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Lumo (2016, Playstation 4) Review


IS THIS GAME COMING ON TO ME?


Also for: Linux, Macintosh, Nintendo, PS Vita, Windows, Xbox One


Step inside a celebration of the 1980:s universe of computer games. Remember games like Head over Heels, Horace Goes Skiing, Donkey Kong, Operation WolfPac-Man, Manic Miner and Q*bert? Remember the chequered, bouncing Amiga ball? Then you'll feel right at home in Lumo, from developer Triple Eh? (greatest developer name ever?). This also happens to be the interactive universe I grew up with. Lumo flaunts its influences with imagery so deeply embedded into my own childhood, that I'd think it was coming on to me if it was a woman in a pub.

It begins with you selecting your choice of sex - boy or girl. You then take control as you're about to enter a retro gaming hall. Soon enough you reach the back of the building, where you come across a machine - the SpecEye - that sucks you into the digital world of an isometric labyrinth. Your character has changed into that of a video game character, closely resembling the black mage Vivi from Final Fantasy IX.



Your goal is to navigate this labyrinth, solving many puzzles and other conundrums on the way, and find four different pieces of hardware. When combined, the resulting machine will have the power to unlock fantastic worlds, wink wink. Each piece lies somewhere in one of four different worlds. Loads of traps, enemies and platforming acrobatics stand between you and your dream machine.

Using the ZX Spectrum-puzzler Head over Heels as its main source of inspiration, Lumo is controlled through the same isometric perspective as the 1987 classic. A few mini-games make brief appearances as well, paying tribute to the other games I mentioned in the opening paragraph. It's a game brimming with nostalgia. In a retro-scene totally dominated by Nintendo-love (which is getting so predictable, repetitive and boring), I applaud the initiative to give the ZX Spectrum a chance to shine.


Lumo follows the tradition of the slightly more complex Spectrum titles that utilized the isometric viewpoint. The ones I have hands-on familiarity with are the aforementioned Head over Heels, Knight Lore, Nightshade, Spindizzy and Gunfright. They were all true cult classics. The problem is that I was never particularly good at, or even fond of, this type of game - they were just too dang hard. The only one I remember enjoying was Gunfright, and that's because it was action-oriented rather than a puzzle-platformer.

Isometric puzzlers generally had a problem with conveying visual depth, and that problem is even more prevalent in Lumo than I can remember from past games. It can be hard to determine if a platform is above you, below you, closer to the camera, or perhaps in the back of the room. In Head over Heels missing a jump often meant losing a life, and games back in the 80:s all offered only a handful of lives. Losing them all meant having to start over from the beginning.



The puzzles could be unkind, too, with hard-to-reach switches revealing even-harder-to-reach hidden platforms and so on. Or maybe you had to push a moveable block on top of an enemy, jump on top of it and wait patiently while he navigated a maze full of spiky walls, only to end up dying in a tricky jump at the end.

Lumo replicates such puzzles with all the frustrations intact, but is kind enough to offer an option to play in "Adventure"-mode, meaning you have infinite lives and no time restrictions. This removes a lot of the anxiety. Hardcore players can try it the "Old school" way, with a time limit and finite lives. Which option did I choose, you ask? Isn't it obvious? The easier setting enabled me to enjoy Lumo closer to the way other players nostalgize over Head over Heels.



The way through the game is pretty linear. Only in the last of the four worlds did the game let me choose in what order to tackle the stages. At some other points the path branches off, but that usually just means you need to go one way to get the key to open up the other. Other times you might access rooms with optional puzzles, rewarding you with a collectible of some sort (a cassette tape, a piece of the world map, or a rubber duck).

Lumo never gets boring. An excellent variation to the challenges keeps the interest going. Some rooms have enemies to avoid (no combat exists), others just present a problem in reaching the exit on the other side of the screen. Some room layouts remind me of more modern games, like Tomb Raider-inspired water level changes that open up access to new parts of the level. I also saw a few unfortunate nods toward Super Mario Sunshine and its rotating platform frustrations. It's a mixed bag of influences, and it successfully recreates the spirit of them all - for better or worse.



Although the perspective can let you down, the controls are slick and responsive. True to the single-button ZX Spectrum joystick, they are also minimalistic, utilizing only a stick for movement and one jump button (for the major part of the game). Failure is often a fault of player intentions - like misjudging distances or positioning - rather than player skill.

This might sound good, but can actually present a problem. You might perform a perfect jump and still miss, because the platform isn't where you thought. This can often lead to moments that feel unfair, and you have no bad controls to blame your failures on. The game starts off excellent. Later on, I encountered a few too many perspective problems like this. The orientation is off the charts. Some distances are just impossible to determine, and some platforms are hidden behind others.


Mix that with some boring, tedious puzzle layouts, and we get a mixed bag of challenges all throughout the game. Some rooms were of the kind that forced me to sit idle for too long while enemies or platforms moved into the right position. If you failed close to the end of the room you had to start over and wait for all the pieces to get back into place.

In the ice-themed world I got stuck for the longest time. It was a room of fragile ice pillars, that you had to push around to form a staircase of platforms. You then had to jump these platforms the reach the exit. The pushing annoyed me to no end, because the pillars made a habit of sliding off in unintended directions. And when I finally lined them up, the slippery surfaces made me fall off, accidentally pushing the pillars out of position and forcing me to start over.


Lumo begins as a charming, cozy adventure with a very understated humor. It gradually transitions into an annoyance further down the line, which leaves me with a bitter aftertaste. Yet, in this day and age it's better than its inspirations. I'm glad it doesn't recreate the technical limitations of the ZX Spectrum, because they were kinda horrid. Lumo has a very cute visual language and a drowsy soundtrack simmering in the background. The lighting effects look nice, and the color palette is helpful in pointing out important things.

The minigames are also fun, with one-off game mechanics. They demonstrate some more humoristic references to other games of the era. Q*bert gets his due in a timed game of changing platform colors. Horace Goes Skiing gets a nod in a downhill race. Miner Willy gets loosely referenced ahead of a similar mining cart section down a set of broken rails. Some sprites from Operation Wolf appear in a shooting gallery. The list goes on, and you might miss a few because many of them are hidden behind optional side challenges.


I feel like a jerk for saying it, but using just any common denominator willy-nilly from my past won't get me into bed. Don't get me wrong, I like many of these references. The main problem is the main one, Head over Heels. Just like Lumo it was cute, clever and competent, but its appealing presentation only made me feel bad for not liking it better. Games in the 80:s had an unhealthier approach to difficulty than the games of today.

Although I appreciate Lumo more, it just recreates everything too well, down to the slightest flaw, and in so doing manages to dust off some of the less flattering qualities of retro gaming. The retro-side of me was always about immersion and self-fulfillment, rather than overcoming hardcore challenges. I guess much of that still lives on. Lumo accomplishes what it sets out to do, and I suppose many a retro gamer is ecstatic about the result. And so, my modest score is not a result of poor design or execution. It is a consequence of bad influence.

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