Edge of Twilight

Preview from Simon - Wednesday, 24 September 2008 @ 5:25pm

Master Yug and myself were sitting by the fire when there was a curious tapping at the balcony window. Upon inspection we found a small clockwork moth with an elegant invitation attached to its tiny gears. We donned our top hats and hopped skipped and skedaddled on our way. We arrived shortly that night at the bottom of an ancient cliff face, rain was streaming down the towering stone but through the flashes of lightning we read a worn old iron sign, which simply read 'Fuzzyeyes Studios'.

We discovered a coal powered zeppelin lift and pleasantly rode our way to the top. Disembarking, we found ourselves at the front of a monstrous rundown cathedral. We both agreed that god had long since left this place. We knocked on the sixteen foot iron doors. We were greeted by a charming automaton servant that took us into the bowels of Fuzzyeyes. We passed the 'steaming pipe room', the 'whirling gizmo room' and entered the 'Demo Room'. Inside was like that of my pocket watch. Ticking and clicking like a thousand tormented crabs.

We sat; the lights went out and so began our demo of Fuzzyeyes Studio's Edge of Twilight!

Edge of Twilight is a 3rd Person action adventure game set in an awesome steam punk world. This world has been sundered in two, separating night and day. You play as Lex, a half breed (half night folk, half day folk) bounty hunter who is the only one who can venture between these two realms, taking on different abilities between night and day. During the day he is a gruff strong fighter and at night an agile scampering fiend.

With any new IP, game developers run into the interesting challenge of finding a reason why gamers should be interested. You could say this product appears no different from your Prince of Persia’s or Gods of War, but what Edge of Twilight is offering is not just another hack and slash clone but a unique world with some amazing atmosphere. Right off the bat I was impressed by how atmospheric everything was, from the rain catching on leaves to the dusty haze in the air. The game was in an early shape with place holder models and textures but already the vibe was there. Things like blood catching on Lex's coat and face and how aged everything looked was just fantastic.

The gameplay seems to be (from what we saw) broken between combat, puzzle solving and platforming. The combat is similar to that of Prince of Persia, small scale fights with cinematic moments. I was reminded of when you fight amongst a group of enemies in Fable, that similar timing and blocking mechanic as they circle around you menacingly. We saw a great variety of enemies all with unique attacks and AI. The basic enemy jumps around and attacks, but if the player isn't aggressive enough, it latches on and requires some serious button mashing to get him off or instant death. There are some crazy insects that when hit, shortly explode. A large enemy charges and swings wildly, but could also hit other enemies. We briefly saw some terrifying zombie- like mechanical abominations that, if left alone for too long, would let out a terrifying scream (Yug and I both squealed) and jump at you and detonate. This is what intrigues me about the combat, you could potentially use the enemies against each other, say by luring a charging enemy into a smaller group or attacking exploding bugs to use as bombs.

After breaking apart an enemy you can harvest ‘ether' out of them, which raises a special bar that you can use to enter a neat bullet time mode, where all colour is drained (except the reds) and you can wail away at slow enemies, while at normal speed. Attacking also powers up your weapon which can unleash awesome gory fatality style finishers, where blood splats on the screen ala Gears of War. Lex’s weapon can also be upgraded to be as bad-arse a bounty hunter as he can be, perhaps not Bobba Fett bad-arse, but close to, we were assured.

The platforming looks fairly straight forwards; turning into Night Lex, he becomes agile and 'jumpy', able to scale walls and flip around in combat, relying on speed and counter attacks. The platforming is similar to Prince of Persia but in this case the Prince is a flippy little blue dude. Hopefully night Lex's combat will be as fully realised as Day Lex's to add more variety. We only briefly saw him in action.

There is still so much we didn't see, such as the main steampunk city which will be Lex's hub and how the story will work. From what I gathered it is a struggle between technology and nature or perhaps science and religion, also a fight to control the 'ether' which is a naturally occurring, though depleting resource; a wink at some particular real world events. I must say I went into this preview a sceptic, but upon spending time with the guys at Fuzzyeyes, I'm confident they can produce a quality product. There should be a real media push soon so keep all your sensory orifices open!

With that, we collected our complimentary smoking-pipes and moustaches and got into the coal powered zeppelin lift as the sun cast a golden light over the new day.