control. The galaxy is essentially completely nonlinear, and you're free to go wherever you want… as long as you have enough fuel. You'll have to scour some planets to find fuel depots, and you'll often have to solve puzzles or find passwords to solve them.
As we have come to expect from Nifflas games, the game is simply beautiful. All the visuals are hand drawn, everything animates beautifully, and the developer went so as to include 11 layers of parallax scrolling this time. Every planet looks very distinct and is stunning to behold. Saira herself animates brilliantly, and is a far cry from Nifflas' previous pixel art.
The soundtrack (also composed by Nifflas) is, as usual, awe inspiring. Most players will know him from the work he's done on the enhanced soundtrack of the Cave Story remake, and this soundtrack will be familiar to those players. It's probably his most electronic music yet, and it fits every planet really well. Surely, Saira is one of the most atmospheric games on the market.
So if you're looking for a good platformer, puzzler or just a game where you can lose yourself in, you can't really go wrong with Saira. It has beautiful story, stunning production values, a good challenge and at around 8 hours of gameplay. You can get the game for 10$ from Steam, or you can try the demo on Nifflas' website (http://www.ni2.se/).