Apple Arcade review #117: Unleash the Light

Unleash the Light, the Steven Universe RPG, was supposed to be the final game in this series of reviews — mostly because it’s a game my daughter and I have been planning to play together after wrapping up the (really, really good) Steven Universe TV series (and equally good movie). But then yesterday Apple went and released another game, so instead of this being the final review, there will be one more bonus review tomorrow, because I’m a completist and I hate to leave things hanging.

(After that, don’t expect any new Arcade reviews for a while, if ever. This was a project I embarked on to see if I could do it, and I did it, and now it’s done.)

So: Unleash the Light. We held off on playing the game in order to finish the series first and avoid spoilers. Watching Steven Universe with my daughter has been a deeply rewarding experience, and wrapping it all up with the movie a couple of months back was quite emotional. It’s a wonderful show. I’ll miss it, and miss the time spent sharing that experience with her. We’ve yet to watch Future (a limited series that picks up a few years later), but this game is set in, or just after, the original timeline.

The following review has been written in its entirety by my SU mega-fan daughter (with a few notes by me at the end):

I liked this game. It was fun and I liked that they had the original voices of most of the characters, which gives it a more real feel. The graphics were nice, and they had a lighter and more cartoony vibe to them. It had the same bright colours and playfulness as the series.

I think the fact that I’ve watched this series makes it a more personal experience for me, so it might not be the same for those who haven’t. (Although some of the things are hard to understand without watching the series.)

There are a lot of things to read and quite a lot of pop-up battles. It’s still fun but, unlike Nightmare Farm [which she guest reviewed a while back], it’s not as easy to pick up and play for a few minutes. It’s nice to play when you’re in a car or in bed, because you can expect to spend a long time playing the game.

The controls are different from what you might be used to. You don’t have to press the screen and wait valuable seconds for your characters to get to the other room: you just swipe and the characters will run to keep up! That’s made it so much easier to return to the last room and check it you’ve forgotten any loot. Battle is pretty much the same as other games, but again unlike Nightmare Farm it requires a lot more focus, especially in the battles.

All in all, it’s a game that might have a complex plot but it has the same story-battle vibe that you’re used to. I recommend it especially to Steven Universe fans who’ve missed the series after it ended.

(And here are my own brief thoughts about the game.)

The game feels like Steven Universe, and that’s important. The writing is good, they’ve used the original actors, and the art looks similar to the show. It’s not quite there, though, and I wish it was, because the show looks great. The dialogue doesn’t work quite as well without the rhythm of linear presentation — you tap to progress, which makes the timing feel off — and not all of it is voiced. In an ideal world, the cut-scenes would have been fully animated by the show’s creative staff. As for the game: we’re talking pretty standard dungeon crawling turn-based combat action, though there’s a decent amount of interaction required, and I did like the quick navigation between rooms. Aside from that, this is a rather basic game. The appeal’s in the characters and universe. My daughter enjoyed that part of it — so did I — but there’s not much else there to keep us interested. I think we’ll start watching Steven Universe Future instead.