In my preview for Lumino City I described it as a point and click adventure game, and I can see now, after playing it through to its conclusion, how wrong I actually was. Granted, Lumi, the game’s protagonist, is moved around the titular city via pointing and clicking, but at its core Lumino City is a puzzle adventure game, having more in common with the Professor Layton series than Broken Sword. The city is broken up into sections, each with its own handful of people to meet and puzzles to solve. Clearing the puzzles opens up the next area and progresses the story. It isn’t possible to revisit areas once they’ve been cleared, but there isn’t any danger of leaving anything behind as all the items needed for solving puzzles are found and used in that puzzles area. The items Lumi collects are stored in her bag, which is accessed by clicking the little satchel around her neck. There are no icons on screen, which makes everything look incredibly clean. Another nice touch with the items is if Lumi puts something in her bag that’s too big, it will stick out the top of the bag. It’s a small detail, but goes a long way to make Lumino City appear as a real, living world.

The puzzles are incredibly varied, ranging from simple pattern matches to more complex and cryptic tasks, and I didn’t encounter any two that were alike. The puzzles are easy to begin with, rising steadily in difficulty as the game progresses. A couple of puzzles I encountered toward the end of the game however were incredibly vague, making them more overwhelming than unenjoyable. It was at times like this that Lumi’s Handybook became essential. The Handybook, picked up during the games prologue, is a great little item. What is essentially a collection of get out of jail free cards, this hefty tome houses the answers to each of the city’s puzzles, but it isn’t as easy as turning a page and finding the answer. If you want to cheat your way out of a difficult puzzle, you have to earn it. In order to find the page housing the solution for a particular puzzle, clues must be deciphered and a math problem must first be solved.

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