Deadlight

Deadlight is a 2.5D side-scrolling cinematic platformer/survival horror in which the player character, Randall Wayne, can move from left-to-right and right-to-left, but is unable to enter any environments off the aligned path. The character can walk, sprint, crouch, roll, jump, long jump, wall jump in narrow areas, climb fences and ladders, hang from wires, push and pull certain objects, and perform contextual actions such as using switches and examining bodies.

Gameplay primarily consists of platforming and solving puzzles so that Wayne can avoid the many "Shadows" (zombies) populating the streets of Seattle. The levels are designed in such a way that the player is encouraged to avoid Shadows as much as possible, rather than engaging them in combat. When combat is unavoidable, the player can use a fire axe to execute short-range melee attacks, which consumes stamina, or later, a revolver, and subsequently a shotgun, although ammunition for both weapons is extremely limited. The player also gains access to a slingshot.

The game takes place in Seattle, beginning on July 4, 1986, one-hundred-and-forty-five days since "Patient Zero". Society has been nearly decimated by the outbreak of a virus that reanimates the dead, turning them into what the survivors refer to as "Shadows". Randall Wayne, a park ranger from Hope, British Columbia in Canada, has been separated from his wife Shannon and daughter Lydia for some time, and traveled to Seattle because of reports of the last remaining "Safe Point" in the Pacific Northwest. Convinced that his family is at the Safe Point, he is accompanied by fellow park ranger, Ben Parker. After arriving in the city, they joined with a group of four other people; a police officer named Sam Powell, and twin sisters, Stella and Karla Patterson, and an unnamed university professor who is killed by the shadows prior to the game's events.

As the game begins, Wayne has just shot Karla in the head, since she had been bitten and was about to turn into a Shadow. As Ben, Sam and Stella return to the warehouse in which they are sheltering, the building is attacked by Shadows, drawn by the gunfire. The trio flee through a skylight, but the ladder breaks before Wayne can follow, and he tells them to head to the Safe Point, where he will meet them.

Deadlight was announced on January 18, 2012 as an Xbox Live Arcade exclusive, set for release during the annual Summer of Arcade. Microsoft Studios revealed they would publish the game, which was being developed by Tequila Works. Although Deadlight was Tequila Works' debut, the development team included people who had worked on the Commandos and MotorStorm series, as well as games such as Overlord II, Heavy Rain, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Diablo III. The following day, a teaser trailer was released, with a demo made available on March 5. Speaking of the demo, Eurogamer's Martin Robinson noted the similarity between the movement and animations of Randall Wayne and the protagonists of classic cinematic platformers such as Another World and Flashback.

This similarity was very much by design, as director, co-writer and designer Raúl Rubio Munárriz explains,

Deadlight received mixed reviews, with the much less widely reviewed PC version generally seen as superior to the Xbox 360 version. On Metacritic, the Xbox version has an aggregate score of 68 out of 100 based on 79 reviews, while the PC version has a score of 78 out of 100 based on 7 reviews.

IGN's Ryan McCaffrey scored it 8.5 out of 10, calling it "one of the finest XBLA titles of the year." He was particularly impressed with the graphics; "its aesthetic is gorgeous [...] Several of Deadlight's set-pieces are so stunning that I had to actually stop to admire them before pressing onward." However, he was critical of the puzzle-based levels in the sewers, the ease with which the player can die, and the final section of the game, writing "These flaws are the difference between Limbo's transcendent excellence and Deadlight's mere greatness."