It Consumes

PC I should probably be a bit embarrassed about admitting quite how long it’s taken me to complete the first of It Consumes‘ three stages. On its lowest difficulty. But I’ve had so much fun not managing it. There are perhaps a few too many games that make their primary feature darkness, but It Consumes makes this fascinating all over again, turning light into your most precious resource. The game takes place in a pitch-black arena, lit (at first) only by the slow pulses of red light emitted from a heart you clutch in your left hand. Sending out a growing circle of vision around you, this lights up (in eerie red glows) the enemies floating toward you, such that you can blast them into oblivion with your first-person weaponry and spells. But those pulses of light don’t last long, and the enemies are unrelenting, and the reality is you’re going to die pretty quickly. However, everything you’re doing in It Consumes is working toward unlocking something new. In your attempts at surviving…