Light Tracer (VR & NON-VR)

I keep a soft spot for games that wear an innocent face while quietly sharpening a knife behind their back. Light Tracer is exactly that kind of game. You play as a disembodied god-figure whose only job is to guide an adorable chibi princess up the Tower of Bellbatis, floor by floor, chapter by chapter. One hand wields a light staff that functions as her beacon, she follows its beam without question, even straight off a ledge if you aim carelessly. The other hand rotates and manipulates the environment itself, pulling levers, shifting platforms, adjusting your view angle to see what trap is lurking around the next corner. That split-focus mechanic, two hands doing totally different jobs at once, is where most of the genuine difficulty lives. The structure is eight chapters, each with five stages and a boss fight capping the sequence. Early on the game keeps things generous, a green-land opening chapter that functions more as an extended tutorial than a real test. But the gloves come off steadily. Ice stages introduce lethal slip physics. A Mechanica World chapter rearranges the platforming logic entirely. Later chapters layer combat into the mix: the princess picks up a sword and you command her slash attacks, though her hitbox is large enough that poorly timed engagements are genuinely punishing. Boss encounters have divided opinion; they demand specific strategies the game does not telegraph, which some players find exhilaratingly opaque and others find just maddening. No hints, no assistance, no hand-holding past a certain point. For puzzle-lovers who value the cold satisfaction of a solution earned, that philosophy will feel right. For anyone already irritated by vague progression, chapter seven and eight may produce some memorably colourful language. The soundtrack deserves its own sentence because it genuinely surprised people. Across eight chapters the music cycles from soft acoustic guitar in the opening meadow-like sections to what reviewers have called "boisterous big band" material during the more intense stages. It matches the tone of each environment rather than just looping a generic adventure track, and that attentiveness to the soundscape is the kind of craft decision that quietly doubles a game's emotional footprint. The visual design lands in the same place: minimalist floating platforms with bold, saturated colour palettes per chapter, clean enough to stay legible in VR without looking sparse outside of it. The Steam version includes both the original motion-controller VR mode and the flatscreen "Princess Side" mode added in a post-launch update, meaning a headset is no longer a gating requirement. The VR experience remains the more immersive way to play, that tactile sense of the tower as a physical diorama you are leaning over and rotating is something the flatscreen mode cannot fully replicate. But "Princess Side" is a legitimate alternative rather than an afterthought, and it makes the game accessible to the far larger non-VR audience. Motion controller tracking issues, most documented on PSVR rather than SteamVR, have been a recurring frustration historically, though the PC Vive build fared considerably better in that regard according to coverage from launch. Four to five hours to finish a first run is an honest estimate for a competent puzzle player. Costume unlocks via in-game coin grinding stretch that time for completionists, though the grind curve is steep enough that most players will stop well before maxing out the wardrobe. The story itself is lean: a princess climbs a tower to save her ailing people, lore drip-feeds through between-chapter cutscenes, and the ending lands with a genuine little twist that the pacing earns. This is not a game that overstays its welcome or tries to be something it is not. It is a precise, handcrafted puzzle-platformer with a cheerful exterior and quietly serious ambitions, and that combination is rarer than it should be.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Light Tracer (VR & NON-VR).