Lamplight City - detective adventure set in an alternate steampunk-ish "Victorian" past

[Koschey]

I don't get how people can be annoyed by Bill, after all his purpose is to be annoying.

 

[Zombra]

I don't get why people complain about getting wet in the rain, after all water is supposed to be wet.

 

[Koschey]

So now design decisions are physical facts without room for deliberation?

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Zombra]

Finished the game, liked the ending, not sure what the naysayers expected.

Whoever complained because not every case is connected to the flower shop killing is dumb. It's not good storytelling when every single occurrence and detail relates directly to a single huge plot point. This isn't an RPG where your only goal is to level up enough to kill the last boss.

I notice that on Steam only 3/5 of all players who completed the game solved every case correctly. So we may complain that it seemed too easy but that is not a very high clearance rate.

At first I was disappointed that this got too bogged down and "adventure gamey" but soon changed my mind. Thumbs up, glad I paid full price and would love to see more games in this format.

 

[Koschey]

I notice that on Steam only 3/5 of all players who completed the game solved every case correctly. So we may complain that it seemed too easy but that is not a very high clearance rate.

Considering only a 10% failure rate for each of the 5 cases (if I recall the number of cases correctly right now), the success rate over all cases comes out to be roughly these 60%. While the cases aren't completely independet (Linda Walker's trial), that gives a rough estimate of how difficult the individual cases are. For a game touting the features of 'failing is ok, the game still goes on' and 'players will solve the cases themselves', I would call that easy to pisseasy. Not to mention a sizable proportion of players might have gotten the cases wrong on purpose (as is likely the case) to see how the game handles these failures going forward.

 

[Zombra]

Not to mention a sizable proportion of players might have gotten the cases wrong on purpose (as is likely the case) to see how the game handles these failures going forward.

I'm skeptical that a "sizable proportion" deliberately failed, but even if they did that means that the system worked - different players played through the game seeing different branches. It's OK for CYOAs to have obviously wrong choices that lead to bad endings.

Considering only a 10% failure rate for each of the 5 cases (if I recall the number of cases correctly right now), the success rate over all cases comes out to be roughly these 60%. While the cases aren't completely independet (Linda Walker's trial), that gives a rough estimate of how difficult the individual cases are. For a game touting the features of 'failing is ok, the game still goes on' and 'players will solve the cases themselves', I would call that easy to pisseasy.

Shrug. The game didn't tout the feature that "cases are brutally difficult and only a genius can solve them all". Failing is ok, the game does go on, and players do solve the cases themselves (and often fail them, whether by choice or by incompetence, we don't know). As far as I can see, it lives up to its intent and every promise.

 

[Koschey]

I'm skeptical that a "sizable proportion" deliberately failed, but even if they did that means that the system worked - different players played through the game seeing different branches. It's OK for CYOAs to have obviously wrong choices that lead to bad endings.

Agreed, nothing wrong with that, but you are missing the point. People intentionally solving cases the wrong way lowers 'perfect' completion rate without this being caused by the difficulty. Nothing conclusive, if noone did it, the rest of my argument still stands, but the larger the proportion of people knowingly taking wrong solutions, the stronger the argument for the game being pisseasy.

Shrug. The game didn't tout the feature that "cases are brutally difficult and only a genius can solve them all". Failing is ok, the game does go on, and players do solve the cases themselves (and often fail them, whether by choice or by incompetence, we don't know). As far as I can see, it lives up to its intent and every promise.

There are approaches to difficulty between 'only geniuses can solve this' and 'Should I put the round, the rectangular or the triangular peg in the round hole?' I think the game falls squarely into the latter for reasons stated earlier in the thread and would have hoped for something more difficult when it comes to solving the cases myself. Since failure doesn't equate to a dead end it wouldn't even mean locking those unable to correctly solve the cases out of completing the game, so I would have expected the game to be a little more difficult on average than less. As it is, you solve the cases yourself in the meaning that you the player do the clicking. So no, I don't see this promise fulfilled except in the barest, most literal interpretation possible.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Boleskine]

 

[taxalot]

I am going through it right now, nearing a close to the spontaneous combustion case.

I think I like it better than Unavowed ? At least, compared to this one, Lamplight City is trying to do something with its universe and characters (I sense a very, very obvious plot twist though, I hope I'm wrong.) ?

But really, pretty much like Unavowed, gameplay is very very subpar. There is no puzzle to speak of, and it sometimes feels like a chore to explore every area again and again just to speak with a different character, because reasons. There is nothing much to do in the various environments of the game, no inventory to speak of. When there is a "puzzle", it's retarded. So, I need to pick up a jug in a part of town so that I can pick up ashes in ANOTHER part of town ? What ? Couldn't you find something else Fordham ?

Is the adventure renaissance dying too ? It was founded on the promise of old school graphics and now both Technobabylon and Blackwell sequels look generic and soul-less. It was also founded on a return to classic puzzles and now the Wadjet crowd seems to be ditching puzzles altogether. It's like they're trying to remake Telltale.

While Lamplight City is enjoyable in its ways, things are moving in a direction I do not like at all.

 

[Boleskine]

Around 18:30 the talk shifts to exploring some of the character, story, and world design from Lamplight City.

 

[Erebus]

I watched a playthrough of this game on Youtube. The puzzles seemed rather weak, so I didn't feel like playing the game myself.


Regarding Bill :

Spoiler

I was left wondering whether his ghost was real, or if it was just a hallucination created by the main character's feelings of guilt.

At no point does he ever say anything that the main character himself doesn't know or couldn't imagine. And there's a conversation between the main character and a bartender, during which the MC tells a story that could be interpreted as meaning that he realizes that Bill's ghost is but a creation of his own mind.

 

[Boleskine]

If Lamplight City gets a sales bump, Francisco will have the supreme edgelord Razorfist himself to thank.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[OndrejSc]

TempleOS version, when?

 

[Boleskine]

 

[JarlFrank]

Playing this right now. The whole "racism bad!" stuff is kinda annoying but otherwise the writing is fine. I like solving cases and don't care that they're not connected, I play this for the detective work not the story. That said, I'm on the fourth case now and found all the ones I solved pretty interesting to investigate.

The third case was the first one where I wasn't 100% sure on the culprit, even though I had plenty of evidence against him I wondered whether the other (red herring) culprit might have done it instead.

But I managed to make the right decision simply by choosing the one that was more work to uncover.

It seems like the basic gist of it is: if it took you a lot of work to uncover the culprit, it's the real one. The one whose clues are easier to find is the wrong one.

 

[JarlFrank]

Finished the fourth case. It was pretty clear this time around, too, but out of curiosity I made a save before reporting my findings. First, I reported the real culprit, then reloaded and reported the red herring.

After making your report, you get a short scene of the police taking the accused into custody. And in this scene at the very latest, you will get confirmation on whether your guess was correct or not.

The falsely accused will say, "What? But I didn't do it!"
The correctly accused will say, "Oh god, so it wasn't a dream!"

So even if you weren't 100% sure from the evidence you found, the accused's reaction will either leave questions about his guilt (in which case he's innocent) or make it obvious that he feels guilty about actually doing it.

And again, the red herring suspect was super easy to figure out, just check one letter and one diary entry in the deceased's apartment.
While the real culprit sent you on an investigation across the city.

So merely by judging the amount of effort you went through to dig up information, you can already make a good guess at who's the real culprit, regardless of the actual facts. I think the game would have been better off if the red herrings weren't so easy to find that you can conclude they're not the real culprit simply by how easy it was to figure them out.

 

[Maxie]

a bit too socially involved this game is

 

[OndrejSc]

Lam' Plight