REVIEW: LAMPLIGHT CITY

The year is 1844 and our avatar is named Miles Fordham . After a catastrophic event when his partner is killed, Fordham has quit as a police officer and started working as a private detective instead. It is painful and long between jobs, but thanks to old contacts, he gets the opportunity to start working again. His investigations put him on the trail of the mysterious man who is guilty of his partner’s death.

Lamplight City is a “point and click” adventure that really gives the same feeling as the classics like Full Throttle and Monkey Island . The graphics are perfectly retro and the animations feel completely authentic to how it was before. Every character you meet has recorded voices and even if the acting efforts are sometimes a bit tentative, they are by and large very good.

The world is big and rich in details. Explore the missions your way and if you get stuck, you can always move on with the next case. It is more or less impossible to get stuck. The world is inspired by classic works by Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens . There is a steampunk element in the whole thing as well which creates another interesting dimension.

Lamplight city works just as well on your Nintendo Switch in both portable and docked mode. Did not experience any performance issues whatsoever. There is a lot of text that becomes quite small in the built-in screen, but it is always fully readable. There is also a fun and informative commentary track that goes through how the game was created in the smallest detail. Fixed play through the game once before activating it because it contains some spoilers.

The only downside to Lamplight City is really just two things. First, the challenges you face are not that difficult. It really is a nice balance between being too difficult and too easy. If it’s too difficult, I lose the urge pretty quickly and I just feel stupid because I get stuck all the time and if it’s too easy, it’s no challenge and I get through the game without resistance. The other thing that bothered me is that Lamplight City was developed for PC (Released 2018) and thus it is designed for mouse. If you are sitting with a mouse, it is no problem at all to search the image in front of you to find what to interact with. If you sit with a hand control, it is more difficult to create the same overview. Other games in the same genre usually have a button you can press so you see what you can interact with such as Primordia but it is unfortunately missing in Lamplight City

In summary, Lamplight City is fun and well made and with a very advantageous price tag so I definitely want to give it a warm recommendation.