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

Alpan

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
I just bought the game (Steam), but for some reason also got the soundtrack DLC alongside it, even though it's being sold separately.

I'm not going to report this on Steam on account of :keepmymoney:, but Grundislav might want to get that checked out if there isn't some sort of hidden promotion going on.
 
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jfrisby

Cipher
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Mar 21, 2013
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Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The protagonist and partner sort of sound like Francisco and Dave. Only a couple hours in, but impressed by the background art and amount of hotspots.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
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?

No. I finished the second case, a kidnapping. I got presented with various leads and by luck followed the right one first, the problem is its instantly clear who did it and I didnt have to follow any other lead which meant I skipped three locations this case because it was absolutely clear who the culprit was. As with case 1 the second also had a puzzle, which was solved by your wife (you could do it yourself but she would have talked you through it anyways. I wouldnt mind the easy puzzles if the detective work was more complicated for example having you follow leads that dont pan out but give you new ones to explore. Like it is right now every lead presents a road, follow the right one and your done. In the first case I found the wrong suspect by accident, in the second I havent had the chance to finger something wrongly.

The Game is definetly to easy, and while for example unavowed was also too easy it at least could hold your attention with the story, Lamplight has the problem of a story that starts somewhat intriguing and instantly loses all its steam by presenting you with cases that have nothing to do with your real target, so they should keep you interested until the story gets going, by being to easy and uninteresting they miss that mark and I could imagine players losing interest before the story can unfold properly (I know I have to fight the urge to stop but I am only at Case 3 and hope it starts getting good now).

If you make a game like a visual novel you should have a very strong story to hook players in, if that takes a while (or the story /writing is just "competent") you should have strong gameplay as in good puzzles or other mechanics. I would say both aspects are just meh at the moment, the detectiving around is nice but it could be much much better which you will notice immediately after playing a bit. Saying that there are no puzzles is a lie but on the other hand the truth would be "there may as well be none" and that doesnt help sell the game either.

Dont take that as "Its shit", the cases are not bad, but also not very interesting to me so that may depend on your taste. For now I would rate the game as "meh - demo before buying"

edit

Almost forgot here is teh issue of your partner which is almost always an insufferable cunt. I dont want to rant about politics and I dont call this a sjw game but if I have to hear one more line about evil Racists / rich people I am gonna kill somebody
 
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Tigranes

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Jan 8, 2009
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10,350
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.

I'm totally fine with this when there is a detective story the whole game revolves around. Unavowed looks horrible because you do investigate stuff, but really there's no mystery or crime or anything.

Folks who are trying this, how is it? Do you really have to use the noggin a bit for clues and accusations?
 

Cromwell

Arcane
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Feb 16, 2013
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5,443
I finished it. Fuck this game.

The story doesnt get better. In fact it has to be one of the worst endings I have ever seen, anticlimatic doesnt even come close.
You shot your partner, which would have died either way, but emphasis on you shot him from 3 meters away because you suck. Your partner way gay. I dont know why thats relevant but he will remind you a few times. A lot of people here are gay but thats ok. Other peopleare black, also ok. Your wife is black, shes also awesome. A lot of other people are assholes, either racist or rich ones, or both.

So the story goes that yopur partner is now in your head, its never stated if hes a real ghostvoice or if you are just batshit crazy. So your only superpower now is hearing the voice of an asshole which annoys the fuck out of you, and is also gay. To get rid of him (give him closure) you have to find his murderer, but that doesnt matter for 4 out of five cases because they have shit all to do with what happens in the intro, they dont even scratch what happens, they are fucking filler. In case five you hunt for the "justice killer", the same guy who bought flowers by breaking into the flower shop. Yes he was that retarded and if he bought them like a normal person he would never have been caught, at least not by you. He also has no reason for being that much of an imbecile, just buy the fucking flowers like a slightly normal person.

You realize pretty quickly why he does what he does, its because man are mean to woman. (technically one of this mean man killed his mother and another fucked up his aunt but at the end its still "JUSTICE FOR MISTREATED WOMAN!") Asshole husbandos/boyfriends are a theme of the game They turn out to be drunks, violent, cowardly, and so on. That includes you of course. The gay ones were ok though.

You finally confront the kilelr, he tries to strangle you and gets shot by your ex boss, which you have informed of the confronting, at least the game says that you have because I sure as fuck havent told him anything and havent gone to him but he still barges in "lucky for you that you told me derp!" in fact, you arent able to inform him, because I tried again and the game wont let you talk to him.

After the guy is shot the voice of your partner is gone, nobody knows why and it wont be mentioned again, nothing will be mentioned again and you wont get closure because fuck you.

The last case as described in the spoiler together with that ending destroyed any goodwill I had left for this piece of shit game. I spent hours with fucking worthless filler content to get a stupid ending that is senseless shit and left me feeling like I had chosen something wrong somewhere along the line (maybe I have). Dont buy this game. And be nice to woman and black people!
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Hit 80+ simultaneous players today, in spitting distance of Shardlight. Metacritic seems to have rejected the Adventure Gamers review, which is odd but welcome news for Lamplight City. GOG reviews have become weirdly contentious, Steam remains super positive. Seems like a pretty successful launch, especially in the supposed indiepocalypse.
 

Koschey

Arcane
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Jan 14, 2013
Messages
615
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Germany
Just finished it. Generally agree with a lot of the points Cromwell made, though ultimately it still lands in ok territory for me. Mostly because I wasn't too bothered by the cases not being tied to the flower thief. I didn't follow the marketing for the game at all (I actually heard the first time about it from the hardcoregaming101 review), all I knew about it boiled down to 'alternate history steampunk detective adventure', so I went in expecting disconnected cases.

The ending is as already stated pretty weak.
After all the buildup for the Justice Killer and Bill's constant nagging to find the perp, it just kind of peters out. You enter, get a couple (as far as I can see) meaningless dialogue choices (the killings were understandable but wrong or just wrong), perp starts choking you, chief enters and shoots perp, game over. The whole sequence takes a minute or two at most. Really unsatisfying, but I guess the typical 'mysteries are more intriguing than solutions' is in full effect here. The thing about Snelling saying Fordham informed him before coming despite me never doing so bothered me as well, a perfect opportunity for a more somber alternate ending. It's not as if the game shies away from those on principle - earlier during the last case, you have to apprehend a saboteur out of a list of several suspects for a witness to talk to you. While the game spells out the correct one (if you have a threat letter from another unrelated witness - because of course there can be only one active saboteur, despite all suspects being responsible for acts of sabotage in the past), you get the option of visiting some of the others. Doing so immediately leads to Fordham being knocked out and running out of time to solve the last case, so Snelling throws him into prison - credits roll.
I disagree on the closure though. It's there, it just feels pretty underwhelming. Bill's voice is gone, since the flower thief was caught and shot; Fordham comes to term with his guilt and Bill's death (shown by visiting his grave and leaving an offering), he starts a detective agency with Upton and Addy and everyone lived happily ever after. Could have been a bit more bittersweet for my tastes - during the game drug withdrawal was alluded to but that and Fordhams marriage problems seem to have disappeared off screen by the ending or at least aren't referenced in any way. Guess I shouldn't have taken the obviously telegraphed 'Do you want to fix your marriage? Y/N' options.

Bill really is an unsympathetic whiny cock. REALLY noticable during I think it was the kidnapping case, where literally every single hotspot comment of his in the victims' home boils down to 'herpaderp, rich people suck and are evil'. Yes, I get Bill it, only Cholmondeley residents are real humans, as soon as you lead a better life than a thug the world is better off without you, yadda yadda yadda. He constantly nags Fordham to catch the flower thief, yet impedes his ability to do so by keeping him awake with his constant yapping (about the evils of people not living in a slum no doubt) to the point of Fordham having to use sleeping drugs or booze just to drown you out. Bill threatens to drive his supposed friend to insanity if he doesn't do as he wishes, because (in my case) he took the shot the cunt was repeatedly telling him to take, despite it being night, all involved balancing on a rooftop and Bill being used as a human shield. Seriously, fuck Bill, and may he rot in hell. And is it just me, or does his portrait in the first case look an awful lot like Martin Freeman?

Regarding the difficulty, the game is piss easy. Whenever someone involved in a case gets added to the list of suspects (at which point you can wrap up the case by naming them as the criminal), Bill gives a little summation of why they're added. For the red herrings it's always like 'Well, we established motive and either possible means or opportunity, let's wrap it up and let the police do the rest' (with an undercurrent of 'I don't care for this case, as it has no relation to me. Why haven't you caught the flower thief yet?'), whereas with the true culprit you actually have some proof if not a confession. Basically the only way to miss out on the leads to the true solution is by ignoring heavily telegraphed warnings ('Do you truly want to piss off this witness for no reason? Y/N'). It would have been interesting, if for some witnesses pressing them further would have been the way to go, but nope, it's always wrong. And as soon as you have added the true culprit to the list of suspects, there is no ambiguity or doubt as to who did it. If having the players solve the cases themselves really was a goal, it would have been helpful for it to be possible to end up with multiple plausible suspects and requiring the player to study the casefiles to be able to reach a verdict. As it is, it's simply a matter of exhausting every conversation topic (except when warned not to press further), clicking every hotspot and then picking the obviously telegraphed culprit. The only real puzzles are a handful of the typical 'guess the password' fare (with one exception). If those weren't there, you could basically ignore reading anything during the cases, click everything until changes cease to happen and only then read the suspect list and pick the only suspect with actual evidence against them.

I also think the steampunk setting was underutilized and only served as windowdressing at best. With the exception of
the boiler repair puzzle and the research of DuPree's daughter,
I don't think much if anything would have changed or been lost by setting the game in a mundane alternate history (to avoid anachronisms). Substitute electricity for aethericity as the new thing, don't put a huge boiler or other device that plays no role for the story in every room, done.

Uh, the positive? Art, Sound, Atmosphere. I thought the cases were interesting and they had me guessing in the early phases, for example
I was half-convinced DuPree faked her own death to get rid of her daughter's lover permanently (seemed the right kind of cruel and underhanded considering her suspiciously saintly image) until the beatings came to light. Or until the beginning of the last case, I had some suspicion Fordham would turn out to be the serial killer, killing random shlubs in the Chum he suspects of being the flower thief and forgetting about it because of drugs/insanity. Glad it didn't turn out to be true.
All in all, I don't regret buying and playing the game and I would rank it between A Golden Wake (at the top) and Shardlight. A Golden Wake I enjoyed quite a bit because of the down to earth, very human Rise and Fall story as well as the interesting negotiation mechanic. Just something you don't see in every other adventure game. Shardlight just felt empty, all style, no substance with a cringy villain (Funnily enough, upon release I expected to enjoy Shardlight a lot and to feel kinda meh about Technobabylon; after playing both, it was the other way around). In comparison to Unavowed I think they're about even, both being light on actual puzzles and having disappointing endings (though for different reasons).
All those MORAL DILEMMAS in Unavowed with CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES, and those consequences in the end boil down to how many of your comrades stand idly by on the final screen while you make the actual choice of ending not influenced by all your gameplay decisions beforehand - ugh!
Lamplight City could have a slight edge, depending on how different a playthrough would be depending on how you solve cases, but then again you have to intentionally try to solve cases wrong, so meh.

Primordia is still the best game from the WEG induced adventure renaissance.
 
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Cromwell

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Feb 16, 2013
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I also think the steampunk setting was underutilized and only served as windowdressing at best.

Yes, it also annoyed me that, instead of being a bit creative with the steamtech, they just had the same tech we have, vacuum cleaners, copy machines and so on.

The only real puzzles are a handful of the typical 'guess the password' fare (with one exception).

The one exception you dont even have to solve because your wife does it.

yet impedes his ability to do so by keeping him awake with his constant yapping

comes to a boil in case 5 if you told your wife about your problem and start looking at the crimescene pictures. at this point I was convinced whoever wrote that dialogue doesnt know real humans.

Also, I agree you may have fun with the game if you go in with the right expectations and arent easily annoyed, but I still would not recommend it. Partly because I was really looking forward to it because it sounded great on paper even if there would be flaws but I wasnt prepared for the huge letdown it turned out to be. As for the ending I discounted the "closure" because it felt like "thats it folks, here have a screen, fuck you, bye"
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I still think The Shivah is a really neat game. To me, an adventure game that finds a way to deviate from the stock protagonist (scavenger/tinkerer/dork) while having protagonist-appropriate puzzles is pretty special. Very few have pulled it off. In fact, other than The Shivah and Full Throttle, none immediately pops to mind. Gabriel Knight, maybe?
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I mean "appropriate" in the sense of "proper for him to do." A lot of adventure games, like Gemini Rue, have protagonists who are ~typical but still have to jump through the same hoops as Roger Wilco or Guybrush Threepwood. In other words, puzzles are still designed the same way, irrespective of the protagonist. By contrast, when you play Full Throttle, the things you do as the protagonist feel more like the things a biker would do.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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One week in, Lamplight City has Francisco's highest Steam rating (90%), highest top review on GOG (five stars), essentially tied for highest Metacritic score (74% vs. 75% for Shardlight, but with a positive review from a major site, Destructoid, for the first time), and it's essentially tied for his most players with Shardlight. Not too shabby!

Also, regarding the political complaints, I'm not sure how you could play Shardlight and then be surprised by LC's politics. Francisco is pretty open about these things.
 

troupeg

Educated
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May 10, 2018
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I enjoyed it for what it was. The ending was super disappointing, as echoed by many other posts in this thread, tho I liked the actual game.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Finished case 1. I like it but it is too linear and easy. It develops interesting, but instead of offering several suspect you have to accuse the right one, you just follow leads and railroaded into.

I hope this is case 1 thing thats always easy in these games and it offer you more freedom and scenario that isnt too obvious. Kinda like sherlock holmes crimes and punishment.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
solved case 2, in which i am quite disappointed that it is the same flow as the 1st case. i really like it, but when i heard about detective game with detective mechanics, i expect something alot more . . . detective-y.
it's the same, you got a case, follow the lead and railroaded into a conclusion. like good ol bill said, the culprit might as well leave a confession in the beginning of the case. where is the vague ambience? where is my multiple suspects? where is the feeling of wracking my brain to find contradiction and follow logic to the conclusion?

again, i love the setting, i love the character and for both case 1 and 2, the first half of the case really make me feel "that" feeling of solving a mystery, finding a new lead is satisfying, learning how to navigate dialogue so you dont piss off potential information source is interesting, but it always pretty much resolve itself.

well, 3rd time's the charm they said.
 

Cromwell

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Also, regarding the political complaints, I'm not sure how you could play Shardlight and then be surprised by LC's politics. Francisco is pretty open about these things.

thats simple, I didnt. But I also didnt complain about the politics per se, I complained about the fact that he is a hack who cant write for shit to put it a bit overly dramatic. I have no problem with the fact that your wife is black or that people are racist. The Problem here is that everyone is either a woman, black, gay (or both) or useless and despicable including the fucking main character. Add to that the fact that it isnt enough to show it, he has to hammer the point home by mentioning it in dialogue again and again and again.

inished case 1. I like it but it is too linear and easy. It develops interesting, but instead of offering several suspect you have to accuse the right one, you just follow leads and railroaded into.

I hope this is case 1 thing thats always easy in these games and it offer you more freedom and scenario that isnt too obvious. Kinda like sherlock holmes crimes and punishment.

There is another suspect in case one, but you might have missed it.
You can accuse the daughter after you visited her apartment. To do that you have to open the trunk? in her room in the mansion.
But as you said it would be idiotic to accuse her. Also no, it wont get better.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
case 3 is alot better so far. i nejoyed it, even tho it is still obvious, at least the culprit doesnt write some confession again and generally more open ended
 

Starwars

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I just finished this. Overall I enjoyed it but I have to say that I agree with the comments about Bill. Having an asshole who stands on a pedestal slinging judgements on absolutely everything you come across in the game got so annoying that I actually clicked through a lot of his dialogues.

Aside from that, it's pretty cool. It never goes into really complex territory which is kinda disappointing given that it's a detective game, but also kinda expected because it's... well, fairly low-budget game in a world where adventure games want to be a bit more simple. Unfortunately it makes the game feel too easy overall. In a way it feels like Unavowed in that regard, you mostly click and talk to people until you solve whatever the problem is.

But at the same time, dialogues and just moving the cases forward is still pretty satisfying in my opinion, easy though it may be. I like the characters you come across, and how everything is fairly down to earth. I like how the setting is done, it's not shoved in your face and the steampunk aspect of it is pretty under the radar. The whole game feels a bit mundane in a way but I think it works well. Maybe that since the last adventure game I played before was Unavowed where you have all kinds of crazy shit.

It's easily the best game the developer (Fransisco?) has done, way better than Golden Wake and Shardlight I think, but like with Unavowed it just feels like it doesn't reach its full potential. It's never amazing, it's just kinda... mediocre to good.

Still, I definitely don't regret playing it.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I dont get the complaints about bill.

I mean he is
deas 90% of the game and the bill we listen to is the manifestation of miles' guilt and it basically his schizophrenic ass talking. Notice that bill's behaviour is worsened as miles mental state worsen. the reason why the voice bill is so annoying is literally because it is a part of miles who felt overwhelming guilt and manifest in a "ghost" that nagging him to catch bills killer. Since the voice is basically bill in miles's mind plus his bas mental state, it turned real bills personAlity into more aggresive, hostile and bitter version of the real one.

i get that he is unlikeable, but his purpose is to annoy, and nags both you / the player and miles fordham.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm only on the second proper case, but I like the Bill character so far.
He's an excellent plot hook as well as a nice excuse for the protag to talk to himself constantly.
I'm getting to the point where I don't click on every single painting and knickknack lying around though. Not because I dislike the dialogue (monologue?), but because it's so time-consuming and unhelpful.
 

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