The Nintendo Switch is not my primary console. I use the Switch to play Nintendo exclusives and sometimes when I am on the road. Which means that sometimes there could be days between 2 of my extended plays on the Switch. Most times, because of that the game suffers and ends up being in my Unfinished (not Backlog) warehouse. Selma and the Wisp through bucks that trends and I were able to complete the game even though there were a couple of months between 2 successive sessions. There are a few reasons why that happened, let’s find out what those are.

Selma And The Wisp

DETAILED REVIEW

Story & Narrative

Selma and the Wisp come from the school thought which inspired Limbo and Inside. Meaning which the game does not have a concrete narrative to share and leaves you to draw your own conclusions. A small girl (Selma) left alone at home in a stormy night is scared and lonely. To her aide, comes the Wisp a small glowy circle thingy which can move/fly around freely. What follows is an adventure where Selma puts her trusts in the Wisp and follows her through dark jungles, abandoned amusement parks, deadly construction sites, and haunted cities. Its never explained why the Wisp takes Selma away from the relative safety of the house, or what the Wisp symbolizes.

Having said that, there is scope for interpretation here, my favorite one being that the Wisp is an imaginary friend to Selma, and all the adventures she has with the Wisp are in her mind, because that way every time she dies, she never really dies.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Because she will die a lot. In most cases gruesomely. Along with some chiding remarks from the game every time she does. Honestly, though it’s mostly Selma’s fault. Let me explain why.

At all times in the game, you control the Wisp. The Wisp is free to move around the screen and can ask Selma to either follow her or stop in her tracks. On her end of the deal, Selma follows the Wisp, if there is a chasm, she will jump across it, if there is a door she will walk through it, if there is a rope she will climb it, and if there are spikes she will get skewered by them. Selma trusts the Wisp and by extension you, unequivocally. Which is not always a good thing as you would find out after the 7th time Selma jumped off the ledge without waiting for the platform to arrive, because you hadn’t asked her to stop.

But Selma is not the only one who is vulnerable. The Wisp is nothing but a source of light, which keeps on depleting with time. The only way to refill it is by consuming light orbs along the way, but get stuck in a puzzle too long, the Wisp will extinguish and Selma will die of fear of being left alone in the dark. The Wisp can also create explosions from time to time, which takes a bunch of your light but is crucial when you are solving some of the puzzles.

This co-dependent relationship is at the crux of puzzle-solving in the game. The Wisp cannot move too far from Selma or she will die of her fear of the dark, and Selma has to keep moving forward if the Wisp is to consume orbs and keep shining. The idea of having a character than can move across the screen without the fear of getting hurt allows for better planning, however timeboxing each puzzle with the amount of light left in the Wisp adds the necessary tension to them.

The puzzles aren’t the toughest nuts to crack. It takes anywhere between 2-10 minutes to figure out most solutions. In fact, most retries at particular puzzles will involve timing Selma’s jump and precision on when to start and stop her. It can become a little frustrating, but fortunately, none of the puzzles are too complicated and elaborate and have multiple save points, so you don’t lose a lot of progress every time Selma dies.

Graphics Sound & Performance

Control responsiveness is not the only place, where the indie effect shows in Selma And The Wisp. The art style is a dark noir caricature, to give the entire game a mysterious haunting feel, again feeling highly inspired by Limbo and other such games. Overall the game gave me a sense of going through a horror pop-up book of sorts. And once I got over the fact that she just walked through a forest into an amusement park and then into a mine, I was actually curious to see how the next level is going to look like.

I was also morbidly looking forward to how the game devs would chide me the next time I got Selma killed. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a lot of variety there either. The monotonous soundtrack also heaped on to the humdrum of the game, which kind of makes you glad that the game isn’t too long. I would have liked to say that the game at least performed well, but I had a couple of crashes while I was in the middle of puzzles, both times after I was a couple of hours in. If anything, the game “felt” more stable when I was playing it in the docked mode.

VERDICT

It’s hard to criticize Selma And The Wisp considering its a good first attempt. But its also difficult to recommend the game for the price of $9.99. Pick it up if you liked Limbo and Inside. But for most people looking to find something for their flight, maybe look at it when its on sale.