OK, let’s say there’s a broken staircase in the real world. The proper, physical version of Iris can’t cross it.

But there’s also a spotlight in the room, casting a shadow on the staircase. If Iris finds an object that casts a shadow that “connects” with the staircase’s shadow, her shadow form can then cross the completed shadow staircase.

(Trying to break a record for most times the word “shadow” has been used in a paragraph. Did I do it?)

The whole game looks like and feels like a beautiful, gothic storybook, drawn with a mostly monochrome colour palette.  

This makes Iris.Fall feel quite distinct from Contrast. While Contrast is a 3D title cradled in The Nightmare Before Christmas-esque film noir aesthetic, Iris.Fall is actually a 2.5D game, with every frame looking like an exquisite drawing.

But that’s not to say that the visuals of Iris.Fall are without flaws. Standing in stark contrast with the beautiful drawings in the background, character movements are very jittery, which sticks out like an eyesore compared with the rest of the visuals.

In contrast, the music is terrific. It’s eerie, deliberately out-of-tune and infinitely fascinating, which really elevates the atmosphere of the game.

As much as the presentation impressed me, the gameplay and storytelling are sadly underwhelming.

There’s no text or voiceover during the game itself -- the story is told by cutscenes in the form of motion comics as well as the in-game puzzles themselves. While that might sound impressive, it’s not all that effective. Only some of the puzzles are relevant to the story, while others seem to exist for no rhyme or reason.

While the highlight of the game are undoubtedly the puzzles that play with light and shadow, they’re not the only ones in the game. There are also other puzzles, like Rubik’s Cube-ish ones, to interpreting a numeric system. To be honest, most of them just boil down to various forms of “find the right combination” -- something I personally struggled with. Facing puzzles like that back-to-back-to-back can get quite taxing.

It also makes the game feel less like a considered experience and more like a collection of random puzzles, with few thematic ties between them. (Or maybe they’re so cryptically linked that I just didn’t see it.)

The story of the game is also a little underwhelming, and I didn’t feel like there was an effective payoff at the end. Rather than seeing anything profound, during the ending I was just waiting for it to be over.

Overall, Iris.Fall is undoubtedly gorgeous, but monotonous in terms of gameplay and storytelling. It’s only worth playing if you’re a hardcore puzzle game fan.

Bladed Fury is a basic but stylish action game