SELINI Review

Everybody loves a good passion project; it keeps us going, and sometimes we can share that little project with the world. CYMBAN is one such developer manned by just one person who had a passion project inspired by games like Limbo and Inside. Now, game development is no small task, but a lone developer had a dream and made it a reality in the form of SELINI.

After years of initial work and a Kickstarter campaign that ran for 3 years, CYMBAN was ready to release his creation into the harsh world of Steam's Early Access on February 12. However, as with any game that releases into Early Access, some bugs and issues can be expected since it can technically be considered to be in an Alpha or Beta state.

Jumping into the world of SELINI, you won't be given any context, story, or dialogue.

Your task is to figure everything out as you go, with almost no information, granted, that is what makes SELINI so interesting. To simplify a confusing tale into something more understandable, SELINI has you take the role of a robot person who's exploring a wasteland/post-apocalyptic world.

However, this is easier said than done; you'll need several upgrades, and you'll also have to survive many dangerous encounters with what seems to be corrupted robots and wildlife. Fun, right?

As mentioned earlier, SELINI takes a lot of inspiration from games like Limbo and Inside in terms of some of the gameplay and the world. Though that's where the similarities end and where it sets itself apart from others like it. You already know that you're taking on the role of a robot person who has to explore this strange wasteland world, but you'll also need to get certain upgrades and abilities if you want to survive.

The upgrades and abilities in question can range from simple things like being able to jump higher to attacks and movement upgrades. The world of SELINI is harsh right from the start, so you'll need every advantage you can get if you want any hope at solving the mystery behind it. However, while there is the main mystery to solve, you'll also run into an absolute multitude of puzzles.

These puzzles act as little stopping blocks to keep you exploring before you can progress, while others are more optional, but they do give you a bit more insight into the lore of SELINI.

One of the biggest things to always keep in mind with SELINI is that there's no dialogue or readable lore; all your interactions and the like happen without speech. This can be somewhat jarring for some, and you might feel a little lost at times, but that's also the beauty in this whole escapade; it's up to you to figure everything out and draw your own conclusions.

Granted, the actual story and goal are not always very clear, and it can be somewhat frustrating.

Delving a bit deeper into SELINI, while most of the world is incredibly unforgiving or confusing, there are some safe spaces that also act as checkpoints. However, finding them is a totally different matter, and some exploration is needed if you want to find them. Unless you don't mind memorizing complex routes to get back to where you last died, though, that would make for an interesting hardcore run through the game.

Life in SELINI is just like most other games, limited… Naturally, it would be boring if you simply never died in a game where combat is part of the overall gameplay. Unfortunately, there's not much indication of how much life you have, except for a small but strange bar in the menu. It is also initially capped as well, and let's not even go into how you can refill it somehow.

You see, your health is in a way tied to, for lack of a better word, light. Little orbs of light can be found just about everywhere, but it'll never really be enough to fully recover unless you find a lot of them. Your only other alternative to getting some quick healing is by going back to a checkpoint.

Taking a closer look at combat in SELINI does reveal a bit more about the nature of the world you live in, since most of the things you'll be fighting will be corrupted. How you choose to fight is much more open-ended and can possibly bite you where the sun doesn't shine if you're not paying attention. Your base attack, which can only be described as a burst of light, is incredibly short-ranged. The charged attack shares a similar range, but you aren't entirely limited by that.

Throughout SELINI, you'll find all sorts of strange things, switches, puzzles, and the like, but one of the more useful advantages you'll find is a convenient drone you can connect to, and it'll follow you. It might not seem like much, but it'll give you a long-range attack that can be life-saving in some of the boss fights. However, that same drone doesn't follow you around forever; dying and respawning means you also lose the drone, and you're back to factory standard, so to speak.

One of the bigger differences you'll see in SELINI that sets it apart from similar releases is the fact that even though there's no actual conversation or dialogue, it doesn't mean you're entirely alone. You initially start off alone, but that changes very quickly as you see more people like the one you're playing as, granted, interacting with them isn't exactly what you'd expect.

It's more a case of you need to 'signal' to them to help you open a door, for instance.

SELINI has a lot to offer, from a massive world to explore, various enemies and boss fights, and even an interesting story to piece together, but it has one glaring issue. Once again, this is Early Access, and it's to be expected, but SELINI does suffer from lag whenever a background process causes any kind of spike in your drive usage. This could be due to a multitude of things, but we'll likely see some optimization in the future to fix this.

With all that said and done, we have to give a little praise to CYMBAN for the world he created in SELINI. The overall theme and visual relying on a dark wasteland / post-apocalyptic world has been done in many other games, but building an interesting environment is where the real challenge comes in.

Drenching the world in black and white is easy, but adding in shading and contrasting colours is what makes it stand out from others. The most important aspect is that light plays such a huge part, too. What you'd normally expect is a ton of bloom and glow that would become overbearing very quickly, but SELINI doesn't go to that extent.

Things only develop further in SELINI as you continue exploring and discovering new areas (or biomes) that still carry the same themes and visual styling without it becoming overbearing. At the same time, there is a certain simplicity in some places that can also make the game feel relaxing, almost as if you're silently being encouraged to keep going and keep trying.

Colour theory and visual styling were both excellently implemented in this regard because you just can't get tired of it. Looking at SELINI from an equally important side, visuals are great, but a dark atmosphere needs audio to match, and CYMBAN did not disappoint. Simplicity's strength is a key factor when building dark ambience to go with a game like SELINI.

The eerie background noise and simple sounds for everything just keep adding to the overall atmosphere, really driving the point home that you're exploring what looks like a wasteland. At the same time, there is a shift in certain places from the calm and eerie background music to very slightly more upbeat music during a boss fight that adds extra emphasis where needed.

Overall, SELINI is far from being just another side-scroller; it can be interpreted in so many different ways. It's a puzzler's dream wrapped into a dark, atmospheric world with a nice coating of mystery that'll keep you coming back for more. After all, every mystery is just waiting to be solved, and this might be one of the bigger mysteries just waiting to be cracked open to expose what could be a great story.