Some games have age limits. I’m not talking about ESRB ratings; I played far too many multiplayer shooters before the age of 17 to suggest that, but rather narrative restrictions. Which is to say that some games are best when experienced at certain ages. I mean, of course, an adult can boot up Bluey: The Game at their leisure, but they would probably not be filled with the same wonder as a kid controlling their favourite cartoon character. Likewise, a thirteen-year-old can definitely play Disco Elysium, but it would take some time before they grow to understand and appreciate its themes.
The reason why this tangential observation prefaces this review is that it was often on my mind while I played through OPUS: Prism Peak from Sigono. As I round the corner into my thirties, I realised that much like the rest of me, the way I play video games has also changed over the years. I still love playing fast-paced first-person shooters, but I can also be patient with a game. I enjoy shallow gameplay-driven spectacles, but I don’t mind sitting with a game’s narrative to let it sink in. All’s that to say, a younger version of myself might not have found this game quite as alluring as my present self. Despite its rough edges, Prism Peak is a game I deeply connected with and will likely dwell on for a long time to come.
Prism Peak is a story-based puzzle game that’s part of developer Sigono’s OPUS series. These games are thematically related but not narratively linked. In this new entry, you play as a weary photographer named Eugene, who is stranded in the Dusklands after a mysterious accident. He soon finds a little girl, fading from existence and unaware of her own name. All she knows is that she has to get to Dusk Mountain. This begins a roughly thirteen-hour road trip with Eugene accompanying and occasionally carrying the girl homeward. Along the way, he’ll make new friends, remember old ones, and uncover the secrets of this fantastical world.
I was initially a bit cautious about the game’s story. Prism Peak popped up on my radar late last year, during Nintendo’s Indie World showcase in August. My first impressions were conflicted. On the one hand, it had vibrant visuals and photography-centred gameplay (my love for photo mode needs no introduction). On the other hand, however, the 90-second trailer featured a weird amount of moping and self-deprecation from the main protagonist. In the full context of the game, those dialogues are much more understandable, albeit still odd for a grown man to say to a child he just met.
Even with those momentary speedpumps in the writing, I grew to like most of the game’s quirky cast of characters. The metaphor of Prism Peak is fairly straightforward, which allows you to easily draw the connection between a character in the Dusklands and their real-life counterpart. Every character is brought to life with earnest performances, which help even the tropey ones remain memorable in the end. It’s a combination of good voice acting and strong direction that makes the caricature like portaryal of characters still feel grounded within the reality of the game world.
No matter what hurdles arise, the heart of Prism Peak is Eugene and his inexplicable connection to this little girl. There are a lot of revelations along the way that shed light on character dynamics and relationships that are both surprising and, at times, gut-wrenching. Eugene is at a low point at the start of the game, and over the course of the narrative, we start to see why the journey to Dusk Mountain is significant to him. Now more than ever. In that way, the game’s lessons are important to not just the main character but to any player who might find themselves feeling hopeless or lost in the ever-churning sea of adulthood. It’s a meaningful message that is imparted nicely in small bursts.
You might look at the tags on Prism Peak‘s Steam page and think it’s a traditional visual novel, but you would be mistaken. While it may have the writing and branching narratives of the genre, in Prism Peak, you control Eugene in a 3D world, exploring level after level to find clues and solve puzzles at your own pace. This leads to some of the most effective and frustrating aspects of the gameplay experience. The addition of the photography mechanics encourages you to slow down and smell the roses. Or in this case, take a nice photo of them.
The camera you carry has multiple settings, including shutter speed, focus, and filters, and you can tune them to your liking to get the perfect shot. When you take a photo, key items, events, and locations are automatically detected. The game gives you a blurb of context, and the photo is saved to a Key folder in your photo collection. Any other photo will be saved to the Extra section for your viewing pleasure. While there are some checkpoint photos you need to take to progress the story, which the game will signal to you through in-game dialogues, there’s plenty more left for the player to discover on their own. Early in my playthrough, I would wander over to a place simply because it looked nice, only to find that it contained details of the greater narrative.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle some players will face when it comes to Prism Peak is that it requires patience. You can cut an hour or more from the game’s total runtime by mainlining the objectives, but to do so would rob you of much-needed context. A core part of unlocking the mystery of the Dusklands is Eugene’s journal. In it are different sections that help connect the dots to understand the world better. One section has you pasting in photos of murals to learn about the world’s history. Another has you decoding the runic alphabet found throughout the Dusklands. Each character also has a page where you have to fill in the blank with their perspective. To do this, you have to pay attention to what characters say and how they’re feeling. It’s not overly complex, nor is it necessary to finish the game, but taking the time to complete each page gives Eugene pertinent flashbacks.
These memories are presented as black-and-white graphic novel panels, and they contrast nicely with the vibrant present-day cutscenes. Overall, the presentation of Prism Peak is great. There are some stunning visuals in the game. The color palette is easy on the eyes, and for a game that puts the camera in the player’s hands, it makes it easy to take good-looking photos. Animations can occasionally be a bit stiff, but when paired with the aforementioned voice acting, they feel lively. The game has a lengthy background score full of slow ambient tracks and energetic melodies that kick in at just the right times.
In case you are worried about getting confused with the puzzle mechanics, the game is pretty good at nudging you in the right direction. Characters will repeat important pieces of information when needed, and hand firebowls can be found throughout the levels. Apart from their story significance, which I won’t get into here, firebowls are key to understanding the Dusklands. Before I can explain how, I first have to tell you about ash and seeds. These are two items you collect on your adventure, and they act as rewards for exploring with levels and interacting with points of interest. Ash is used to fill in the journal so that you can’t simply brute force your way to the right connection. Seeds are offered at the firebowls in exchange for gifts like new filters or lens cleaning kits.
Also at the firebowls, you will find hints at crucial details you should keep an eye out for and character totems. In each instance, you are given a few vague lines of text to interpret. You then have to go and take the relevant shot, though if you are thorough to begin with, you might already have the photos in your album. Presenting them to the fire will give you additional pages for your journal, new flashbacks, and more. Much like the journal, the game doesn’t want you to blindly guess the solutions here, and some opportunities will be locked after a certain number of incorrect attempts. This motivated me to think through my options, and the instances where I did miss details reinforced the need not to rush to conclusions.
As I said earlier, there are some drawbacks to this game’s design too. The big thing for me is that while the photography gameplay loop was enjoyable, the gameplay itself was rather underwhelming. I played through Prism Peak on the Nintendo Switch 2, and performance ranged from okay to bad. There are frequent frame drops, Eugene can walk through random pieces of furniture for some reason, and on two instances, I had to restart the game because of a visual bug that made it hard to see anything but the characters in the centre. That aside, Eugene is just stiff to control, and I would get stuck on odd pieces of geometry throughout levels that made the game feel clunky. These issues might be negligible in a fully linear narrative, but given the freedom the game gives you to explore each area, they become even more glaring.
Once you roll credits on the game, you unlock a sort of New Game Plus mode. This lets you save a handful of photos from your last run and allows you to skip cutscenes in the next one so you can focus exclusively on the puzzles and deciphering the lore. Perhaps the best post-game feature is the commentary tracks. These are audio files from Game Director Brian Lee, where he talks briefly about the game and some of the decisions that shaped it. I found this to be a great companion piece to the game, and I actually wish they were a bit longer. Closer to a mini-podcast than a short voice note.
When you put it all together, Prism Peak was a memorable narrative experience. Its pacing in the last act is a bit slow and dragged out, but the revelations were satisfying enough to make it worthwhile. The reveals at the end are cool, thought-provoking, and even manage to stir the emotions a bit. For the emotionally callous, there are still some stunning visuals to gawk at in the finale that the Nintendo Switch 2 seems barely capable of handling. I do think that Prism Peak is best enjoyed when you’re an adult, out of school and maybe even on your own. But the beauty of video games as an art form is that, despite unfamiliar adult themes, an engaging gameplay loop and gorgeous visuals can still make it fun for players of all ages. I just wish the performance was better on the Switch. OPUS: Prism Peak is available now on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. A code was provided by the publisher for review.
