"Despite almost four years of Early Access, Striving for Light feels as unpolished, and doomed to obscurity in 2025 as it completes its Early Access journey, as it did in 2021 when it first entered Steam Early Access."
When it comes to releasing a new title into an already crowded genre, a developer should aim to meet at least three of the four criteria, which separates successful new games from titles that live and die without more than a handful of people noticing.
With that in mind, lets examine the four criteria, and see how Striving for Light measures up.
I appreciate the huge amount of work that goes into creating hand drawn visuals, even lacklustre ones, however from a purely critical point of view, Striving for Light, is not a good looking game, the quality of the assets is inconsistent, animations are poor, and the UI feels like it was ripped out of the early 2000s.
While performance is good, combat feels unrewarding and due to the poor animations looks terrible.
I honestly cannot imagine a single scenario (other than for the purpose of this review) where I would choose to play Striving for Light, over almost anything else that the genre has to offer.
I am sorry, but Striving for Light, feels like the type of game you get in a 20 games for a dollar bundle from Fanatical or Indiegala, while I could understand a retail price of $4.99, there is no way that its current price of $17.99 could be considered reasonable, considering the price, quantity and quality of titles in the same genre.
I am not being cruel, but I would feel disappointed to receive Striving for Light, as a stocking filler in a Humble Choice Bundle, and could not see myself paying more than a few cents for it, without regretting my purchase.
A game needs to have a reason for existing to do well, the fact the developers wanted to make a title in a particular genre or hope to mimic the success of another game is not enough reason to ensure gamers will want to play it.
Unfortunately Striving for Light does not innovate, expand or improve upon the Action Roguelike genre, and in many ways is worse than a lot of what is already available.
Without sounding callus, I am not sure why it even exists to begin with, when so many better games existed in the Action Roguelike genre, prior to Striving for Light entering early access..
With so many excellent titles clamouring for attention in 2025, a game needs to excite me, to draw me in, and Striving for Light, simply does not, and considering just four people are playing right now, it seems I am not alone in feeling this way.
For those who have been following us for a while you may have read our review of Striving for Light: Survival, a lacklustre vampire survivors clone, released by the same developers, which reused many of the assets of Striving for Light, in effort to cash in on the Vampire Survivors genre, a move which ultimately failed, with 0 players online at the time of writing this review.
Striving for Light is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by Igniting Spark Games, it was released on 29 November 2021 and retails for $17.99.
Striving for Light is available exclusively on PC.
Striving for Light supports the following peripherals:
Striving for Light is unrated and contains:
Striving for Light isn’t a bad game, but it in no way is a better game that than the many excellent, and comparatively priced titles on the market.
While I do not hate Striving for Light, I personally found there to be very little to like about it, and for the most part there is no single aspect of Striving for Light, that feels superior any other known game from the Action Roguelike genre.
While I am sure there are worse games out there, I personally have no played for them, and for that reason I cannot recommend Striving for Light at this time.
We found Striving for Light to be a poor game, meaning that while it has some redeeming qualities, it's ultimately disappointing and not recommended for most gamers.
"Vampire Survivors, often copied and never beaten, proves that excellent gameplay and affordable pricing will win out over poor gameplay and excellent visuals any day of the week."
"Culinary Survivors is barely a tech demo, let alone a game, and its chances of selling enough copies to sustain further development are close to zero."
"Malignant Survivors is the bite-sized, fairly priced action rogue-like that the genre has been needing, and while it won't take the genre by storm, the fact it exists bodes well for the genre as a whole."
