Rumbral is billed as a dark puzzle platformer set in a desolate world, where it seems all living things have disappeared due to some kind of disaster. It is a game that wears some if its inspirations openly – namely Limbo, Inside, and a bit of Little Nightmares sprinkled in – but it is also a game that ends way too quickly, not letting the atmosphere it crafts reach a true peak that really pays off.
Rumbral does have a gameplay mechanic that separates it from other games similar to it, and that is its reality shift. Some puzzles require you to fall through puddles to the Magenta world which appears to be the world prior to the collapse. Shifting between the true world and the Magenta world reveals changes such as machines being operational, doors not being blocked, and boxes being in the right places.
A lot of Rumbral’s puzzles need you to push boxes to the right places to either create platforms to jump from, or to add weight to pressure plates. Other puzzles include pulling switches in the correct order and sneaking from an enemy at the right time. There isn’t much variety beyond this and the ones that do exist are pretty easy to figure out.
Rumbral sets a tone of mystery, and you do get pulled in trying to figure out what happened to the world, but with the game’s total runtime of just around an hour, there is not enough time to build out this story. You are in a world that has suffered some kind of catastrophe, there is a mysterious liquid, and your character, but Rumbral does not really tie all of this together and create a story that sticks the landing. Yes, there are collectables through the short stages which give a bit more information, but aside from that there is nothing really telling you what is going on. And then it just ends like that.
Rumbral can feel a bit sluggish in its movement. It is a hindrance in a specific level with a chase sequence where jumps have to be timed precisely, but you notice jumps can be floaty which led to quite a few deaths. If the movement felt less slow then Rumbral would be a better experience.
