Captivating. That’s probably the best way to describe Lumino City, and before it becomes bogged down in mechanics and direction and problems, it has you drawn in and breathless. The hand-crafted, stop motion animation aesthetic has you sworn from the very first second; it’s a true, genuine labour of love as much as any can be. There’s a real art to it – and not in a ‘videogames are art’ kind of way, but in that it is driven by a love of what it is, rather than what it should be.
That ‘is’, however, is a fairly typical point and click puzzle game, along the lines of Machinarium rather than Broken Sword. There is a narrative underpinning everything, but essentially you’ll be navigating a series of rooms each with a problem to solve before moving on. There’s a tactility to everything, too, made all the more pleasing thanks to its papercraft style. There’s less to do with finding objects and using them in other places – though there is some of that – and instead about spinning pagodas, writing morse code with lighthouses or operating cranes to plug holes. There’s a great amount of variety to the puzzles you’ll encounter as well, and their immediacy in the gorgeous landscape – the folded structure that is Lumino City – makes everything feel like a joy to interact with.
Except, that is, with some fairly irritating systems, which do sadly hold the game back. While the stop motion visuals make it a treat to watch – especially with the panning cameras and heavy use of depth of field – it has made for a fairly awkward means of navigating the admittedly fantastic backgrounds. There are only a handful of core ‘spots’ player character Lumi can situate herself in, and very little in between. Part and parcel of the way the game is presented, of course, but it means one wrong move and you’ll need to sit through an unstoppable animation, made doubly irritating in knowing that this wasn’t what you wanted to do.
While finding the necessary object to click on has long been a difficult bit of tedium to balance with this sort of game, Lumino City suffers greatly because of it. The criticism lying not in the having to find items, though, but instead the arduousness of having to move.
It really is a core problem when a game as delicious as this makes watching a fruitless and – often – painful task. It’s not enough to quite stop Lumino City from being worth your time, to be honest, and it is still worth experiencing all the same – if not for the game, then to experience the art of it. Meta-gamers might be frustrated as the tiresome task of getting from one section to the next becomes increasingly irritating, but the puzzles will have you thinking and the art style will have you hooked. Sometimes, that’s all it needs.
