Game:

Steven Universe: Attack the Light (2015)

Duration: 10:06

276 views

4

As if it wasn't tease enough last time when the game told you about something exciting and I said that we weren't going to be seeing it for awhile... let's take a peek at the Indigo Caves stage map and see that we will NOT be visiting the gold laurel-encrusted treasure chest with a big ol' exclamation point over it for awhile. I'm serious, that thing will mess you up.

---

Strawberry Battlefield
Stage 2-1:

So, for fans of the show, this is a nice treat. One of the benefits of working with the creator and crew behind a show like this is that you get a lot of creative latitude to use some under-explored aspects of the world and lore... not to mention tons of notes on how you're doing, making the finished project that was Attack the Light something that everyone could legitimately be excited about, and I feel like that shows through with every little moment that you feel like COULD have been part of an episode, but instead, you get to experience it here. Well, YOU lot get to vicariously experience me experiencing it again, but that's what you get for having not run out to your nearest mobile app platform and played the whole game while I was apparently incapable of sticking to a schedule. Shame! All YOUR fault! Shaaame!

For those of you that haven't obsessed over the little boy as a magical girl with three rock-mom...aunt...sisters(?) that has taken Cartoon Network by storm (seemingly despite CN's scheduling department's best efforts at times), I feel like... there's probably not TOO much spoiler potential here. This could easily have been a relatively early Season 1 episode for all intents and purposes... only a few major nuggets of information exist, and they're just kinda dropped in your lap as a sort of "so what, this happened, deal with it" presentation. Only the one most major of them is continuously dropped in your face, and only as much as you CAN (but probably should) get extra reminders along the way... and even that one was STILL a "so what" sort of detail even in the show itself... for a really long time, in fact. So that's kinda neat.

I bring this up, but I feel like the existence of the "Strawberry Battlefield" is still a pretty "so what" bit of world-building at the time I'm writing this, several whole seasons later. I mean, from the start, it's clearly important, but it's also basically an excuse for some sweet set dressing, because obviously we're not about to drop the gravity of what those words stuck together even MEAN to young Steven. Adults will acknowledge the existence of war, but past that, you get a lot of thousand-yard stares as they try to make sense of it all (even and ESPECIALLY the ones with thousands of years to contemplate it)... there's no way they're going to offload any of that onto a kid.

I hope it didn't seem like too much of an inside joke that, no, there were no Strawberry Olympics held here... because one of those choices wouldn't explain how even the stage select screen shows a discarded sword lying forgotten, plunged into the ground. (There's even one visible at the edge of the screen while this choice is being made!)

Oh right, we're here to attack some light! Let's do this! (What was I thinking?!)

Our first encounter with Green light monsters shows a bit of a mixed bag already... on the one hand, it's the lowest on-paper damage output we've seen in any enemy... but I don't think I need to explain how this makes them significantly more dangerous than scorpions and most of the other types we ran across in the Indigo Caves. You have a totally different means of minimizing damage this time, and it's entirely possible that you won't WANT to minimize when you could hopefully prevent those opportunities by prioritizing the destruction of these little blighters a bit earlier than their unassuming lack of presence might suggest. The minor variances in damage really add up here! Also, they can get critical hits, too! I hate bugs!

We also get to see the tactical indecision of the Ember Badge's allocation I hinted at earlier. While it might feel lucrative to possibly impart a burn on entire groups of enemies with a single attack, you really only get the ONE shot all round long... and having fewer than three targets already diminishes its tactical value, never mind the fact that Pearl's individual attacks are STILL stronger than Amethyst's, so you'd really only want it if you knew there was a huge swarm coming up soon... ... ...gosh dangit. (Even so, the fact that you only have a CHANCE to cause a burn means that you'll still want to rely on the by-the-numbers guaranteed damage output of the attack and factor in the sweet immolated icing on top when it DOES happen, not when it MIGHT happen.)

Anyway, we're just minding our own business, considering how bugs are EVERYWHERE in the great outdoors when suddenly, it's boss time! ... ... ... no, not really, but you'd be forgiven if you found the encounter surprising. Don't beat yourself up over it! (Unless you're Pearl.)

Other Statistics