I recently replayed Lumino City, for the purposes of following a joke recipe in it, and made a horrible lemon dish (it was lemony). Lumino city is a puzzle adventure where you navigate a little city that runs on all sorts of unusual machinery. And that city is a physical model, with the characters mapped onto it. It’s beautiful.
]]>Lumino City came out in 2014, but it remains one of my most favourite ever puzzle games. I go back to it probably once a year at least, because it's a soothing little happy place. Like how when I'm chronically hungover I watch This Is Spinal Tap. It's a puzzle game made with a physical model of a little city, and I am incapable of getting over that fact. I felt that it was an ideal game to write about for a day of lovely cute features.
Miniature models involve a lot of detail work, and Lumino City has a lot of other unnecessary details. When I started playing it earlier this week to get a feel for it again, I found that one of these details is a recipe for "Lemon in a Lemon Sauce." With instructions. So I made Lemon in a Lemon Sauce.
]]>Update: There's an update at the end of this post with notes after playing the remaining levels in the finished build.
The thing you'll remember about Lumino City, certainly from the build I played, is the handcrafted element. That's for both positive and negative reasons.
Lumino City is a point and click adventure which follows a young girl called Lumi as she tries to find her missing grandfather. The story plays out across a papercraft city – one which actually exists in miniature in real life – and revolves around solving puzzles and assisting the cast of odd cliff-dwelling characters.
]]>These are all photos I took at the exhibition - if you want to see the larger version just click on them.
"All our games so far have had some element of handmade-ness to them but Lumino City has gone to the nth degree."
Katherine Bidwell, co-director of studio State of Play, is taking me round the GameCity exhibition of their Lumino City game models. If you're not familiar with Lumino City you could be forgiven for thinking all of this card and wiring is entirely a marketing concept, bringing a digital creation into our physical world. Actually it's the polar opposite. Lumino City was created as a sprawling fantastical architectural model in real life before being painstakingly converted into a digital gamespace.
]]>We've admired the papercraft world of Lumino City before and oh me oh my, it's still looking gorgeous a year later. A new trailer lets us into State of Play's world of paper and card and wood and metal and motors and electric lights and crafty bits for another two minutes before politely bringing the conversation round to how, it's late, they're busy tomorrow, and they've got to get up early. "Wheee!" we giggle as the pinball machine lights up and bings before starting the trailer over.
]]>Lume might not have been a particularly challenging adventure, but the visuals were nothing less than inspired. Taking their inspiration from classic stop-frame animation, the game was actually made from cardboard and paper, and consequently looked incredible. The sequel, Lumnino City, uses the same approach, creating "a wondrous sprawling puzzle adventure game, entirely made from paper, card, wood, miniature lights and electric motors." And it looks completely beautiful. Really, go look at the video below.
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