The Uncertain: Light at the End (2020)

Post-apocalyptic settings can be many things, but boring should never be one of them, and The Uncertain: Light at the End is unfortunately exactly that, with its mediocre to bad writing, forgettable world and characters, and okay-ish to lacklustre puzzles. Even the best thing on offer, which is the design of each area, fails to leave an impact. The graphics are nice, but visual appeal and atmosphere are almost non-existent.

The Uncertain: Light at the End is a game that interweaves everything through its narrative. Sadly, that narrative is frustratingly tedious, meaning the rest of the game's building blocks fall apart without a strong base.

All in all, the game simply does not work as a stand alone title. This leaves one disconnected from the events of the story. Given how the story is structured, the developer should have waited releasing the game as a complete package with all three parts included.

As you dig into this tale of survival, I can’t help feel that it would have been better suited to a 2D point and click. The Uncertain: Light At The End does play on establish genre tropes but still manages it convincingly. Where it falls down is when it jams in odd immersion breaking puzzles and drops in yet another bug. Uncertain is an appropriate description for this tale of tin and while I’d give it a whirl once it’s had its chrome plated spit shine, I would hold off for some Walking Dead with better footing.

The final result is inconsistent, and what we find on our hands is an empty shell with gameplay mechanics inserted by force to give a semblance of meaning, to create what by definition would be a "video game" but which in practice it turns out to be a not very successful attempt to tell a story, unfortunately not so compelling. If two slices of bread enclosed a single lettuce leaf technically we would have a "sandwich", but it would be very difficult to call it such, and above all it wouldn’t satisfy anyone's palate.