Lorn's Lure

With the surge of climbing, grappling, and descending games in the last few years, Lorn's Lure caught my eye with it's setting being a massive brutalist megastructure, a trope that while starting to border on overused cliche, is still so evocative that I remain a complete and utter slut for it. The game's first map was wonderful, with interesting to look at architecture, challenging routes who's light-touch signposting was oblique enough to let the player feel clever without frustration, and platforming that utilized the game's simple toolkit with momentum-based physics to create interesting problems that demanded both clever pathing and dexterity from the player that felt very rewarding to solve. Every map after this removes a piece of that formula in lieu of adding gimmicks that seem to keep getting ever further away from the methodical and deliberate platforming of the first map. Ultimately, I think you can safely play the first one or two maps of this and come away being much more positive on this as an experience, as it's story and setting neither serve to be a reason to push deeper into this game by the end.

I personally could not recommend this game to someone despite the fact i have played through it's entirety and enjoyed some aspects of it, the reason for that being that for the most part (roughly two thirds) of this game's experience is very unpleasant and uninteresting, not because of the difficulty, but because of how both the gameplay and level design leave a lot to be desired. What i enjoyed most out of this game, was firstly the [b]art direction [/b] (including the visuals and soundtrack that compose the ambience) and second the story, but both of these qualities only really shine in two out of the eight maps. I won't go into much detail of what makes each map bad or good, but basically, after the first two the method of which the maps are designed changes to be more of a continous walk through many different sequentially connected segments, as opposed to a few large areas with many different segments. So it stops feeling like you're making your way through one massive enviroment and changes to a race through unsignificant places you wont ever go back to again. What i did NOT enjoy and ultimately forced me to give this review is what constitutes most of the game, that being…

Overall cool game, but leaves me feeling very mixed. It has good atmosphere, bare minimum climbing and movement, and pretty interesting worldbuilding. Unfortunately, the level design isn't all that good, and I found myself getting more frustrated than I feel like I should've as someone who has played a lot of platformers. Some of the ideas are cool, like the cave level was cool, but it tries to lean into this scary tone that absolutely in no way pays off. It just ends up feeling a bit half baked, and despite the last level being one of my favorites, its practically an entirely different game, and the final section lowkey sucks and I didn't like it at all. Like how did a game with really cool exploration and freedom to approach these massive open spaces turn into the most linear platformer design wise. It really just lost the plot, but still was at least fun. Also, how the ♥♥♥♥ do you make a grappling hook section the worst part of your game by far? I love grappling hooks, but that just wasn't it.

After the 8.5 hours it took me to beat the game this first time, I can say safely say this is by far one of my favourite games of all time, ESPECIALLY when it comes to worldbuilding. The vast and empty space with sprinkles of inexplicable constructions and mechanisms of a megastructure is easily my favourite type of atmoshpere, and to see it done so well puts me in awe. While some parts of the game were so hard that they made me want to pull my hair out, I would happily go back and play them again and again just to find every little secret and collectible. Easy 10/10.

genuinely if it wasn't for the last level i wouldn't have left a review T_T the games great 10/10 super enjoyable atmosphere and movement system with a interesting lore and fairly easy/casual difficulty. enough content to keep coming back to even after completing. only downside is the last level is as if the devs decided to throw the entire thing through a 180. its soooo out of place and i fount it was often frustrating even after you get it right. sooo look forward to that :3

your nothing and thats okay.