Tricks of light in the forest

A very intruiging title. I didn’t know what to expect. The “tricks” part made me think of magicians or wizards at first. The game certainly has a magical air, albeit of a more realistic nature.

My parents’ house is surrounded by farmlands in all directions. A mile or so down the narrow road is a small forest. There were no children my age in the street where I grew up. My favourite passtime after school was exploring nature around my house, catching (and releasing) spiders, crane flies (we call them horse mosquitos), grasshoppers, etc… And no, my best friend is not a tiger…

Lara wakes up before sunrise and heads into the woods near the village with her sample box. She’s looking for stuff she might take to school for show-and-tell, and also just out of curiosity and wonder.

At first, Tricks of Light in the Forest comes across as a slice-of-life walk in the forest. Your sense of touch, smell, taste, are as much part of the experience of your surroundings as sight. Nature in all its forms is described in loving detail. Trees and flowers and moss in terms of their fragrance, colour, soft leaves or hard and brittle bark. Bugs up close with shiny beetle shields, dew-glistening spiderwebs, larger animals mostly heard instead of seen.

During the long walk, more and more images and memories and stories about Lara, her parents, the village’s history are triggered by the surrounding forest. These are personal to Lara, showing just a small part of her life here. Put together however, they lead to a fragmented realisation in the player of the broader setting. ((Spoiler - click to show)Twenty, maybe fifty years into the future. Global warming is in full effect, though not in a dramatic post-apocalyptic way. Trees are dying in the drought and uprooted by sudden rainfalls. Species have disappeared and others have migrated into the area. The cities are partly abandoned, skyscrapers are crumbling down.)

The subtle and gradual introduction of these elements into the story has an unsettling effect on the player, but for Lara they are part of her life in this place. She is aware of the changes through stories her parents tell her, and through events during her lifetime, but these things are simply part of the natural flow of things in her experience.

We get to share her view on the woods through an intimate first person viewpoint, with her fears and delights intertwined with her observations of nature.

Later in the game, some puzzles are introduced in a spontaneous manner, blockades and obstacles one might reasonably expect in a forest that has been returning to its wild state for many years now. Their solutions are not that hard, they serve more to force Lara off the beaten track and penetrate deeper into the forest where she witnesses more of the changes to the environment.

Tricks of Light in the Forest is beautifully illustrated, with drawings reminiscent of images out of old natural history books. When Lara reaches notable landmarks, a handdrawn map pops up and shows her progress on the forest path.
Most impressive and impactful are the subtly changing colours and intensity of the background, depending on the lighting of the location (bright sunlight, overshadowed by the canopy,…), or reflecting the time of day (early morning fog, noon sun,…).


A deep, slow, thoughtful piece. Beautiful and detailed descriptions of nature. Themes of loss and wonder and inevitable change. Nature in all its flowing resilience.

Pseudavid has been consistently putting out thought-provoking games that are near-historical or near-real with cool UI for a while, so I looked forward to this.

The engine for this game reminds me a lot of Gruescript, and has clickable buttons but otherwise operates similar to a parser, for a parser-choice hybrid.

The idea is that you are exploring the woods at a time you aren’t really supposed to, taking pictures and looking for things to bring to school to show others.

The game has enough nature to feel like a nice walk through the forest, like the game The Fire Tower. But it’s odd enough to feel unusual. Plastic is seen as something exotic and rare. An abandoned hut contains what seems to be evidence of torture…or dental care.

I liked the overall vibes, and thought the game looked great, especially the background changing over time.

The game implied I missed out on something at the end, or at least my character did. I didn’t see any opportunities to do more than I did (I crossed the bridge and, looking at the walkthrough after, I had done everything in it).

Sometimes it was a bit of a chore to have 4 different things to click on every thing (the original click to look, then photograph, then smell/touch, then collect).

At times I struggled to use items. I can’t tell if there were bugs or just my way of clicking was bad. At times I thought that clicking to use an item and then clicking on a scenery object would bring up an option on that scenery object to use the item. At other times I thought that clicking on the object itself would bring up the option to use it on the scenery item. I suspect the latter was the case most often.

Also, it seemed like the map kept getting bigger (which was awesome) but at some point the X got stuck in the upper right.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot; the complaints above are minor things, while the core game itself was something good and interesting.

I liked this game a lot! It’s very aesthetically pleasing, with soft, shifting-color backgrounds, a map that expands as you go deeper, and lovely art. The engine worked well and made for a smooth choice-parser hybrid experience. After a bit of a slow start, I became invested in the PC’s forest exploration, partially due to her strong voice—her youthful enthusiasm and joy are captured so well. Discovering new things to photograph, interact with, and collect for my sample box was delightful, especially since trying each action on each item has its own unique flavor text. For instance, photos of certain things may come out blurry or not live up to what they’re trying to capture, which was an excellent detail. All in all, this really captured the experience of going on a rambling forest hike.

A layer of intrigue was added once the worldbuilding started trickling in, creating a sense of potential danger in the forest and of precarity about life in general in this world. The small-scale stakes of potentially getting lost, getting in trouble for sneaking out, or even getting attacked by a creature played out against an off-screen backdrop of warring ideologies and a forever-damaged planet. The way that glimpses of this larger geopolitical situation were meted out throughout the story was very effective, providing one puzzle piece at a time that never formed the whole picture, but were enough to convey a strong impression.

I love exploration in games, and this was a thoroughly satisfying experience on that front, with a few small puzzles along the way and an enjoyable PC to spend the time with, along with a compelling world to do it in.