Bruma (Spanish for haze) is a lovely platformer with a unique art style about a cat named Luna who must seek out an old lady’s lost memories.  According to the game’s Steam page and Kickstarter, you will explore an abandoned city submerged in a mysterious mist, where you can use traps or stealth to deal with enemies.  Along the way, you’ll be solving puzzles and can, apparently, even travel to the past.

The demo took me 35 minutes to complete, and during that time, I didn’t encounter much in the way of puzzles.  Mainly, you just platform, which includes the usual jumping, plus Luna has the ability to climb up walls with vines.  A few times I needed to activate platforms that would rise for a limited time, and at one point, you must sneak through the grass and pounce on birds.  Along the way, I managed to uncover a handful of memories in the form of flowers and whatnot.

While it appears some issues with the demo have been patched, I did encounter a few more issues during my playthrough.  First off, the part where you hide from the laser was very laggy.  I don’t know if this was an issue with the game or my laptop, though the rest of the game ran fine.  The bigger issue, however, was the fact that I was unable to even complete the demo due to a glitch.  Towards the end, you ride this little elevator up, and, according to someone else’s video, there should be a rat.  You do something with this rat to proceed, but for me, the rat wasn’t there, meaning I was stuck.  I couldn’t even backtrack because the elevator was out of power, and when I tried to simply jump to the lower area, the cat started floating in the bottom left corner of the screen, forcing me to restart the scene.  (Normally, a game would automatically fade to black and reset your character back to solid ground.)

Bruma certainly sounds intriguing, but the main appeal comes from what I’ve heard or seen outside of the demo.  I already like any game where I get to play as a cat, and the whole idea of exploring an abandoned city and, presumably, discovering the cause of the mist sounds interesting to me.  (I’m already wondering if the mist could be a metaphor for the old lady losing her memories due to old age.  I know I’ve had “brain fog” on occasion!)  Most of all, I’m intrigued to learn more about the old lady and her relationship with Luna as more memories are uncovered.

The problem is…the demo is a bit rough around the edges (I understand the game’s not even done yet, but I can only judge what I’ve actually played), and what gameplay we got wasn’t terribly compelling.  While the concept may be intriguing, the demo alone isn’t enough to get me interested.  Hopefully once the game is finished, they’ll release a more polished demo that will really make this game shine.  If you’re interested, you can play the Bruma demo for yourself on Steam.