The Gateway to Vespuccia, the City of Air and Light, Lamplight City - the thriving port city of New Bretagne is a beacon of progress and industrial advancement in the New World. Yet beneath the promises of a shining 19th-century future, the city rests upon foundations of poverty, class struggle, and...
The Gateway to Vespuccia, the City of Air and Light, Lamplight City - the thriving port city of New Bretagne is a beacon of progress and industrial advancement in the New World. Yet beneath the promises of a shining 19th-century future, the city rests upon foundations of poverty, class struggle, and crime.
For police detective turned private investigator Miles Fordham, Lamplight City's shadowy corners are just part of the territory. But with his former partner constantly speaking to him from beyond the grave, his grip on sanity is slowly loosening. Can Miles find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
Lamplight City is a detective adventure set in an alternate steampunk-ish "Victorian" past.
Be the detective you want to be. But prepare to face the consequences.
Investigate crime scenes, interrogate suspects, get information by any means necessary. Follow the law or make your own rules, but how you choose to act will affect people's attitudes towards you.
Five cases to solve, with multiple suspects, false leads, and different outcomes.
Never find yourself stuck in a dead-end situation. If the case becomes unsolvable, simply move on to the next one. The story will adapt based on your choices.
Single click interface with no inventory.
Gather clues and documents in your casebook for review. Item manipulation is handled via a context-sensitive cursor.
A fictional city with four boroughs to explore, each with their own unique flavor.
Players will visit each of these boroughs throughout the game, exploring themes such as class divide and the public's fear of emerging steam tech.
Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens.
A typical point and click adventure game, you would think. But while the gameplay loops are actually pretty classic p&c with emphasis on dialogues and clever combining information and items you found to solve the different cases.
The twist that comes into play is, that you actually can fail at solving your cases and still progress through the game. This may not lead you to the best possible ending, but you will still get your own story.
The solutions aren't that hard to find, so that solving the crimes "the right way" shouldn't be a big problem as long as you listen to everyone and talk to everyone.
Lamplight City is a narrative-focused detective story that strives to stand out thanks to its steampunk vibes. The classic tropes of the genres have been used mildly: luddism and fear towards the new steam-based technology melds with noir vibes about a solo detective with ghosts from its past. Despite its good writing, the story is not strong enough to settle the game as a "steampunk noir" classic, but it sure is good enough to entertain the player for a few hours of above average narration.
If you play for the story, this is a good mystery game with well written relationships and some introspection about love, hate, friendship and grief. Great characters and dialogues overall, but still not enough in my opinion to really stand out. The game has a decent worldbuilding, but the single detective cases can be pretty boring at times.
If you play for the art and atmosphere, this is where the game really shines. Detailed scenarios, good animations, excellent lightning, outstanding voice over and background music. Tons of locations to visit, all made with love: the town is a pleasure to explore, and it's too bad that you'll visit some locations only once. If you are into steampunk and pixel art, you'll love the game aesthetics.
If you play for the challenge, I'm sorry to say there isn't any here. The gameplay only consists of dialogue and exploration, with detective cases that basically solve by themselves. The main design idea of the game is punishing the player with a dead end in case they choose the wrong dialogue option in certain (few, fortunately) circumstances. I found myself cut out of gameplay just for saying "I'm a detective" instead of something else, in a situation where I had no hints about that specific answer being so dangerous. This means you'll need to save often, but overall it's not a big deal, just some frustration around the corner.
The game is quite long, I'd say 10-12 hours, and that's a positive.
I liked this game. Story was good, though sometimes a bit easy. The cases were harder as they progressed. The characters were interesting. Sometimes Bill was a bit much. I noticed the homage to Gabriel Knight so that was cool. Worth buying and playing. Well done!!
A solid detective adventure with some added Steampunk spice. It lacks some of the traditional adventure game tropes like an inventory, and the rubbing of items on other items to see what sticks, but it's still a joy to play. I also like that it has the option to get the conclusion wrong, though it's fairly obvious which one is the right one (a bit like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishment).
I love the mood of the game and the voice acting is solid, but if I had to pick one niggle, it would be the character portraits. There's just something off about the art style, and especially women look lumpy or have way too pronounced jaws. Either it's a conscious choice with the artist's own style, or it's something that'll get better in future games.
TLDR; Great adventure game with some non-standard mechanics for point and click games.
