Lamplight City Critic Reviews

More than an open love letter to Sins of the Fathers, Lamplight City is a first class detective mystery that succeeds in creating an atmospheric and believable alternate historical setting, whilst allowing us to fail in spectacular style. Highly compelling.

Do you want to feel like a detective? Do other games keep giving you ‘all-seeing vision’? Do you wish you could actually solve problems on your own (more-or-less)? Look no further.

In sum, Lamplight City is a bit of a departure from a typical point and click adventure, but it more than holds its own. While a little bit light in terms of gameplay and difficulty, it’s well compensated for with good characters, stories, multiple endings per mystery, and a fine presentation. Any fan of the genre or a good mystery should give this a serious look.

Lamplight City is the rare detective game where the mysteries are challenging to solve and satisfying to do so. While the world-building often doesn’t stand up if you peel back the initial layers and there are frustrating elements to the way cases stack against each other, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the world of New Bretagne and the mysteries inside of it. The game handled sensitive topics with real care and integrated them seamlessly into the story of Miles Fordham.

Lamplight City offers an intriguing set of mysteries and stands as a great throwback to titles like Monkey Island and Sierra's Gabriel Knight series. The cases aren't especially taxing, but the well-realized setting and characters add plenty of flavor and help the game feel like something more than the sum of its parts.

A great Sierra-style mystery game. Very enjoyable despite the lack of some major point-and-click gameplay features.

Lamplight City is neither as good, nor as bold as Unavowed’s mix of adventure and RPG but certain ways it reforms the genre do pleasantly surprise. Gonzalez’s marriage of a crime story with a period drama piece came out better than ever before.

A detective adventure with lots of conversation and exciting cases in a varied steampunk world.

What it lacks in originality, it makes up in its unmitigated resolve to stick to realism, in the purity of its characters and the charm of its wonderful pixel drawn vistas.

Lamplight City is a satisfying, point-and-click adventure, which tells a compelling detective story. While there are some issues that clearly take away from the overall experience, I was genuinely surprised by how much it gets right.

Lamplight City is a successful point-and-click graphic adventure in terms of storytelling and with a convincing and pleasant retro – pixel art style. The almost total absence of enigmas, together with the lack of interactivity, prevent him, however, to aspire to the top of the genre.

In Lamplight City, you aren't led around from room to room, clickity-clicking your way to success. For the most part, logic and reason are at play. Brush up on those skills, and you will find your way. Take your time, enjoy the well-themed music and ambiance, enjoy the story, solve the crimes, and for goodness' sake, listen to Bill.

Even though the world seems alive and the characters are quite charming, the work as a sleuth doesn’t feel methodologically sound.

Lamplight City has a hell of a concept behind it, but unfortunately, the cases don't deliver on its promise. When you strip away the idea that the game will let you fail, and that you need to pay particularly close attention to what's happening, you're left with an adequate adventure game that is low on great puzzles.

With stunning visuals, solid sound and music, and nuanced worldbuilding that many adventure games would kill for, it’s unfortunate that Lamplight City is lacking in the one area that distinguishes games over other storytelling media: interactivity.

By sacrificing player’s freedom in favor of questionable game design concepts, the developers failed to flesh out the intriguing world, characters and plot of Lamplight City. I expected a much better result from the makers of Shardlight.

Lamplight City is a steampunk detective adventure with great voice acting and unique worldbuilding—but the gameplay is full of unrealized potential.