Lumino City
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Lumino City
Lumino City is an interesting design sketch, then, but the real building work is yet to be done.
Lumino City is a gorgeous enough to grab anyone's attention, but stays within the boundaries of its genre conventions
Beautiful to look at but the story and gameplay prove far less fascinating than the real world model-making skills of the developer.
Issues with the sound design aside, Lumino City is truly wonderful. The writing sparkles, puzzles are well put together and fun while requiring you to work for the solution just the right amount, and the visuals really do feel special. With a length that comes in somewhere in the eight to ten hour range, depending largely on how good you are at solving puzzles, it's of a length that will leave you wanting more, although I fear it may take State of Play quite a while to craft something like this again.
The strange characters you meet never become more than a whimsical cut-outs with a few lines of dialogue. Shortly after you meet them you're off to the next surreal setpiece. It gives the sense that the city simply looks lovely but the team haven't put similar thought into the people who live in the place. In games like Broken Age, which is far weaker on the puzzle front, there's a fascinating story that's pulling you through the game. It lets down an otherwise excellent game.
Whilst I enjoyed exploring the gorgeously hand-crafted world, I couldn't help but feel that the gameplay just wasn't up to snuff at times and should have been better in a number of areas.
Lumino City is a real world filled with relationships as thin as its papercraft inhabitants. Whether intentional or not, it seems to be the focus, given that there's not much in the way of "adventure" in this point-and-click adventure.
