Lamplight City - detective adventure set in an alternate steampunk-ish "Victorian" past

[Boleskine]

Interview with Francisco starts at 16:27



https://techraptor.net/content/a-venture-into-the-darkened-alleys-of-lamplight-city

A Venture Into the Darkened Alleys of Lamplight City
Courtney Ehrenhofler / August 22, 2018 at 11:00 AM / Gaming, Gaming Previews

Lamplight City is a steampunk-styled detective story from Shardlight and A Golden Wake developer Francisco Gonzalez of Grundislav Games. With five cases and an overarching mystery to solve, this preview goes over the opening story and the first case. With access to all that, I was able to get a real flavor of what’s to come.

The game opens with you, as Miles Fordham, investigating his last case working with Bill Leger, his best friend, and partner on the police force. Why is it their last case? Well, Bill promptly kicks the bucket during a scuffle with the criminal perpetrator. This section of the game acts much like a tutorial. It gives you a feel for both the city of New Bretagne and for the game’s mechanics. The tutorial abruptly ends with the death of Bill, only to have Miles wake up several months later, jobless and listless, with a ghost in his head.

Interrogating a suspect’s mum is always fun

Retaining Bill as a character and as a motivation for Miles was actually my favorite element of the gameplay. It gives Miles a more immediate reason to pursue the suspect for Bill’s murder – to get Bill’s incessant jabbering out of his head – and also allows their relationship to continue, letting the player see Miles’ emotional motivation in his hunt. Bill is also, quite frankly, hilarious. He is the one who makes comments on what you observe in your environment, giving a nice twist to the usual adventure game practice of just describing random things you find. The two of them balance each other out well. Bill is the more intuitive and people-minded one while Miles is the sharp-witted observer who isn’t afraid of asking hard questions.

The case included in the preview has you investigating the attempted murder of a high-society woman who woke up from apparent death during her funeral. Amusing circumstance aside, the game very quickly takes a dark turn. Blackmail, torture, multiple murder, affairs and Dorian Grey-esque indulgences run rampant from start to finish. This gives the game a rather gloomy tone that matches well with the background feel of the city of New Bretagne.

Very useful desk drawers they are too

With so many crimes, there are plenty of suspects and motives being tossed around, which in theory should make the case that much more difficult to solve. After all, the game touts its central mechanic of being able to drop cases and leave them unsolved or solve them incorrectly. You can progress with the story regardless, albeit in a different and not necessarily satisfactory, way. One would think that making the cases more difficult would be to encourage players to use this mechanic. Maybe it’s because it’s the first case, but so far it was easier than most mystery games I’ve played.

One element of Lamplight City that breaks from the norm is the lack of an inventory. While you can still pick up and use items, the game automatically uses whatever object is right for the situation. This sounds great at first, but I found myself forgetting what I had in my possession at any given time and there was no way to check. If I stop playing for the night, I’m out of luck when I try to pick it up again. On the other hand, it was nice not having to fiddle around and figure out how to use esoteric things like a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.

Our next murder suspect is… Poison Ivy!

The setting of the titular Lamplight City, New Bretagne, has an atmosphere that belies its inspirational roots in Dickens and Poe. The sound design is wonderfully solemn and the backgrounds, as usual for a Gonzalez game, are stunningly gorgeous and lovingly detailed. The characters themselves however are… not. They just don’t live up to the traditional level of excellence and detail that Gonzalez is known for. During extended dialogue sequences, these half-moving character portraits are more creepy than anything else. I, personally, don’t trust people whose lips are literally the only thing that moves when they talk. It looks like someone’s head got flash frozen and only the part below the nose thawed out.

All in all, Grundislav Games’ Lamplight City is so far a veritable Quality Street assortment of components. That is, it’s all chocolate, but not everyone is going to like the coffee one or that weird Brazilian Hazelnut one. It’s a solid start to the game in any case. Time will tell if the full game manages to capitalize on its unique mechanics and stand out from the crowd.

Our Lamplight City preview was conducted on PC via Steam with a code provided by the publisher. The game is scheduled for release on September 13th.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Boleskine]

https://af.gog.com/news/coming_soon_lamplight_city?as=1649904300

Coming Soon: Lamplight City
an hour ago

"And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor…"

Lamplight City is coming soon, DRM-free to GOG.com.

Haunted by the spirit of his dead partner in a city that's smothering its disenfranchised with promises of technological advancement, P.I. Miles Fordham presses on, following false leads or blind instinct through five murder cases that will challenge his presence of mind.

Missed a clue? It happens. Got sidetracked by a crafty witness? The story will go on, twisting itself around the state of your investigation. What you can't miss, are the overt Gabriel Knight vibes and Edgar Allan Poe ambiance that envelop this Victorian-escue mystery like an alluring mist.

Maybe DaveGilbert can convince Francisco to join the Codex.

 

[Outlander]

Guys it's out:

 

[HoboForEternity]

How is it?

 

[MRY]

It's getting glowing (incandescent?) reviews.

9.5: https://techraptor.net/content/lamplight-city-review
90%: https://ragequit.gr/reviews/item/lamplight-city/
4.5/5: http://monstervine.com/2018/09/lamplight-city-review-case-closed/
8: https://www.jumpdashroll.com/article/lamplight-city
9: https://www.indiegamewebsite.com/2018/09/13/lamplight-city-review/


Only negative one is from GameSpot: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/lamplight-city-review-cold-case/1900-6416987/
A kind of mixed one from a site I've not heard of before: https://www.gtogg.com/News/en/Lamplight_City_A_detective_I_was_meant_to_be_Review/

It's puzzle- and inventory-free, though, which I guess is now how these things go.

 

[evdk]

It's puzzle- and inventory-free, though, which I guess is now how these things go.

That sounds kinda off putting, but then again I enjoyed Unavowed too, dohoho.

 

[MRY]

I've tried to avoid too much in the way of spoilers, but what I gather is that (in theory) it's about navigating dialogue, gathering clues, and then making the right accusation -- you don't have obstacles, just judgment calls. I can see the appeal of such a game, though I'm not sure it's within the core definition of an adventure game.

 

[V_K]

TBH I'm more concerned by that Gamescom review that claims that the cases are a no-brainer to solve properly.

 

[Boleskine]

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/lamplight-city/

Lamplight City
Posted by Jonathan Kaharl on September 13, 2018

Just a scant few months after Dave Gilbert released Unavowed, arguably one of Wadjet Eye’s best games in their growing history, studio contributor Francisco González released his own title under his own studio, Grundislav Games. Keep in mind he’s one of the major creative leads behind Shardlight, arguably Wadjet Eye’s best game alongside Technobabylon, not to mention the underappreciated A Golden Wake. González has been living under the collective shadows of Wadjet Eye and artist friend Ben Chandler for awhile now, but Lamplight City is definitely going to change all of that. With this game, González finally cements his own personal styles in art and game design, and the end result is a refreshing new point and click that doesn’t so much expand on what the genre can do as completely re-frame it through the influences of detective games.

You play as Miles Fordham, one of the most decorated detectives on the force in a steampunk 1840s American New England city New Bretagne. He and his partner Bill are out to handle a small time robbery case at a flower shop in the slum area of Cholmondeley (aka “The Chum”), but things end up going bad as Bill dies during a confrontation with the perp (either by being pushed off a roof by the perp or accidentally shot by Miles). A month passes as we find Miles a mess, addicted to soporific and hearing Bill in his head, begging him to go find the flower shop burglar and get some closure for the both of them. From here, the game follows Miles as he solves cases under the nose of the police department and struggle with new addictions to drown out Bill’s voice, straining his marriage, the ultimate outcome depending on your choices and your ability to solve cases.

Lamplight City shares a lot of structure with A Golden Wake, both following incredibly talented men with crippling personal problems and their struggles with dealing with them. The plot is also structured in a similar manner, showing us a day in the life and cutting ahead a significant amount of time, though it feels more natural here through the case structure. Miles isn’t doing much in between jumps other than languishing, the cases acting as his moments of actions and self-definition. It helps that the these scenarios have the player more personally involved by actively solving mysteries instead of experiencing a real world history tour.

Miles central struggle manages to be a powerful to boot, a rare exploration in very real emotional turmoil games often don’t know how to grapple with. Where Dave Gilbert excels at character creating characters with personality and life you want to follow, González manages to create a cast of simple characters that let the central lead bounce off of them to explore their layered and flawed self. It’s a classical literature character arc mixed into familiar pulp and genre writing, like smashing together old stage plays with a detective serial. The addiction theme is even explored in a clever mechanical way, as often some of the choices you get aren’t really choices but a tone shift for a bad choice Miles has already made without your judgment. It inspires frustration in a way that mirrors what it’s like dealing with real people with addictions, a neat narrative trick that removes you from Miles perspective at the right moments for narrative impact.

What sets Lamplight City apart from other point and clicks is how it approaches the investigation set-up. Where Unavowed used an RPG set-up to explore puzzle design through your party members, this game takes a more traditional angle and focuses more heavily on being a detective than we usually see from point and clicks that share the mystery theme. The big change here is that you can actually screw up cases, which can have radical impact on your play-through in unexpected ways. However, solving cases perfectly can unlock new paths or shortcuts in later cases, as the effects of your actions spread throughout the city. On top of this, your deductions end up having rippling impact on Miles’ personal life, his marriage, friendships, and profession career, tied together and all threatening to unravel from his personal weaknesses. It doesn’t create as much replay value as Unavowed, but this does make the gameplay and narrative segments with Miles fit together better. Your ability to observe and your problem solving skills are ultimately the deciding factor in what happens to Miles and the people involved in each of the five cases. It’s not so much a screw over for not finding a single item at the very beginning of the game to solve an ending puzzle, but showing the player’s actions impacting the protagonist and making you want to do better for his sake.

To keep the game from bloating, several systems are streamlined. The big thing is the inventory, which is non-existent. If you have an item on you, it’s solely for a quick use somewhere in the room or set of rooms that’s heavily telegraphed, with the odd exception. Puzzles mostly take place in one screen events, or they’re based around your ability to make sense of information you’ve gathered. So instead of a traditional item inventory for puzzles, you’ll mostly be looking at your case book, which keeps track of your investigation goals (even helpfully not removing goals if there’s still an event yet to trigger in an area), clues, documents, and suspects, ala L.A. Noire. You’ll be checking this a lot, as while part of the aim is to get enough to make someone a viable suspect you can pin as the perp, the main aim is to sift through everything you’ve found to make the most reasonable estimation of who the crime was committed and by who. The case ends when you decide it ends, there is no end state you reach naturally. Once you make the call, you see how things play out and hear of fallout later on.

Actually gathering information is pretty painless and even a tad addicting. Lamplight City takes the character question system of Gabriel Knight (even copying Sins of the Fathers‘ character portraits in a black void screen) and simplifies it down to necessary questions and some flavor text, no constant asking to tell me about voodoo or snakes to be found. Exploring areas for important items and information is made way easier with the clear art style, but it still requires an attentive eye for the small details that can completely flip around your perspective on a case. Some areas also disappear from the map after you’ve found everything you need to find in them, cutting out some needless backtracking if you hit a wall in your investigation. Even with all these touches, the game is the meatiest of González’s work, clocking it at roughly ten hours if you take your time to go for a perfect run. It’s also much more involving, as where getting stuck on a puzzle in a traditional point and click is just frustrating, it feels a bit invigorating here because you know there’s a logical solution there waiting to be found, you just have to connect dots you haven’t yet. In other words, you have to be a better detective, managing to capture the investigator formula better than most games in the point and click world.

This is all great, but the insane amount of polish González put in here is what really brings everything together. His artwork in previous games has been lacking a feeling of life and polish Ben Chandler has been rocking for years now, but Lamplight City finally shows us González’s real A-game. His more natural lighting and shadowing result in much more lived in areas, places that don’t feel so much like illustrations as they do photographs or film shots. The less detailed character sprites and portraits also benefit greatly from the animation on display, giving the world a pulp 1800s sci-fi feel to it when mixed with the exaggerated real style. There’s just so much attention to detail in the most unexpected places, the highlight easily being what appears to be a rotoscoped sequence where Miles pulls something out of a sewer drain. The music is less notable if satisfactory, though the credits theme is actually performed with a real choir in a cathedral, resulting in some incredible acoustics.

On paper, Lamplight City doesn’t seem like anything particularly fresh or exciting, lacking a particular hook that makes it stand out among the crowd. Actually playing it, however, reveals that the reason to check it out is for sheer masterful design and execution. There are few point and clicks this fun to just play and explore, less focused on getting to the finish line as enjoying the moments in between on the way there (not too unlike Unavowed, funny enough). It does everything either good to great, making one of the tightest, most constantly great games among modern point and click adventure game releases. Originality can go a long way, but sometimes all you need is true mastery of the craft, and that’s here in spades.

 

[MRY]

What a great review! (Though it's a little unusual that the first names are Dave and WEG, not Francisco and his studio's.) I wonder if Francisco is glad that the WEG brand is being used to promote his game, or irked that his game is getting subsumed by that brand after he and Dave parted ways.

 

[Cromwell]

How is it?

Obviously you could read the reviews that are out there but heres my first impressions (after the intro and the first case). So far the game is very easy, you just talk to everyone until you got all the information, the game then tells you which npcs you can safely ignore until you get new information. The game also informed me (two times) that I shouldnt speak about a certain topic to an NPC because that would probably make her mad. I still could do it but I got hit in the face with "better not do it" - I didnt and I think I solved the case perfectly.

The Review above talks about streamlining and quality of life features like locations vanishing when theres nothing else to do there and items that are used automatically, which could count as positive sparing you the frustration of having to click everywhere and trying everything, for me personally it also means I feel restricted in what I could do and try. I see trial and error as a important point of such games, of course I am frustrated some times but If I want that to stop and cant find a solution then I just look it up in a walkthrough. The Point is, there is never frustration for a player because techniocally he can look up the solution, but streamlining everything has the added effect that it becomes so pisseasy they also take out a certain amount of gratification (you know, the puzzlers you solve without having to resort to a walkthrough).

Since I am easily frustrated I use walkthroughs quite frequently, but since this game (and unavowed) are made to be very easy it takes away a huge amount of that great feeling when a noob like me finds the solution without help.

More Items, Puzzles, and a proper inventory would also have given the game more optins to let you fail forward. For example let me go to a locked door, find some lockpick item, try to pick the lock and get caught because I forgot to bring a book to the npc downstairs which now wasnt reading but was bored and decided to go into the bedroom for a wank. You could still tone down the difficulty if thats what you want in your game, but I think taking away mechanics just because they could be frustrating to morons is the wrong way.

As for the Cases like stated above, yes the first one was pretty brainless to solve correctly, I wont spoil anything but I dont know how it would be possible to get this one wrong. I even almost missed the wrong solution because I missed an item I had to click that would lead me to another location. But its the first case so we will see how it goes.

Something else that bugs me (but maybe will be explained properly later)

Spoiler

So it starts with someone that breaks into a flower shop, to buy flowers when nobody is there. After confronting that man he thinks it is a good idea to threaten to murder a cop over.... flowers he has already paid for? Also, you are probably the worst shot in the whole world because you shoot your own partner to death from 3 meters away? what the fuck?

 

[MRY]

Spoiler

So it starts with someone that breaks into a flower shop, to buy flowers when nobody is there. After confronting that man he thinks it is a good idea to threaten to murder a cop

Clearly, you haven't seen Zootopia! The flowers are probably a steampunk version of midnicampum holicithias.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Bought it but i dunno when will start playing. Maybe after dragon quest

 

[taxalot]

I'm a bit wary. I really didn't like Golden Wake for all its efforts.

 

[MRY]

This is shaping up to be a legitimate hit:

Quite a year for indie adventures between Hero-U, Unavowed, Lamplight, and Mage's Initiation (which I assume is launching this year?).

 

[MRY]

A more mixed review: https://opnoobs.com/reviews/adventure/lamplight-city

 

[MRY]

100% positive on Steam right now. Top review on GOG:

So good! by jenwithglasses
Lamplight City is a steam punk, detective noir themed adventure game. You play as a detective, solving crimes to pay the rent, while trying to keep out of the way of the police. The game has multiple paths and it matters how you treat the people you meet. As in all adventure games, save early, save often! I really enjoyed the music. It's the perfect accompaniment to playing the game and I ended up humming along quit a bit. I would recommend this to everybody but especially if you enjoy games with interesting choices and problems to solve in a strong story.

A glowing German review: https://www.adventurecorner.de/reviews/782/lamplight-city

63 simultaneous players and rising on Steam Charts, crushing A Golden Wake's launch (20), and closing in on Shardlight's (95) -- might surpass it this weekend.

At least for now, it seems to be soaring like a dirigible aircraft.

 

[Boleskine]

https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/35984

Lamplight City review
Written by Richard Hoover — September 14, 2018

The Good:

• Beautifully atmospheric pixel art locations with smooth animations
• Well-realized worldbuilding;
• Good variety of cases
• Effective soundscape.

The Bad:

• Lack of interactivity
• Overwritten dialogs
• Choices cut off gameplay instead of opening it up.

Decent

Scoring System - Editorial Policies
Our Verdict:
With stunning visuals, solid sound and music, and nuanced worldbuilding that many adventure games would kill for, it’s unfortunate that Lamplight City is lacking in the one area that distinguishes games over other storytelling media: interactivity.

Spoiler

In recent years we’ve seen an ever-growing shift from adventures with straightforward, linear stories to ones that try more and more to incorporate a degree of player choice. Pitched as “a detective game where it’s okay to fail,” the 2D point-and-click Lamplight City by Grundislav Games sounds like another step in this direction. Set against an atmospheric, stylishly drawn, and narratively interesting backdrop, I was keen to see how the mysteries and decision-making would play out in a game with such high production values. The result fell a bit shy of what I was expecting, since most of the time there is no choice other than to passively click through the many extended dialogs.

Lamplight City is set in the 1800s of New Bretagne, a pseudo-New Orleans of an alternate Earth history where the use of steampunk technology is on the rise. You play Miles Fordham, a disciplined and capable detective for the city’s police department during the game’s playable prologue. Your partner is Bill Leger, who is rather less disciplined and injects comments that range from small smile-inducers to downright groaners.

The two detectives have been summoned to a flower shop. Someone has been breaking in after hours and stealing flowers but leaving money behind to cover the cost. Miles and Bill are there to search the store and track down the culprit. Minor spoiler alert: the investigation does not go to plan and Bill ends up dead. Fast forward three months to the story proper: Miles is no longer on the police force and takes a nightly soporific that dulls his wits but is needed to drown out the voice of the spirit of the deceased Bill, who is haunting Miles and demanding that he track down his killer.

With Bill speaking constantly in his head, Miles is a bit worse for wear at this point. Even so, he still has some friends in the police department who want to help get him back on his feet. Chief among these is Constance Upton, the office secretary who is responsible for dispatching bulletins to the field officers. Recently a high society lady was pronounced dead, only to awaken and start banging on her coffin in the middle of her funeral. While the police have a suspect in custody, Upton believes it’s the wrong person. She meets Miles at the local coffee shop to convince him to look into the case, the first of five that Miles and Bill experience throughout the game.

Between cases, Miles usually goes home to have a chat with Bill – or it’s more appropriate to say Bill has a chat with Miles, as Miles just wants Bill to be quiet. During these interludes, Bill is rather one-track-minded, demanding that former partner stop sedating himself and get on with finding the killer. Bill’s intrusions into the protagonist’s thoughts help you sympathize more with what Miles has been going through, although the conflict between the two men never really comes to a head at any point. Things get even more complicated for Miles because he’s been keeping Bill’s otherworldly existence secret from his wife Addie, putting even more strain on their relationship. It’s an interesting thread although not the main focus of the story, which is squarely on the different mysteries presented.

During each case you’ll travel to a wide variety of locations, with more being added in later investigations. Each place of interest typically consists of one or two scenes, with other areas accessible via a map of the city. There is quite an impressive array of locales, from the opulent houses of society’s upper crust to the oppressive streets of Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley), one of the lower class neighbourhoods, so you’ll get to see the city’s many socio-economic strata. It’s not all homes and offices, however, as you’ll also stop by manufacturing plants, the cemetery, a bridge construction site, and a church, among other assorted destinations.

Every location is impressively detailed in retro-styled pixel art. Homes have intricate carpets and fancy wallpapering, while exterior locations give glimpses of the cityscape in the background. These scenes aren’t just pleasing to look at; they’re well designed and laid out in such a way as to draw the eye to the important hotspots in each one. Just to be sure, the mouse pointer changes when over an area that Miles can comment on or interact with.

Characters are also nicely rendered, ranging in attire from shabby to splendid as befits each person’s social station. Their movements are fluid and it’s nice to see that attention was paid even to having Miles open doors to walk through them rather than the common technique of cheaply fading to black. Of course, it’s not all about doors, as Miles will fish around in storm drains for evidence, climb through windows, and even get into a brief bout of fisticuffs (don’t worry, it’s just a cutscene, no action sequences here).

Music also adds to the atmosphere of Lamplight City, sounding suitably olde-worlde classical with hints of steampunk influences thrown in. The instrumental score never dominates nor distracts, but it does help to heighten the mood in any given scene. The sense of place is completed with appropriate sound effects, whether it’s the soft tread of Miles’s footsteps, the murmur of distant crowds outside, or the hiss of various steam tech devices.

While there are a lot of places to visit, the focus is on meeting with all the different people that inhabit them. There are quite a few characters encountered here and they’re all voiced to quite a high standard, although the same actors have been reused a number of times, which is most noticeable for a handful of female roles. Even so, the actors deliver solid performances – which is good, because they’ve got so much to say.

The bulk of the game’s twelve hours of play time is spent talking to people. This is mostly done through lengthy dialog trees modeled on the ones used in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. During these conversations, animated portraits of Miles and whoever he’s talking to are displayed against a black background, with a list of topics shown between them. Each character is beautifully detailed and has been fully lip-synched with their lines of dialog. It’s an impressive amount of effort, and crucial given that these exchanges are what you’ll spend almost all of your time doing.

Unfortunately, it’s during these interviews that the game hits a snag due to their sheer volume. It’s quite common to have at least seven or eight different topics to grind through, with each individual subject tending to go on at some length. The goal is to find the topics that reveal leads to other characters to talk to next. However, as there’s no real way to gauge which line of questioning might result in such leads, the default approach for most people will be to simply go through all the trees picking each option in turn. It’s the dialog equivalent of trying everything on everything, with the effect of feeling more like you’re watching an extended cutscene that you periodically have to unpause. No matter how detailed the portraits, you are, at the end of the day, left looking at nothing more than two talking heads. It makes for a very passive playing experience, even by adventure game standards.

Occasionally during your investigations, you do get to break away from just going through another dialog tree. Sometimes you’ll get to examine a crime scene, which requires finding key hotspots. Other times you’ll get to do more immediately interactive tasks, like figuring out how to open a locked window from outside, or analyzing different chemical compositions in the police lab. Nowhere will you find yourself selecting items for use, as Lamplight City doesn’t have an inventory. Every now and then Miles will be able to pick something up, but he will always use it automatically in the correct place when appropriate. None of the special hands-on activities are all that tricky or complex, but at least they have the novelty of giving you something to actually do. There are only a few of them sprinkled throughout, and more would have been quite welcome to help break up all the talking.

During any given investigation, you will typically uncover multiple suspects that could be accused of the crime. Once you’ve found at least one such suspect, you can go back to whoever asked you to look into a case – usually Constance – to solve it. Here is where Lamplight City lives up to its billing of allowing you to fail, as the actual solutions for the most part aren’t nearly as simple as they first appear. You’ll need to make sure to keep digging, which essentially means talking to everyone until you run out of topics to discuss in order to discover all possible culprits. It’s then up to you to choose which one to accuse. Don’t worry about accidentally getting a case wrong, though. If you’ve fully investigated everything, it’s always clearly spelled out who the real criminal is.

You can be a jackass if you want and throw someone else under the metaphorical hansom cab if you so choose, but even then, the consequences of getting a case wrong aren’t as significant as one would expect. Mostly it amounts to a different write-up in the next day’s newspaper, though in some instances if you accuse the wrong person, certain lines of inquiry will not be open to you in subsequent cases, possibly even denying you access to key potential suspects.

There are also a few times when you can insult someone in conversation if you say the wrong thing. You are usually given a warning when you get to one of these junctures, and the choices themselves are presented as dialog options at the bottom of the screen instead of the typical topics of discussion located in the center of the screen. As with accusing the wrong person, if you offend somebody they’ll refuse to talk to you, not just in the current case but during subsequent investigations as well.

In theory, the ability to fail should offer some replayability, but in practice it’s not as simple as that here. Getting a suspect wrong or insulting somebody simply closes off parts of the game without providing any alternative path to go through. In essence, you end up playing an abbreviated version of the game. If you go into Lamplight City looking to play it multiple times, I’d suggest insulting everyone you can and choosing to accuse the wrong person in every case first time around. That way, on a subsequent replay you’ll at least have access to more content that you were denied the first time.

The cases themselves offer a good deal of variety, including murder, kidnapping, and even a serial killer. Given that multiple suspects are available in most cases, there are usually one or two twists that make the mysteries less obvious. While uncovering these, you’ll also discover quite a bit about the narratively rich world around you. You’ll learn about the politics, technology, spirituality, class-based discrimination, and assorted other social issues that help to make this fictional environment seem real. There’s a lot of worldbuilding on display here, and acting as an investigator allows you to see these aspects from a variety of different perspectives.

To help keep track of your cases, the game offers a built-in journal, accessible from a menu bar that appears when you move your mouse to the top of the screen. The journal keeps track of leads you still have to follow up on (essentially a “to do” list), suspects that you’ve amassed for possible accusation, and assorted clues and documents you’ve found along the way. It’s a nice touch, as it allows you to walk away from the game for a while and then review where you were at when you come back later.

Lamplight City has a lot going for it. It has beautiful backgrounds and fluid animations, with solid audio complementing the pixel art presentation. It also has a lot of fleshed-out worldbuilding and background information to uncover along the way. It’s a shame, then, that all this is rather tempered by the fact that the majority of gameplay consists of moving from one person to another and grinding through all of the conversation topics available. While the writing is by no means bad, there’s just so much of it, with nothing for players to do but look and listen and periodically click to advance the dialog. Sadly, this doesn’t lead to more complex mysteries with equally plausible theories in which failure is a legitimate option; instead it’s just a largely insignificant consequence of skipping through the many interrogations. Without much in the way of puzzles to pose a challenge, your enjoyment of this adventure will be directly related to how much you like listening to dialog. Love a good chinwag? This is the game for you. If not, move right along as you won’t find what you’re looking for here.

 

[Zombra]

Only had time to look at the title screen and check out the soundtrack so far. Fabulously optimistic feeling I'm about to have a really enjoyable experience. Looking forward to coming to grips with this tonight. Checking out of thread for now to avoid spoilers.

 

[MRY]

Boleskine Wow -- after they gave four stars to A Golden Wake and Shardlight, I was expecting to see something more glowing. I would think that Francisco would be getting better as a developer, so I wonder why the harsh change?

 

[MRY]

the fuck you mean no puzzles

Francisco has clarified: "The game hasn't eliminated 'puzzles,' it just doesn't feature any sort of inventory combination puzzles or ones where you have to end up clicking everything on everything." The dialogue is now the puzzle.

EDIT:
5/5 from Cliquist: http://cliqist.com/2018/09/14/lamplight-city-review-victorian-steampunk-noir/

 

[Cromwell]

the fuck you mean no puzzles

Francisco has clarified: "The game hasn't eliminated 'puzzles,' it just doesn't feature any sort of inventory combination puzzles or ones where you have to end up clicking everything on everything." The dialogue is now the puzzle.

EDIT:
5/5 from Cliquist: http://cliqist.com/2018/09/14/lamplight-city-review-victorian-steampunk-noir/

I also dont see how that needed clarification you get puzzles (even non dialog ones) as early as the first case. Reviewers should have noticed.

 

[V_K]

the fuck you mean no puzzles

Francisco has clarified: "The game hasn't eliminated 'puzzles,' it just doesn't feature any sort of inventory combination puzzles or ones where you have to end up clicking everything on everything." The dialogue is now the puzzle.

EDIT:
5/5 from Cliquist: http://cliqist.com/2018/09/14/lamplight-city-review-victorian-steampunk-noir/

I also dont see how that needed clarification you get puzzles (even non dialog ones) as early as the first case. Reviewers should have noticed.

Did difficulty improve past the first case?

 

[Zombra]

So far I like this a lot but there's one thing driving me CRAZY with the visuals.

Spoiler

Are you sure? You might not notice otherwise but if you read this you won't be able to unsee it.

Spoiler

OK. When characters are talking, the closeup dialogue screens, their heads stay still but their teeth move. Your upper teeth should not move unless your whole skull is moving. Everyone looks like they have white-skinned snakes writhing in their mouths.