Katherine Bidwell: To be honest, it never crossed our minds. Obviously a sequel to any game is likely to bear aesthetic similarities, but as striking as the look of Lumino City is-and it's bloody gorgeous-were you the slightest bit worried of being seen to "repeat" your visuals, rather than (re)invent in that area? VICE: The physically handcrafted style of Lumino City follows closely in the pattern of its predecessor, Lume. In Short: Beautiful to look at but the story and gameplay prove far less fascinating than the real world model-making skills of the developer.From Paper to Play-How They Made 'Lumino City' State of Play are clearly a hugely capable team but it seems they haven’t yet found a suitable outlet for their talents. A sort of 21st century version of Camberwick Green (amusingly the studio is based in Camberwell, London).Įven then the writing and characters don’t seem interesting enough to ensure success, which leaves the whole experience a visual feast in search of a suitable occasion to justify it. Ultimately you walk away feeling that the whole endeavour would make a better TV show than it would a game. The real-world models look amazing but you rarely get to interact with them in the sort of way that would justify the effort of making them in the first place. Considering how it’s made we suppose a point ‘n’ click adventure was one of the only options possible but you do feel they could’ve just swapped the backdrops for some ordinary computer-generated ones and it wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference to the gameplay. These aren’t game-breaking issues, but instead the more serious problem is that the game just doesn’t make enough use of its unique visuals. Lumino City (PC) – would it be better as a TV show? Rearranging the bumpers on a pinball table or solving the maths problems on a safe door are a nice change of pace, but feel a touch gimmicky. A lot of the puzzles though are more hands-on and reminiscent of the sort of logic puzzles seen in the Professor Layton games. Otherwise though the puzzles are pretty standard fare, as you collect lemons to run an electric current or navigate a complex trading agreement between uncommunicative neighbours who refuse to restart a crane. Due to the nature of the visuals though the focus is different from normal and most puzzles can be solved by everything that’s already around you – so there’s less backtracking for unrelated objects than most other adventures. A complex story is not a necessity for any game but it is a little surprising given that Lumino City is essentially an old school graphic adventure, with actual real pointing and clicking. If the game has a narrative theme it’s the problems that come from not talking to others, either that or the developer is just looking for an excuse not to have too much dialogue. But just as we wouldn’t give a normal game a free pass just because it had really good graphics we can’t ignore the fact that underneath it all Lumino City is far less interesting to play than it is to watch. Apparently it took London-based team State Of Play three years to make, and on an artistic level it’s fascinatingly beautiful. The video below gives some indication of the amount of work and effort that went into creating Lumino City’s world. As if someone decided not to make LittleBigPlanet out of pixels and polygons but cardboard and glue. These are essentially green-screened clips of real world models, with a little computer character running about on top of them. But these aren’t computer-generated graphics. You’re probably looking at these screenshots and videos and thinking that Lumino City is an amazing-looking game. It’s one of the best-looking games of the year but is there more to this new point ‘n’ click adventure than just pretty visuals? Lumino City (PC) – for once the world inside the game is real
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