Vigil: The Longest Night is an upcoming 2D action platformer inspired by a combination of Lovecraftian horror and Taiwanese culture, and it had a demo available on Steam as part of the Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition. You play Leila, a young woman recently trained to fight as a Vigilant, as she returns to her hometown after receiving a letter from her sister.
Monsters roam outside the town and a girl has recently disappeared. With Leila’s skills, you’re soon asked to investigate the disappearance by talking to other townspeople, gathering clues, and fighting your way through to the truth. There are four different types of weapons–swords, bows, daggers, and axes, and you can equip three weapons at a time to switch between during combat. You’ll also want to dodge, roll, and make the most of your equippable items if you’re going to survive. As you fight, you’ll also level up, allowing you to spend skill points to unlock new abilities and passive bonuses. It’s hard to avoid Dark Souls comparisons when parts of the UI (such as the item screen in particular) look so clearly inspired by it, but Vigil has enough differences to help set it apart.
It took me a bit to figure out the timing to properly dodge attacks, but the combat felt quite good once I did. The platforming felt a little stiff and cumbersome at times (and trying to climb up the stairs next to an NPC was particularly awkward, since the “up” and “interact” buttons are the same), but fortunately this is a game focused more on combat and exploration than any sort of precision platforming. It has a great visual style, as well as gorgeous music. The environment temporarily darkened whenever I closed a menu, and I wasn’t sure if that was a bug or an intentional effect, but that’s the only part of the game’s presentation I found jarring.
Once I got through the tutorial section and reached the town, I found shops, a blacksmith, numerous people to talk to–and side quests! Vigil hadn’t struck me as the sort of game that would have many side quests, so that was a pleasant surprise. Quest labels aren’t actually translated yet, which made navigating my notes more tedious than it had to be, but I’m sure that will change ahead of launch. While one quest was as simple as returning a helmet I found to its owner, it rewarded me with both items and additional lore, and the other quests I saw seemed even more deeply entrenched in the game’s narrative.
Speaking of which, the world of Vigil is still quite mysterious, but I enjoyed what I saw of the narrative and worldbuilding despite the occasional typos and odd phrasing. My brief time in the town gave me a better idea of the world, the monster designs became pretty disturbing as I got further in, and the end of the demo left me excited to see where the story is going. There is some twisted stuff at work in this world, and knowing it was inspired by Lovecraft has me all the more eager to watch it unfold.
While Vigil: The Longest Night is a little rough around the edges right now, it holds a lot of promise if you’re into this style of action platformer.
