Gathering your weapon is the first action you undertake in every Nix Umbra round. It ignites in your right hand, creating a few-meter-wide pool of intense emergency lights. You survive as long as the blade is lighted. The sun emblem in the lower right corner represents your common energy. The gritty dirt ahead vanishes into quivering darkness. Stars as uncertain as bedroom wallpaper flash above. You believe the moon is visible.
You will come across your first tree after about five seconds of walking: a coarse, slashing texture under the menacing glare of your blade. The trees may seem consoling at first when you first encounter Nix Umbra: they are obstacles and markers that you may duck behind or weave among as you run. As soon as you peer over the trunk, it erupts into flame, lighting the surrounding trees, which are arranged in a ring like feasting petrified ogres. Your sun icon becomes rather faint. You don’t stop moving.
thirty seconds in. Something, maybe a hundred meters distant, is observing you through the trees. The hint of glowing eye sockets and a gaping smile. It moves at an ethereal speed, disappearing and then resurfacing, and seldom remains in one place for very long. You’re not sure whether you should face it head-on or follow it further into the shadows. You realize, rather belatedly, that you are immersed in sound as the spectator jiggles from one spot to another: a soft hum, like to an idle motor.
forty-five seconds. Increase the number of trees. A lone stump that you want to hop on. Once again, you spy on the moon, but something seems strange. It seems as if the globe is circling something invisible. To each side of it are spindly, fidgety objects and what seems to be a comet moving in busy but deliberate arcs.
50 seconds. Your first collectible is discovered! A jewel that floats, its facets flickering black and white as it rotates. Your sun breaks out into a semicircle with teeth that are wavy. In the dark, the eyes are nearer. It continues darting in front of you even after you look aside. The tangle of leaves above is moving; there’s a sharp fluting sound and a faint impression of spinning wings.
For sixty seconds. The strange droning background noise has become louder, with a menacing undertone beginning to emerge. There’s a growing curiosity in the invisible world. A far tree catches fire and erupts, creating the illusion of another little haven with gloomy trunks and swaying shadows. There is no thunder thereafter. You slant toward the dark patches on the horizon, keeping in mind the age-old horror notion that any light place is probably a trap. Several sets of eyes are now observing you; some are cavernous and motionless, while others are closer to the earth.
75 moments. Suddenly, there is an assault on you. The nothingness behind you draws in air and condenses into a terrifying, falling cry that sounds like the cry of a Stuka under possession. Instead of wasting time searching, you quickly turn and lift your sword, causing its blade to blast into the bright sunshine and obliterate everything in your path, including the enemy. As if they are reloading after a collision, the trunks and foliage seep back in. Your sun continues to fade. Continue your journey.
Eighty seconds. 90. 100. You consider the area you’re in, an artificially created expanse with habits instead of characteristics or contents. You wonder how much of the terrain is there before it becomes engulfed in the thin navigable plane circle of fire. A general logic may be seen in the collectibles and a few other things that come at random but deliberate intervals and sometimes create trajectories that mimic a racing game’s boost pad lines. As you go further away from your starting point—which is just two minutes behind you, but it seems like hours—you start to notice different kinds of trees. However, a lot appears arbitrary or entirely reliant on your actions. You are reconfiguring and provocating this forest as you go through it in an attempt to get to know it better.
For three minutes. You are continually under assault. The sun becomes smaller and smaller. The sword is a powerful but inaccurate weapon that blinds you each time it is raised. Its area of effect and range are only determined by trial and error, and it provides no feedback to let you know whether you have hit a target or sustained damage. It’s very tempting to hold down the button until your sun symbol completely disappears while you’re facing many attacks.
As you look for a spot to rest, a border to return to, but anything fleeting like boundary stones or even simply a shift in the ground under your feet, a harsh, gobby type of static fills the sound. Three quarters of an hour. Fissuring halos and other more acute visual artifacts reveal something else that is hidden in the forest, a force or tendency inherent in the night itself. You can flee from it, particularly if you utilize some of the items you acquire (dashing isn’t involved, to start). However, I doubt that it can ever be overcome.
I won’t go into too much detail, but let me just say that I’ve never made it through Nix Umbra’s “horror ritual,” which you could best describe as Devil Daggers meets Slender: The Eight Pages with ambient effects reminiscent of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and art direction reminiscent of The Return of the Obra Dinn. Nix Umbra is a “occult” game, meaning that its goal is to teach players how to handle concealed objects without ever being able to see them clearly.
It’s more of a straightforward scoring assault game with leaderboards and power-ups. There are even more things to discover, such several color schemes that pay homage to the World of Horror, an amazing monochromatic nightmare, and, well, that’s all for now. The “combat” is probably not going to excite someone looking to test their reflexes, and there are no growth features. Here, survival is more about understanding the behavior of an unseen environment and doing your best to avoid experiencing it at its worst than it is about hitting and avoiding precisely.
It’s just disgusting. But enticing too. Despite all of its danger, the darkness is pliable and may be pushed against or played with. If only you could hang just a little bit longer, there would be so much to explore. The next time, instead of turning around and facing the forest’s creatures, you’ll turn right at the first tree you come across. You’ll look into the lightning and prioritize the diamonds. Just like with your eyes, you’ll play with your ears. And maybe you’ll make it to the moon if you have enough good fortune and discernment.