Dark Into Light
- Brand
- Nickelodeon
- Year
- 2013
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Monks
Objective
Nickelodeon needed a way to hold The Legend of Korra's audience between weekly episodes of Book Two: Spirits and route TV viewers to its own digital properties rather than letting the gap go to competitors. Launching the game days before the season premiere and tying new content to the broadcast let a week of anticipation turn into a returning digital habit.
Solution
The player opens a map of the Avatar world and picks up Korra's story where the latest aired episode left off. Each stage is a side-scrolling, parallax-animated level built from a location out of the show; running through it, the player has Korra bend at incoming dark spirits or jump over them, and one stage swaps her for Bolin in his Nuktuk costume. Along the way the player collects tokens that buy upgrades and unlock new moves, working Korra up toward a boss encounter with Unalaq. A session ends when the current chapter's stage is cleared, leaving the map locked until the next episode airs and unlocks the following chapter; a companion trivia quiz about that episode, played on mobile, hands out codes that open secret bonus missions back in the browser version.
- 1
The player reaches the game from Nickelodeon's own properties — the Nick.com Korra hub, the m.nick.com/games mobile hub, or the Nick App — and starts it free in the browser with no install. On first launch only the tutorial and Chapter One are open, teaching the basic run-and-bend controls before anything else unlocks.
- 2
A map of the Avatar world lays out where the coming quests sit — three in the Southern Water Tribe, one at the Eastern Air Temple, two in the southern Earth Kingdom, two in the north-east and two near Republic City — most of them still locked.
- 3
Picking a quest drops the player into a side-scrolling stage built from the show's scenery, running as Korra through animated parallax environments and either bending at dark spirits and enemies or jumping over them and other obstacles.
- 4
Along the way the player collects tokens and power-ups that pay for upgrades, and clearing missions levels Korra up with new moves — Wall Jump, Double Jump, Air Dash — that make her faster and tougher and open access to parts of later stages.
- 5
The player can also unlock the Avatar State, a special ability that makes Korra's eyes glow and turns her briefly unstoppable.
- 6
Story stages follow the season's own chapters, with named quests such as Rebel Spirits and The Southern Lights playing out across Southern Water Tribe locations, including a stage set in its prison.
- 7
Clearing the Civil Wars quest unlocks a stage set on the film set of The Adventures of Nuktuk: Hero of the South, played not as Korra but as Bolin in his Nuktuk costume.
- 8
The stages build toward boss battles where the player draws on the power-ups and special moves collected so far to fight the season's antagonist, Unalaq.
- 9
A new chapter is added each week to match the Book Two episode that just aired. On mobile the player can also read profiles of newly introduced characters and answer five-question trivia tied to each episode; a perfect score yields a code that unlocks a secret mission in the web version, and overall progress unlocks exclusive images from Book Two: Spirits.
