Indie games seem to be all the rage these days, but I personally didn’t catch on. This is ironic because I complain about Nintendo, Activision, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft for taking good ideas and taking a steaming dump on them, but then when something beautiful and original like Journey or Thomas Was Alone comes out, I lose interest and end up not buying the games that have realized their intended vision. I don’t fully recall how I heard of Closure, but I remember downloading it shortly after I got a PlayStation Plus subscription. I heard about the game, saw it was free, and decided to give it a whirl. I recently started playing it again so I figured I would start a review for it. Here’s what I think about it, boys, girls, and everyone in between.
VISUALS/SOUNDTRACK: 1.5/2
Though at times the visuals look a little too much like Macromedia Flash for my taste, overall Closure looks very unique and dare I say beautiful. One of the main gimmicks of this game is that it is entirely in black and white. I’m not talking about It’s a Wonderful Life black and white though; I’m talking most of the game is pitch black and everything else can only be made out through white or gray. Naturally after a while this can become a bit of an eyesore, but I am far more impressed with how they utilized only two colors. The game is supposed to look creepy while being cartoony at the same time, which it pulls off very well. The backdrops and details of certain objects and levels are actually very detailed and stylized. I’ve been less enthralled in worlds that pushed the graphical limits of an Xbox 360. See in a world where things are all white but detailed in black, everything still has a very visible outline so shapes can still be heavily detailed and full of motion and still look fine with relative ease. Something about the way a mostly black layout looks just seems way more difficult to be able to discern one thing from another, but Closure does not have this problem. The puzzles in the game still look just as good. The visuals also fall in line with what may be the most important gimmick in this game: if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. I’ll have more on that later, but it makes total sense why everything would be seeped in darkness.
The soundtrack, albeit arguably mixed way too loud, serves its purpose. The tracks usually consist of punchy distorted guitars and creepy synthesizers. There are also underwater renditions of certain stages which instead of just being calmer like Super Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie, it plunges your brain into a warped realm and makes you feel like you are swimming in an unknown black abyss by your lonesome… because you are.
GAMEPLAY: 1.5/2
You control a little nameless creature that takes the forms of more human-like bodies. The creature’s primary objective is getting to the door at the end of each stage. He just seems to have a thing for doors. Your main controls are simply moving, jumping, and picking things up such as light orbs and keys. The controls are fairly simple because the puzzles become increasingly difficult, and because there aren’t too many puzzle games like this, some of them can actually be real stumpers. Like I said above, the cache of this game in comparison to other games or even other 2D platformers is the rule that if you can’t see it, it essentially doesn’t exist. Light is your only friend in this game. You can’t stand on a platform, open the door to the next level, or even swim through a body of water unless there is light involved. The game’s gimmick never feels repetitive, as Closure seems to feel very self-aware of this trick, twisting the formula bit by bit with things like adjustable lamps, a light cannon, and one of my favorite tropes; if you jump out of a body of water into the darkness, you will no longer be underwater and normal physics will return as you fall into either another window of lit up water or your doom.
When you start Closure, it starts you off with a tutorial level and then a hub world that consists of three main worlds. Each world, although still in black and white, seems to have its own little subplot where the creature will take the form of one of three different characters, which I think are a construction worker, a nurse, and a little girl. This not only adds variety but wonderment to the game, and if you get stuck on one puzzle with one character and can’t currently proceed to the next level, you can take a stab at one of the other two until you can shake all three. Each of the three roles have twenty-four stages to themselves and clearing all of them will lead you to another door in the hub world with ten more stages. The cool thing here is that you can see this door from the beginning and it has three locks on it. Your only other clues are that the tutorial was based in a point A to point B layout, and there are three doors with “0/24” over each, implying to the player that you probably have to clear those doors before touching the locked one. This also automatically gives the player a reason to go on, because the player now has at least a vague idea of what his/her hard work will bring to fruition.
My only problem with the gameplay I suppose is that later puzzles add challenge through very long jumps. This would not usually be a problem, but you have a lot of things to do to set up certain jumps and then if you are an increment off or jump at the wrong time you could be completely screwed and have to do the tedious work of setting up the puzzle again and again in agitated hope that you will jump perfectly this time. This becomes increasingly frustrating when you are trying to exit the stage with a hard to obtain secret as well, which I’ll get more into that later. Other than that, the game is very fun, smooth, and makes you want to complete the game without any dialogue whatsoever to pull you in.
REPLAY VALUE: 1.5/2
I will say for a two-dimensional, platform-heavy puzzler this game has plenty of replay value, although simple. There are 30 moths hidden throughout the different levels of this game, the only true secrets this game holds lie in the moths. As there may be multiple ways to pass through a level, there is typically only one strategy in obtaining the moth and getting out of the stage alive. Another kicker here is that you don’t know which stages have a moth unless you search the internet for it. For those of you who don’t want to cheat the game, this will force you to scavenge through the delightfully clever and eerie trials you have already passed until you have gotten through the level with moth in hand.
This is a great excuse for re-entering a pleasantly unpleasant world, but there is not much reward other than a PSN trophy. You can beat it all and brag to all your friends, but unless they’re trophy-whores they probably won’t care and you won’t have much to really show for your accomplishment.
STORY: 2/2
As I said before, there is essentially no dialogue in Closure, and it can tell the whole story without it. Since there is no dialogue or real backdrop to anything that’s going on, and the characters and settings are so mysterious, it makes me want to go even further into the game than it would with fully rendered cutscenes. You want your character to make it because you aren’t sure why he is stuck in these miserable situations in the first place, and without dialogue every bad thing that happens to the character feels more personal to the player. The way the hub world works makes even more sense to the vague plot because you go through the main three scenarios taking over the form of another being, but in the last world, you are your dark and twisted self. The story seems to be left more to player interpretation than leaving anything set in stone, and I think the way they did it was great, and possibly one of my favorite things about this game.
ORIGINALITY/CREATIVITY: 2/2
There’s not much more that I can really say on this, kids. The gameplay mechanics take a bit of something old and twist it into something beautifully new. The visuals and soundtrack make you feel like you’re in a Tim Burton nightmare but at the same time you want to see where it goes. Like I also said earlier, it doesn’t get old either; the light and dark gimmick is still an absolute pleasure from beginning to end. I have seen many first-party developers get tied up in their own gimmicks before, but Closure, made by three people in total, avoided this and really did a great and original thing here that will hopefully be remembered as a cult classic as time goes on.
OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10
To the three people who made this game: you are fantastic. To the people who read this review: you are also fantastic.
If you are a puzzle game fan or even a side-scroller fan, I highly recommend this game, and I would say give it a whirl if you’re not either. The game is so original that I’m sure it has the potential to interest just about anyone, with its controls so simple that anyone could pick it up, and with puzzles so intricate that the most experienced gamers could be scratching their heads. This is truly one for the books and easily one of the most interesting indie games I have ever seen. I also believe that it just got another price reduction of some sort on PSN, so now is a decent time to check it out if you were thinking about it.