Soon Shine

Game Info

A couple months ago Dahku Creations released their first title Chubbins for the Wii U eShop and we here at GameGravy met the title with a favorable score.  Chubbins was a tough as nails platformer that had you bouncing an overweight bunny through a treacherous course of death. Soon Shine, Dahku Creations’ second offering is a completely different affair.

In Soon Shine, there is no platforming, just good ol’ touch screen based arcade game. The main purpose is to tap on the spirits that are heading for your character in the middle of the screen before they reach you.  Your character is a sun mask or if you swipe over the mask, you flip it over to a moon mask.  If the spirits reach your mask, they will start draining your life meter.  Destroying the spirits is as easy as tapping them with your finger or stylus on the GamePad. Spirits with round white eyes will move when the Sun is displayed and spirits with black eyes will move when the Moon is displayed.  Then there are angry looking spirits that just don’t give a crap and will attack you know matter day or night!  Also, you can only dispose of the spirits when they are moving, they are protected when sitting still.

There are three different modes that you will be able to play while trying to establish that high score.  The first mode, “Standard” mode, will allow you to use power ups such as a screen clearer or health bonuses that are available for purchase from the Token store.  Tokens are earned by playing the game and wrecking some havoc.  The second mode, “Purists” mode, disallows the use of any of the said power-ups.  The final mode, “Timed” mode, gives you three minutes to achieve the highest score possible.  One of my issues with Soon Shine is that it takes so long for the difficulty ramp up that the first 3 to 5 minutes of the game are slow and monotonous, after the difficulty ramps up though I had a lot of fun and it was challenging.  Another issue I had with the controls were that swiping over the sun or moon to switch to day or night didn’t work flawlessly 100% of the time.  If they could map the switch to the L button or if you could tap the sun, I think that the “flip” would be more precise.

Graphically, being a simplistic arcade type of game, there isn’t too much going on.  The backgrounds look really nice in HD (I love some of the unlockable ones in the Token store) and there is not slow down even when there are tons of spirits trying to take you down.  The soundtrack has a nice smoothing sound and is fitting for this sort of game.  There are also some great tracks that can be unlocked in the Token store, which is a great way to add replay value to the title.

The Recommendation

If you are looking for an easier arcade game that is simple in terms of controls and concept, Soon Shine is for you.  Those familiar with touch screen mechanics from tablet or cell phone games will feel right at home with tapping out hordes of spirits.  The day/night switching to rid of certain spirits is an added challenge that keeps you engaged and consistently thinking.  I had a few minor gripes that I expressed earlier in the review but nothing game breaking and this is a good follow up game for Dahku Creations.