Another quality indie platformer with a unique gimmick.

User Rating: 6 | Closure PC

Trust your initial reaction to this review's title. I expect you'll either be excited for another fairly well made entry into one of your favorite genres or you'll bemoan that the indie scene is oversaturated with these types of games. I find myself starting to lean toward the latter.

Generally Closure's puzzles are cleverly designed with an adequate amount of variation. There are some that were too easy as well as some that, for me, crossed into frustration territory. These aggravating stages were always the longer stages where if you made even one mistake you'd have to start over and redo numerous steps that quickly become tedious. Where the game faltered most for me is that I'd estimate a third of my a little over 7 hours playing the game was spent on these infuriating levels.

Adding to the challenge are 30 collectable moths hidden throughout the game that you'll need to gather all of to get any kind of ending. I got 17 of them during my playthrough then elected to watch the ending on Youtube rather than go back for the remaining 13. I'd suggest skipping the moths unless you are really enjoying the game.

Taking a look at global Steam achievements suggests that the game isn't as widely appealing as its positive reviews would make you believe. Currently, 48.2% of game owners have completed the tutorial stages. Only 8.4% have completed the first 24 levels called "the Factory." In other words, only 17.4% of players who completed the tutorial felt compelled to keep playing to the end of the first of 4 acts. To be fair, you can play the first 3 acts in any order but the way they are laid out in the hub and the general difficulty curve steers you toward playing them in a specific order. 5.1% of players completed "the Hospital," 5.0% of players completed "the Circus" and 3.5% completed the main game. Looking at a few similar games, Braid and LIMBO are much better in these numbers and FEZ is modestly better.

From an artistic standpoint Closure does well at creating a creepy, dark ambiance. The visual style is like moving scratchboard art and is quite striking. Unfortunately, due to the light/dark gimmick much of the screen will always be black, making it difficult to get a big picture view of the environments you are in. What story there is is told purely through visuals that can be similarly tough to uncover. Most of the joy you can get out of the story will come from treating it like another puzzle where you try to piece together some meaning. It's hard to praise this aspect of the game as it really doesn't have much discernible depth, but it does dance along the line of being just vague enough to get your imagination going to fill in the details. The music is solid and adds to the atmosphere, even if it gets a bit repetitive at times.