Introduction

Hey folks! It’s Duncan again, this time I’m reviewing Rising Dusk a platformer game from the indie studio, who both developed and published the game, Studio Stobie. This game is available on all platforms including consoles and PC, so there’s plenty of chances to experience this challenging platformer for yourselves. I personally played it on the Xbox series X. this game might not be a Game Pass game, which might put some people off, but it is worth purchasing, for those who love classic platformer games from years past!

Rising Dusk is a 16-bit platformer game, inspired by Japanese folk tales, with an interesting twist on the Game Mechanic of collecting or finding all the collectables in the game. In Rising Dusk, the number of coins your character, Tamako, has in her possession can drastically change how easy or difficult it is to progress through each of the various levels. This makes for quite an interesting challenge as it meant that you had to sometimes resist picking up absolutely everything you come across! If you’re like me than is a challenge, let alone any of the other challenges the game throws at you throughout its run time.

It is a simple game in all, but the challenges it presents throughout were a lot of fun! The twist of trying to avoid collecting every coin you see in the level certainly took a bit of time for me to wrap my head around, but once I got there it made the game even more fun and intense, as I tried to figure out, if collecting a particular coin or collectable was worth it.

Plot

In Rising Dusk, you play as Tamako a young girl who becomes trapped in a permanent twilight world after spotting a Yokai, a monster like a ghoul or ghost. This is very much their world, and it is up to Tamako, to try and find a way to escape! With a variety of levels and backdrops all presenting their own challenges, it’s not often as straight forward as you think.

Graphics

The graphics in this game are very much classic 16-bit meets Studio Ghibli, meaning it’s very cutesy, but also kind of stunning in its own way. I personally really liked the look of this game and had no issue with how it looked or ran. I didn’t notice any glitches or bugs whilst playing and found that graphically it ran smoothly. I also found that it was really detailed in places and looked impressive throughout.

Gameplay

The gameplay is super simple and easy to pick up. After a short and prompt-less tutorial, you realise there’s only a couple things you need to know, jumping, crouching, and moving, which is all you need to progress through the game.

The level design is interesting in this game, as depending on the number of coins you have, different types of blocks will either appear or disappear, when you go to jump or stand on them. This can make progressing through each level a challenge as if you’re holding too many coins, whole rows of blocks will disappear, making it impossible to get form one side to the other, or forcing you to take the long way round.

Occasionally there are Yokai, known as Yanukis, in certain levels that will take coins off you if you touch them, and this can be a help and a hinderance simultaneously. Any accidently collected coins can be spent at hidden vendors, which is encouraged, as the one of the achievements for this game is to beat the final boss with as few coins as possible.

You really have to think hard when playing this game partly because you have to set aside the ingrained habit of collecting every coin you can see, but you also have to think about how you can progress with the coins you do accidently collect and which type of Yokai might knock in to a stash of coins or off the edges of platform, or which ones you can use to your advantage, by getting them to push blocks along, for example.

Soundtrack

I really enjoyed the soundtrack to this game! I found it really suited to the gameplay and what you were experiencing as you played through the different levels. The sound effects in the world were also quite satisfying.

Development

Studio Stobie also known as Lukas Stobie is an Australian Artist, and Game Developer based in Tokyo, Japan. The fact that this game was made by one person is impressive! With everything combined they really created a fun and challenging experience. I couldn’t find any developer diaries or anything like that, which is a shame, because I would have loved to see the process of making this game and how they came up with some of their ideas.

Value for money

I would say that Rising Dusk is totally value for money! Even though the game is relatively short, I think it took me around three hours to beat, I still had plenty of fun with it! Its uniqueness made it more challenging and that’s part of its charm. The graphics were also satisfying to look at. The levels were interesting and different enough so that in didn’t feel like you were repeating yourself or spending too long on areas that all looked the same.

The twist of not collecting every coin available means that you do really have to think whether they are all worth collecting and I really enjoyed that aspect of the game.

Rising Dusk is available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch

GAMERHUB RATING: 5 (out of 5) JOYSTICKS

(Thank you to Keymailer and Studio Stobie for providing the code for this review)