“Attack The Light: Steven Universe RPG” is another gorgeous, fun game from Cartoon Network

Alice Hill

10 years ago

If you’re familiar with “Steven Universe,” a show running on
Cartoon Network right now detailing the life of a young half-alien boy being
raised by three alien mentors, you’re likely very familiar with how absolutely
gorgeous the show is, and how sweet and hilarious the writing is. Okay, maybe
that’s biased. I’m a big, big fan of the show.

So when I heard “Steven Universe” was getting another game, I
was … Excited! But cautious. Mobile games tend to not be … Great. The last “Steven Universe” game was fun, as was the Disco-esque Lumpy Space Prince dance game (These Lumps was addictive). But I’ve seen other mobile games just be quick
cash-ins, or relevant textures just sort of slapped onto a previous game (I
love you, Gem Bound, but I am looking at you). So finding out Attack the Light
was going to be a turn-based RPG was…. Surprising!

To explain: Turn-based RPGs are games where you control
characters, and deal out moves each ‘turn.’ You typically explore lands, fight
monsters, and there’s a big over-arching plot. This seemed like a lot for a
mobile game to deliver. I bought the game on day one, because, like I said,
big fan. But wow, I was NOT
disappointed.

In “Attack The Light: Steven Universe RPG,” Steven & Co.
must stop a gem monster that has created light monsters from its gem prism.
They have to travel across lands, get treasure, and “Attack the Light” to defeat
it. It’s actually very cute, as Steven’s a video game fan, and keeps expressing
excitement over being in an RPG (To which Pearl
asks, “What’s an Are Pee Gee???”)

As you can see in these shots, the game is absolutely
gorgeous. The creative and art team from “Steven Universe” actually helped with
this game. The backgrounds are reportedly intensely inspired by Yoshi’s Island,
and convey a lot of mood without too much detail. The artwork itself is nice.
The character portraits are based on ‘far away’ simplified models of the
characters used in the show. And they’re fully animated for moves in game (A
particularly neat one is Amethyst’s Purple Puma move, where you see Amethyst
turn into her wrestling alter ego, Purple Puma).

The game play itself is fantastic. Grumpyface Studios did some
really creative, incredible stuff. You attack normally, then hit on a rhythm to
double your attack. Or some attacks, such as Amethyst’s Purple Puma, or
Garnet’s Shield Smashing Hammer Fists require timing for a successful attack
(In Amethyst’s, you have to hit a moving wrestling bell 1-3 times to deal
damage, with damage increasing with each successful subsequent hit. And
Garnet’s involves hitting a red area on something that almost resembles a
test-your-strength meter, which will make the character deal damage on top of
smashing an enemy’s shield).

You do the same for enemies, of course (All gorgeous, all
very well suited to their respective areas: Bats and scorpions in the cave,
beetles and plants in the garden, snakes in the desert. All reflect the design
that they’re created by the light, as guided by the design notes from series
creators Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey show below. They attack, you block
with a timed prompt. It makes figuring out what new enemies do a fun puzzle.
And it can make boss fights seem like very intense challenges. Thankfully, the
many items throughout the game really saved my bacon in those boss fights.

All in all, I was absolutely blown away by this game. While
I still haven’t beaten it (Midterms), it’s absolutely taken over my
Illustration classroom. Classmates come to me talking about how much fun it is.
How it’s a game you really have to pay attention to due to the game play style,
and due to this it sucks them in for longer amounts of time. I’ve got to agree.
Most mobile games I find myself playing for chunks of ten minutes at a time at
the most. Attack the Light pulls me in for hours, and I stumble out later,
usually because of battery issues, excited for more.

I’ve only encountered one glitch in the game so far, which
made me have to delete the game and start all over. I had to shut off my phone
mid-battle and switched to another ap without pausing the game. And when I came
back, the game was an unresponsive black screen, even on a restart of the
phone. Hopefully this problem has been fixed by now.

Overall, though, I’d recommend “Attack the Light: Steven Universe RPG.” Between the
beautiful art, hilarious snappy writing, and intuitive game play, this is not a
game that I’d pass up!