Lumino City is a point and click adventure from State of Play, which combines digital design with physical design. The developers of Lumino City physically built the game world out of paper and tiny lights, and then created a video game out of this little paper city. And, the results are beautiful. I found the whole game to be a work of art. As an added bonus for me, I got to play the game on my retina screen, something that doesn’t happen often because most games either aren’t on the Mac or don’t work well on the Mac. Lumino City looks so crisp on the retina screen, but I bet it’ll look great on most screens.
The build process took 3 years and looks incredibly detailed. I love the idea of blending the physical and the digital. As a LEGO fan, I can really appreciate the intricate design. You can see a bit of the process here. I couldn’t help but think about how cool it would be if someone did this with a LEGO game. I imagine it would take forever, even with bricks, but after I played Lumino City for awhile, I switched to LEGO Batman 3, and while, that looks good too, the idea of blending the physical and the digital seems like such an obvious idea for LEGO. Maybe someone more creative than me will get that started.
The game picks up where their previous game Lume left off. I haven’t played Lume, but from what I understand, was also built using physical materials. As far as game play goes, Lumino City is pretty much a standard point and click game, but the development of the game was what drew me in originally. The premise of the game involves a young girl who is looking for her missing grandfather. Like most point and click games, she interacts with other characters and solves puzzles along the way. I did find the puzzles to be all over the place difficulty wise: some seemed way too easy, while others left me scratching my head with no idea where to even begin. She does have a handbook to help solve puzzles (although it’s also really long), so I haven’t gotten stuck yet. So far I have found the game, mostly, easy to move through. The narrative seems interesting so far, and the dialogue is just so well done and humorous. The developers also did an excellent job with the soundtrack. I found it fit perfectly with the environment and mood of the game. My favorite part of the whole game though (besides the fantastic physical design) is the way the girl blinks at me when she is waiting for me to make a decision. For some reason, I just thought that was the cutest thing.
If you are into narrative and point and click games, I would definitely recommend Lumino City. If you aren’t that into narrative or point and click games, you might want to pick it up anyway and enjoy the well-done aesthetics.
