The first thing you do in every round of Nix Umbra is collect your sword. It burns in your right fist, casting a pool of harsh emergency lighting a few metres wide. As long as the sword is lit, you live. Your shared vitality is measured by a sun icon in bottom right. Ahead, coarse soil disappears into twitching shadow. Above, bedroom-wallpaper stars flicker uncertainly. You think you see the moon.
Nix Umbra review
- Developer: ilzard
- Publisher: ilzard
- Platform: Played on PC
- Availability: Out now on PC
After around five seconds of walking you’ll encounter your first tree: a gritty slash of texture in the baleful glare of your sword. Early on in your time with Nix Umbra the trees might seem comforting: landmarks and barriers, things to retreat to, weave through while fleeing. You peep around the trunk and it bursts into flame, illuminating other trees, grouped in a ring like petrified ogres at feast. Your sun icon dims a little. You keep moving.
30 seconds in. Something is watching you through the trunks, maybe a hundred metres away. The suggestion of glowing sockets and a lipless grin. It rarely stays put for long, sliding around at ethereal speed or vanishing and reappearing. You can’t decide whether to confront it or let it herd you deeper into the darkness. As the onlooker glitches from point to point, you become belatedly aware that you are engulfed in sound – a subliminal purr, like an idling engine.