Silicon Fusion >> News >> Boktai lights the way (ECTS 2003)

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29th August 2003:
Boktai lights the way (ECTS 2003)
The game with the light gimmick gets some light shed on it. Get it? Oh well...
Posted by Chris Barnett - Game Boy Advance - UK and Europe

Unless you have not been following video games for very long, you should recognise the name Hideo Kojima, for he is one of the industry's greatest innovators. Having created all of the intelligent touches throughout the Metal Gear series of games, he is a household name amongst gamers. So it should seem fitting that he himself got the honour of unveiling details of Konami's latest innovation, Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand.

The game has been given quite a lot of attention of a GameBoy Advance game, not due to it's developer's fame but due to the fact that it has a light sensitive cartridge. Before this ECTS all that was known was that real sunlight was required to kill enemies, but now Kojima has spoken we can tell you all sorts about how light is utilised throughout the game.

The player takes the role of Django, a young hero who wants to free his village from vampires. Taking the form of an isometric exploration/action game, the player must guide Django into the catacombs (yes catacombs, that word that you learnt from playing the Castlevania games, also made by Konami, though not Kojima) of several castles. The job is to get the vampires within the castles into the light somehow in order to kill them (as in all the vampire stories that you may have read/seen/plagerised).

Many rooms within the castles will have windows in them, through which light can be introduced. So it is a case of learning where the light spots are and taking the vampires into the beams. But the light must be real light, so the player must be in direct sunlight at the time when the vampire is grabbed in order for there to be a beam of light at all.

To add strategy to the game, certain weapons can be found that must use light in order to function. But the light they use must be stored in coffins first. And to complicate matters, these coffins are those of guardian vampires that must be killed. An example of a boss battle discussed by Kojima went as follows:
The player must locate the guardian vampire's coffin. They must then store enough sunlight to power any of the weapons that they may have in their inventory in order to prepare for the battle with the guardian vampire. Once located, this vampire must then be forced (using any weapons charged up) into it's coffin. When the coffin is loaded it can be dragged outside into the sunlight where it can be opened and the contents can be exposed to not only the sunlight, but also to a weapon that intensifies the sun's beams (that must be found) in order to destroy the guardian once and for all.

This is perhaps the most innovative game we have seen since we played drinking games with students and should at least prove appealing just for the light sensitive gameplay. Let's just hope that the game is as good as it is innovative and that poor weather will not hinder progress too much (which may seem like a joke, but it could prove a serious challenge when the sun decides not to come out from behind ugly smog clouds for days on end).

Due for release early in 2004 so there is plenty of time to learn how to control the weather using white magic in the meantime.

All of the screens below were taken from the display at the ECTS, by the way.

Chris Barnett

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Related Games:

Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand
for Game Boy Advance

Screenshots