For humanity’s last remaining effort, Mother Earth represents the hope and possibilities in One Last Breath.
Ever since 2.5D games were able to execute the idea of the forced perspective and narrative-driven games, the idea always floated in the void, waiting to be returned again. One of the biggest titles to bring the 2.5D story games to the mainstream was the beloved title called Inside. Inside had its roots in another game by the name of Limbo, where a small child was jumping through paths and solving puzzles to escape from enemies in a world of black, white, and shades of gray.
Inside brought depth into Limbo by giving more perspective to its narrative. Since it was 2.5D, the objects could be put closer to the camera to give more detail about the game and talk about its environment. This was, now to think of it, quite a long time ago.
I remember the times when Limbo was more of an advanced Flash Player game and Inside was the true successor to 2D platformer puzzle games, of course since then the 2D genre split into many subgenres for people to enjoy. And now we have One Last Breath, a title that is clearly inspired by Inside in both gameplay and narrative aspects.
One Last Breath tells us the story of Gaia, the holy spirit in human-like form, who was dropped down onto Mother Earth from a terrible accident caused by humans. We all know the mumbo jumbo about how humankind is the worst presenter and there aren’t monsters but us. But in all seriousness, One Last Breath shows us what to expect if we just happen to lose all our faith in ourselves and ditch what we already have.
Since it is Gaia on the run to save us, it is obvious that the main idea is about pollution, global warming, and how humankind treats their sources in a bad way. The game takes place in post-apocalyptic Brazil- at least that’s what I guess since I saw Christ the Redeemer statue in the background- and its surrounding areas.
There are a few corporations who both enforced their take on renewable energy and cleaner water, but at the same time, nuclear wastes and laboratories that tested animals can appear too.
These environments give the eerie feeling of how humankind was terrible at managing their home planet despite their goodwill to bring a safer solution to the table. Considering there are barely any humans in the game, it is okay to assume they have vanished after a catastrophic incident.
There are, however, some enemies that you must avoid while controlling Gaia though. Said enemies resemble human beings, but at the same time, they look quite distant from what a human would evolve into.
One gripe I had with all of these narrative-driven games is the non-clear objectives they give during the gameplay. Everything has to be too vague for the player to understand because that is how some of the artsy games are meant to be played.
One Last Breath is a showcase of what humans are, in fact, what they are currently doing, and it is an effort to showcase it to the masses. However, without a clear intent or direction, it is up to the player’s mind to decide what to do in the end. Since One Last Breath doesn’t provide that many open-ended options, it’s either one or two ways to go anyway.
The gameplay, as I stated earlier, is similar to ones found in Limbo or- to a farther stretch, Klonoa, where you can move the main character in different directions but cannot move them closer or away from the camera.
The characters walk in a straight line and it is mostly us trying to appreciate the effort that was put into environmental storytelling. The same procedure can be seen in One Last Breath, where we are simply controlling Gaia to move either left or right, with some obstacles on the way for good measure.
We cannot qualify One Last Breath to be a walking simulator due to the evenly placed puzzles and chase sequences the game has. We are not only trying to understand what has happened on earth but at the same time, there are places where we have to think and connect dots in order to proceed and continue our adventure.
Chance sequences, on the other hand, feel a bit weak, unfortunately. The chases, basically known as thrilling sequences, are also in One Last Breath, but it is mostly without a clear direction on what should we do, so it had me always dying once or twice before finally finding out the solution.
One Last Breath is best played with a controller, and the control scheme only consists of a few buttons, such as jump, crouch, use, and movement with the analog stick. Objects that are grabbable are marked with red tape so it makes it easy to find out what is an actual set piece or object to be interacted with, though this also took some time for me to realize as well.
The game throws puzzles for you to solve during the slow moments to chill out and forget about what to worry about for a while. The problem is that the puzzles are quite easy to solve, even if you have no clue what to do, it would take less than five minutes to understand the steps you need to take to proceed.
What I truly did not understand is whether One Last Breath is trying to convince players to try out extra ways to go through puzzles or not, as you can get sidetracked while solving a puzzle and find another way out, and then it leads to another way for you to continue.
It is a subtle way to show players that there are multiple paths to follow through, but its inclusion during the solving phase kind of kills the mood as you can basically feel like you might have moved in the wrong direction and missed on a bigger plot point.
I have bragged about the environmental storytelling of this game, but can we interact with it, at all? Well, I am here to say that you can pet the animals you can come across within your path, our character is the creation of Mother Earth, therefore she has the right to do so, right?
I know it is a pet peeve of lots of people and has become a meme in recent times, but still, you can indeed pet the fox or the deer, which would grant a seal of approval in lots of people’s books.
Other interactive environments usually consist of debris, car wrecks, and doors that we can go through, and they usually end up alerting the enemies, so be aware before committing a jump or slide.
There are parts of the One Last Breath where you have to use your abilities as Gaia to move roots that are overgrown on the surface of the earth over time. The roots can help you reach places, open or close doors or lift objects for Gaia to climb on. While running around casually, you might find green glowing plants, pressing the use key grants you to move roots as you’d prefer, as sometimes both removing or pushing roots might let you solve the puzzle.
Along with green flowers, there are green orbs that allow Gaia to grab using her vine, sort of like using a grappling hook and swinging from one side to another. I’d say the timings are forgiving but pressing the use late key a millisecond late from the keyframe leads to death no matter what.
Now that the gameplay and the narrative are covered, I can easily talk about its graphics and sound design in a brief way. The whole forced perspective is neat, giving players a different look at both puzzles and the environment in a detailed way.
The color scheme usually consists of nothing but black and white, but occasionally, important bits like buttons and draggable items are covered in flash colors, giving some clue to players on what to do. Since our character represents the earth, we can find lots of green in places where hope shines through, but in infested parts of the facilities and cities, red gets to be the dominant color.
Sound design isn’t out there much, you can still hear faint ambiance sounds, such as the empty factories, forgotten highways, and windy rooftops of the city. Music does justice by giving heated moments a spike of rush, or calming vibes during a puzzle-solving session.
One Last Breath is one of the titles that I was happy to see in 2024 because the whole 2.5D forced perspective games from the past are still relevant thanks to people’s interest in making them. Nowadays, most 2D games are “metroidvanias” that rely on the skill of the players and put very little emphasis on the story.
Thanks to One Last Breath’s interest in reviving this sort-of-forgotten subgenre, it was a refresher, at least for me. That doesn’t totally mean One Last Breath was a bit tedious to go to due to the simple puzzles, but hey, it was at least trying to put out an important message.
