Child Of Light Release Date Set With New Trailer

Curious about the release date for Child of Light? Well it's April 30th, later this spring, just in case you were wondering. The game has been on the receiving end of a lot of critical praise for its artistic direction and gameplay style and we get to see a lot of more of it in Ubisoft's newest trailer.

The new trailer for the game details more of the gameplay as players take control of the child of light in a quest to save the land from darkness. The setup and premise seems like a story told a thousand times before, but the prize lies in the execution.

The game takes a floaty, eight-directional, adventure approach to maneuvering through the environments while also getting back to basics as far as combat goes. The turn-based structure is a welcomed return to the core mechanics of a role-playing game. The added ability to craft and modify items and gear could also help extend the gameplay and replay values by a fairly large margin. Well, that's assuming that the crafting isn't some tacked-on grind-fest that only serves to hamper the gameplay immersion and instead feels like something from out of an EA mobile game.

The real highlight of Child of Light, however, is that the game unravels itself mostly through artistic interpretation. The lead character, Aurora, is beautifully animated in a hand painted-looking world splashed with engrossing colors and captivating designs.

In particular, I love the way the artists and animators managed to make her hair a standout feature of her design; every swing, every hop, every step and every movement from Aurora is accentuated by the lively personality of her hair. It's an interesting way to help bring the game and the development team's visualized idea of interactive entertainment to life.

I know a lot of AAA publishers get a ton of flack for being greedy mofos (and I'm one of the big critics of them being greedy mofos), but out of them all I would have to say that Ubisoft is at least competent enough to take some off-beat risks, even if they don't always pay off.

The fact that Child of Light exists and is coming to a wide range of consoles, utilizing a visually poignant art-style and a collection of gameplay mechanics not frequently used (or supported) by AAA publishers, at least lets me know that they still allow their creative juices to flow every once in a while. Then again, they are French Canadians.

Child of Light is set for release on April 30th, this spring, for the PS3, PS4, Wii U (oh yeah), Xbox 360, Xbox One and the Glorious PC. Need more info? Feel free to hit up the official website.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.