Who remembers Child of Light, the 2014 side-scrolling turn-based RPG whose latter element housed an interesting take on the Final Fantasy-style active time battle? The same game not just published by, but developed in-house by Ubisoft? Back when Ubisoft was not entirely cold to novel ideas and Skull & Bones hadn't even been announced yet. Yes, we're going that far back. The more I got involved in the familiar turn-based encounters in developer Noname Studios' Worldless, the more I was welcomingly reminded of a game of this ilk. Like that similarly-forgotten 2014 game, in all its abstract visuals, artistic pretense and seemingly as-standard Metroidvania traits -- down to the very unlocking of a valuable strafe/dash ability early on -- Worldless is a game that demands precision. Precision in its platforming and of its general pacing of course, but not for a second does it feel like an encounter can be won by simply relying on dumb luck.

It's also nice to see turn-based fights aren't so much forgotten; plenty of studios around the world, rightly so, still see the joy in one of gaming's oldest forms of encounter design. Rather, that teams are still looking to add an interesting flourish or interpretation on what "turns" actually entail. Further exemplifying those hooks on seeing one's strategy flourish or otherwise come crashing down by some ill-placed decision-making. Because encounters in Wordless aren't so much life-or-death synergies of brains and brawn in the pursuit of getting stronger as they are, in a way, this game's brand of puzzle-solving. If anything, combat in Worldless is far more puzzle-leaning than it is necessarily RPG-leaning.

And yet that risk:reward factor is always there, as deductive and rhythmic encounters may end up feeling in Worldless. Deciding how best to use the time allotted in your "turn" per se, as represented by a bar beneath your character that immediately starts to drain regardless of how much, or little, you act. Once it's over, naturally, it's the turn of your enemy. One who dishes out either a physical or magical/psionic (hard to specify what kind of properties this game is utilizing) attack, with which you can block with a well-timed shield, but will eventually break after enough strikes. Admittedly, Worldless feels vague when it comes to illustrating how long your shield will last -- perhaps the only part of the brief demo that seemed to act on random instinct as opposed to the consequence of one's actions or lack thereof.

Even so, it's surprising just how far Worldless manages to pull away from the regular formality and groove of your typical RPG fight. How the concept of time and time spent is now more material and present. The premise, simple as it is, remains the same obviously: kill your enemy before they kill you. And yet the timer combined with that greater demand for pre-planned knowledge on what combination of inputs to dish out means that the pressure to use one's time wisely is even greater. As if figuring out whether one's own physical or non-physical abilities seem the better fit; get it wrong -- be it with an indicator the enemy has "resisted" one's strikes -- and that feeling of wasted opportunity only bears down on you with even more weight and bitter regret.

So to then up the ante -- to add even more pressure to one's short-term reactionary decisions -- battles that involve acquiring an ability is where Worldless pushes this concept towards its more tantalizing potential. While the previous sequence of events remains, the added caveat is that in order to acquire said ability, one has to build up enough of a corresponding meter to activate what is essentially an even more stressful form of a QTE in the form of inputting an obscured sequence of prompts. The catch is that the more you charge up that meter, the easier it is to guess the sequence. Initiate at the earliest opportunity and you usually have four or five buttons to input in little time. Fail and the meter resets...all while your health during battle remains the same as it were prior to said activation. Hang on a little longer, though -- specifically, waiting until the meter hits near-200% -- and the window of opportunity is greater. It's a spin on the risk:reward pull that here, feels surprisingly more high stakes whichever way you look at it. And while you might think simply hammering away at all face buttons brute-force style will cover you, such is the looming concern on failure, that the game does enough to throw you off mentally that some frantic desperation won't always save you.

The fact that an element like combat is the first focal point in Worldless should give you an indication that despite its ethereally abstract foundation, Noname Studio are prioritizing the intricacies of their combat encounters. Wordless may well dedicate more time to its more narrative progression late on, the relationship between your blue-and-white feminine (I'm assuming as much) entity and the seemingly more masculine orange-and-white rival/antagonist that may become friendly later on?

If this write-up has come across too gameplay-fronted -- with focus seldom offered on the visuals, presentation, supposed narrative amid this abstract space -- it's due to just how taken a back you feel that a game like Worldless has itself found the willingness to look this deep and in a way reflect on. To look at the very nature of turn-based combat and pose the idea that time itself, so often an infinite or otherwise unnecessary resource, may actually prove a viable throughline again. And not to knock the countless games of prior that've so often relished exploring the artistry and the spectacle that games of this stature can flourish on. Maybe there'll be some manner of metaphoric tale or message or theme that underpins Worldless. Maybe it'll find a way to stand out and say something worthwhile, maybe it won't. It's because a set of combat mechanics this exciting -- excitingly perilous and stressful at times -- if not entirely original are wound together in such a way that've granted Worldless a deeper look. Where combat manifests as puzzle-solving and button prompts feel humorously more aggressive and critical in one's mind than they so often should.