Closure

Closure is an indie puzzle platformer with a great art house feel. With its dark claustrophobic aesthetic, heavy ominous sound and light/shadow mechanic, the title provides a unique and arresting audio/visual experience and a refreshing and inventive gameplay.

This isn’t a game that cares to explain anything about itself. It simply drops you into its world after you get through the menu screen and you are to figure out everything on your own (you can even die in the hub world). This approach and attitude mostly benefits the game because as a player, anytime you get through anything you know it’s you who thought of it and accomplished it (actually there is a tiny tutorial but this is 98% true). This is where a lot of the satisfaction of playing the game comes from. There is no hint system or anything guiding you through the stages, it’s just you and the puzzles. This works because the developers did an incredible balancing act of being really clever and being highly accessible and they are confident enough in themselves that players will get through them. Out of 82 stages, I only had to look up one. The difficulty in this game is nearly perfect. It’ll make you come back for more because you know you’ll solve it but you also know you’ll have to think through the levels.

The puzzles will make you want to return to Closure but most likely the visuals are what made you check out the game in the first place. The good news is that the game has plenty more to show you. Besides the first world seen in the quicklook known as “The Factory”, there are 3 other worlds (“The Hospital”, “The Carnival”, and “Purgatory”) with different characters for each of them with the last one being the crab/spider creature you controller in the hub stage. What’s great about the visual is that it goes hand in hand with the gameplay. The main mechanic is the manipulation of light and dark spaces and the world is black and white and the characters seem like moving hieroglyphics. It all sort of makes sense and fits quite well together.

The sounds of Closure are also front and center along with the gameplay and visuals. The eerie music in the game will probably be the most dividing aspect of the product. While its sometimes bass heavy tunes grabbed me, others might think they are too overdone. I love how the music slows downs and gets distorted every time you go underwater making the eerie music even more so. However, besides that, none of it is tied to the visuals, they are simply looped so you’ll get stretches of silence which I enjoyed but felt weird nonetheless. There also aren't enough of them and you’ll hear the same ones throughout each of the worlds.

The “go and figure it out” attitude of the game while strengthens its gameplay, doesn't do its world any favors. The developers have definitely created a place with a sense of energy and being but a story is only alluded to. There are a lot interesting things simply unexplained and as it is, feels just skin deep. Closure is a rock solid game on all fronts but with a good narrative, it could’ve elevated itself to potential classic status. Still, I would highly recommend this game to anyone out there looking for some clever puzzle action.