The Uncertain: Light at the End

You’ve got to temper your expectations for a title like The Uncertain: Light at the End. It might not be particularly innovative or revolutionary, but what it does deliver is a pleasantly surprising short adventure. It may be a little rough around the edges, but it’s graphically competent, and its excellently-designed world leaves you wishing there was more. The story pacing may be all over the place, and the abrupt ending comes too soon, but it’s enjoyable enough while it lasts.

The Uncertain is a difficult game to discuss because it seems so hell-bent on getting in its own way. For every great choice that has been made, a new issue is just around the corner – Good voice acting? Terrible sound design. Great world visuals? Poorly designed characters. It’s truly a shame, as this game had so much potential and definitely wasn’t awful, but overall it just seems rushed and unfinished, with a story that’s over way too quickly.

As you dig into this tale of survival, I can’t help feel that it would have been better suited to a 2D point and click. The Uncertain: Light At The End does play on establish genre tropes but still manages it convincingly. Where it falls down is when it jams in odd immersion breaking puzzles and drops in yet another bug. Uncertain is an appropriate description for this tale of tin and while I’d give it a whirl once it’s had its chrome plated spit shine, I would hold off for some Walking Dead with better footing.

I feel weird rating The Uncertain: Light at the End, since I haven't played the prior title or the upcoming conclusion, but I also think that a game, whether it's part of an intended series or not, should stand on its own. Light and the End does not. The story is all right, and the premise behind the game is stellar, but the broken mechanics and omitted quality of life options made it really frustrating to play, and I didn't enjoy it. Hopefully the next game makes up for these shortcomings, but in the meantime, if you value your time, I would suggest skipping Light and the End in its current state.

For everything that goes wrong for it I will admit that there is a lot of promise in The Uncertain: Light At The End if it actually worked right. The frustrations between the game-breaking mechanics and inconsistent saves make it borderline unplayable. But if that could be fixed and optimized, the story might feel more compelling. Especially if they added better facial work into the characters. I will say that the beautiful pixelated backdrops and set pieces are the best things about this game, but with a couple of big improvements, the whole experience might feel salvageable too.

The game is pretty short and it would be even shorter if you were given the option to skip dialogue or move while listening to voice logs. For me it was not at all compelling, characters were annoying or just very poorly written and the gameplay didn’t add anything to make it interesting. If you are a fan of the first game, perhaps you will be invested enough in the lore to want to get through this, but otherwise I would suggest avoiding it.

All in all, the game simply does not work as a stand alone title. This leaves one disconnected from the events of the story. Given how the story is structured, the developer should have waited releasing the game as a complete package with all three parts included.

Post-apocalyptic settings can be many things, but boring should never be one of them, and The Uncertain: Light at the End is unfortunately exactly that, with its mediocre to bad writing, forgettable world and characters, and okay-ish to lacklustre puzzles. Even the best thing on offer, which is the design of each area, fails to leave an impact. The graphics are nice, but visual appeal and atmosphere are almost non-existent.

The Uncertain: Light at the End is a game that interweaves everything through its narrative. Sadly, that narrative is frustratingly tedious, meaning the rest of the game’s building blocks fall apart without a strong base.

Nothing about The Uncertain: Light at the End demands investment, unfortunately. A lot of work has gone into producing the game in terms of world design and presentation, albeit rather uninspired and derivative in execution, but the game design choices keep you at arm's length at all times. There are many alternatives to The Uncertain: Light at the End out there, more deserving of your time and money.

The Uncertain: Light at the End isn't a bad game, but so much of it feels uninspired and done before that it fails to thrill or excite.

The Uncertain: Light at the End is a very rough project with a weak plot, outdated animations and a myriad of bugs.

If video games had an equivalent of Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Uncertain: Light At The End would be a worthy candidate to appear on it. Everything from the story to the acting to the gameplay to the constant onslaught of bugs makes it a title deserving of mockery. Its only saving graces are its passable graphics and the puzzles that made me temporarily forget that I was playing a horrendous Telltale clone. I may be uncertain about a lot of things in life, but I'm 100% certain that you should stay away from this.

The Uncertain: Light At The End is a heap of derivative themes and ideas missing the narrative and mechanical buttresses needed to hold it together.