Nothing terrifies me like tight spaces, heights, and never-ending seeming dark holes. Also, there are few games I’ve been wanting more than a serious platformer capable of making older audiences feel the childlike wonder provided by the classics.
I read that Lorn’s Lure could be that game. The first video I saw of it showed the main character getting ready to make a deliberate plunge into a hole in the ground; one I feared could be long enough to cross the entirety of the Earth.
Lorn’s Lure seemed like a challenge I’d have to go through, to get the platformer I’d been hoping for.
Lorn’s Lure (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Rubeki Games
Publisher: Rubeki Games
Released: September 20, 2024
MSRP: $14.99
Upon first glance, Lorn’s Lure is very simple. You can jump, slide, and climb over platforms until you reach the place the game wants you to get to. From the outset, the only tool at your disposal is climbing gear you’ll use to somewhat freely climb many walls in the game.
I say somewhat freely because, like where Portal only lets you portal on white walls, Lorn’s Lure only allows players to climb on vertical walls made of climbable rock. The pickaxes allow you to move up, down, left and right for a limited time while you put yourself in the right spot to safely drop down or jump onto the next platform.
This alone would’ve been good enough to keep me engaged till the end of the game, but I was pleasantly surprised to unlock more more mechanics that enhanced my climbing abilities and the fun I had climbing. There’s wall running, wall jumping, and a grappling hook to traverse the areas like Pathfinder from Apex Legends.
The rest works just as you’d expect. Fall into a bottomless pit, or onto the ground from a high enough altitude, and you’ll get the option to restart from the last good position you were in, or from the start of the chapter.
On the graphical front, Lorn’s Lure cold trick you into thinking it’s a PS1 game with upscaled textures. Still, the humongous size of the play areas would likely melt Sony’s OG console in one second. Lorn’s retro look only adds charm and a welcome sense of eeriness, to a game that wants the player to feel like they’re trapped in an infinitely alien, indifferent, and sometimes surprisingly beautiful world.
Lorn’s Lure also takes a cool minimalistic approach to storytelling. The set-up is done by small cutscenes show the vastness of this world. Then, you can scan areas of interest to learn more about the haunting mega structure where your character – and many others before them – have found themselves trapped for hundreds of years.
The world of Lorn’s Lure will seem familiar to anyone who’s read BLAME. Just like Tsutomi Nihei’s manga, it puts the main character in a high-tech hell-scape vast enough to make any being, living or imaginary, feel tiny. I love that choice for a platformer. It conveys a grandeur never before seen in the likes of Tomb Raider or Uncharted. Those series have shown us a fair amount of large areas, but they have always been just as focused on showing us tiny details. In Lorn’s Lure, you never feel like you’re just exploring a level – you feel like you’re exploring a planet.
Like Chained Together, Lorn’s Lure could probably prove a hit among the speedrunning community. I don’t doubt it will, because this is a better looking and much more mechanically challenging title. Still, I was a bit surprised to learn Lorn’s Lure actually feels like a puzzle game of sorts. It starts off as simple as any other platformer. Then, it has players clearing the way of obstacles, or finding ever-more intricate ways of completing the supposedly simple task of getting from point A to B.
Even with its awesome mechanics, what makes Lorn’s Lure truly shine is its level design. Its dauntingly vast spaces make the player feel helpless when thinking of a way to get to the next checkpoint. Then, once they clear their minds, the game makes players feel like a true post-apocalyptic sci-fi raiders once they’ve finally overcome yet another obstacle.
Lorn’s Lure will need you to be quick on your feet, to be precise in both the spacing and the timing of your jumps. Even if you’re just trying to escape the megastructure, Lorn’s Lure will provide quite the challenge. But, once you’ve already beaten its main challenge, the game is still filled with collectibles placed in even harder-to-access areas.
Fortunately, Lorn’s Lure doesn’t waste your time. The developer knew this would be a very intense trial-and-error affair. Players can, at any point, restart their run to the last time they had secure footing on the platform closest to the objective, with no loading screen involved. I’ve tested the restart option a lot — you guess whether I did so intentionally or not — and it works very well. Too many platformers struggle to record the player’s last good position before a fateful misplaced jump, or record a platform where they’d been previously, wrongfully making it the restart position. Lorn’s Lure is free from that sin.
As for what I didn’t like, the massive size of the play area makes it sometimes difficult to understand where to head next. The game’s plot conveniently introduces a guiding glitch in our character’s eyesight, but it isn’t visible at all times. Players can toggle a marker at all times to know exactly where they need to go, but I’d rather just have a diegetic cue like the one the game intended.
Still, that’s more of a nitpick than a huge problem. In terms of what I liked but many might not, well, Lorn’s Lure is very challenging. The trial-and-error nature of the entire game might put some off. I totally understand players might not want to die more times to one single jump than they would to a boss in Elden Ring. Even I felt deeply frustrated at some points, but the frustration would vanish as soon as I’d found myself past each of the most demonic jumps. Many players may not re-energize so easily, and I totally get that.
But, if you’re into challenging platformers like the remaster of the original Crash Bandicoot, then you’re very likely to enjoy this one. Alongside with the aforementioned Chained Together and Jusant, Lorn’s Lure proves that the world of platformers still has a lot of mechanics to be tried out. It’s also revealing just how inhospitable and utterly terrifying platformers can be — in the coolest of ways.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
Published: Sep 20, 2024 02:53 pm