Guided by the light.
Candle: The Power of the Flame is a 2D puzzle platformer that stars Teku, who has a special gift of maintaining a flame on his hand. It is part Limbo, with physics-based puzzles and deadly traps, and part adventure game, with items scattered around the world that are sometimes hidden quite well, but always factor into a puzzle down the line.
Platforms: XB1, PS4, Switch, PC
Price: $19.99
Price I’d Pay: $15
When a foreign tribe, The Wakcha, raid his village and kidnap the Shaman, Teku ventures out on a rescue mission. Those with the power of the flame have a special relationship with shamans, so it makes sense that Teku would risk his life to help his mentor.
Wakcha warriors play a big role in many of the physics-based puzzles that Teku comes across. By using smarts, Teku’s flame, and items found around the world, these enemies can be lured into compromising situations. Teku can light his hand from any fire source and can light other torches/idols scattered around the levels, which in turn makes them available sources of fire as well.
Light the way, please
Each chapter, which is self-contained, isn’t crazy expansive by any means but has enough locations to make it a challenge to figure out what to do sometimes. In order to discover these points of interest, the player must pay pain-staking attention to notice the subtle visual cues. There are also situations where there isn’t much of a clue given. For example, there are two instances of swimming into fake walls, which should be relegated to secrets and extras, not the locations of progress-gating items, as they are.
Finding these hard-to-find locations could be called puzzles, I guess, but these caused me great frustration because there weren’t any visual hints or any dialogue pointing in their general direction. There was also a time where a character said he needed one thing, but he actually needed two things. I don’t know how I would have figured that out without the help of an online guide.
In addition to the physics and item-based puzzles in Candle, there are also a lot of one-off, more focused puzzles of varying types. These usually come in the form of ancient mechanisms and while a few were very hard, most were an appropriate level of challenge for me.
Hand-painted beauty
Candle’s world looks beautiful. Its watercolor and hand-drawn art really pops, making it one of the more visually striking games I’ve seen in a while. It’s also incredibly detailed, with hints and other small things that flesh out the world. Huge kudos to the art team.
Throughout the game, a narrator with a calming and wise-sounding voice assists the player on their journey. He obviously provides a lot of exposition, but also provides occasional hints and summarizes what characters say when they talk to Teku. Unfortunately, in order to hear his summary of a conversation, the characters must first go through a pictograph cutscene that plays out in a dialogue box. These can be very long and there isn’t a way to skip them – that is – if you want to hear the hints from the narrator.
Okay +
When I think back to my experience with Candle, two things jump out at me. How pleasant it was to look at, and the moments of terror and frustration when I didn’t have a clue what to do. I get quite anxious in those moments and would have appreciated a slightly friendlier design, but there has to be people out there who are more into that particular type of challenge.
Candle: The Power of the Flame is a beautiful game with a charming and emotionally resonant story. That may not be enough for players who don’t want to spend a good deal of time on challenging puzzles and helplessly wandering the play area for a long time, searching every nook and cranny. The overall design is good most of the time, but at times when it doesn’t translate to the player, it quickly crosses into frustration.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
