Lumo asked me a lot of questions during my playthrough of its many hallways, rooms, and throwbacks. It’s a game that evokes memories of a simpler time in gaming and, although I was instantly enamoured by what it was trying to do, I couldn’t help but feel like it was to its own detriment.
Heavily inspired by the isometric design of the late 80’s, Lumo doesn’t so much as take you on a trip down memory lane as it does drag you along by your collar. Its creator, Gareth Noyce, who is also the sole person behind the project, has written a love letter to the earlier days of gaming and, for the most part, he pulls it off. Even if you’re a younger gamer like myself, you will be able to appreciate how faithful a homage Lumo is, which isn’t to say that it doesn’t belong in this century, too.
Starting off as a young boy, you’re quickly sucked into a computer to become a miniature mage, which was simple enough a premise to interest me. Graphically, Lumo is not much to look at; the constant background doesn’t inspire and the character models are basic. If that sounds like a decision maker for you, don’t let it be – the charm of Lumo lies within.
One of Lumo’s biggest assets is that it’s always throwing new challenges your way. Once you think you have it sussed, there’s a room full of spiders waiting to kill you or an invisible path that needs opening. Lumo’s puzzles are complex, but not to the point that I, a self-confessed simpleton when it comes to problem solving, couldn’t swear my way through them. When you do manage to conquer a particularly tricky room, it’s pure joy.
For a one-man show, Lumo is remarkable. 500 rooms have been created by one man, which is hugely impressive, no matter which way you look at it. Noyce’s passion for gaming is apparent everywhere, right from the game’s retro opening titles up to its conclusion. From early frustration to inevitable addiction, Lumo does its best to make you fall in love with it. Where the game falls down, however, is in its mechanics.
Frustration comes from the unusual perspective of the room design – you never really know where your jump is going to land. For a game that’s dependent on platforming, it can quickly become tiresome to try to navigate a simple looking room, only to fall to your death and hear a cutesy noise to accompany it ad nauseum. Swinging between platform is an exercise in maintaining inner peace as you will plummet twice as often as you will connect to the rope. Lumo’s level design also seems out to punish – mistakenly walking through a door after being halfway through completing a puzzle, resetting everything in the process, is like being repeatedly pinched. It doesn’t annoy too much, but after the tenth time, you will want to scream bloody murder.
However, Lumo asks that you adapt yourself to its ways, not too dissimilar to Dark Souls (though the comparisons begin and end there). Just like From Software’s death simulator, you need to play Lumo the way Gareth Noyce intended or face the consequences: a breakdown-inducing amount of failures.
Lumo’s soundtrack is one that you will want to burn onto a disc and then throw out to sea; when you’re trying to solve a real head scratcher of a room and have a constant loop of music distracting you, it’s infuriating. Bizarrely, there’s no option to lower the music volume, or many other customisation basics, for that matter. This is an example of where Lumo’s simplicity becomes a burden, when the bare bones nature of it all overwhelms whatever the game has going for it.
Despite its flaws, Gareth Noyce’s production still somehow managed to capture my attention and keep me hooked. It has that special ingredient to it that you can’t put a finger on, a certain kind of spark that would be irreplicable in the hands of anyone else. Charm can only get you so far, though, and Lumo is unlikely to convert many who don’t have a penchant for nostalgia.
With some refinements, Lumo could have been something truly magical, but as it is, it’s a game that I would only recommend to those with patience.
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