Lost in Play
Might contain spoilers.
Beautiful, charming, lovely, delightful, whimsical. The music is pleasant and the animation is gorgeous. Its gentle curves and generous blocks of colour could be mistaken for the all-too-prevalent Flash style, but, fortunately, resemble the excellent Hilda or Gravity Falls more than Inside Job , and call to mind illustrations in books from my childhood. Indeed, I feel lucky to have enjoyed, in quick succession, two completely different yet equally stunning games—the other being LEGO Builder’s Journey —with terrific visuals that mock the very idea of technical limitations.
Speaking of Hilda, I couldn’t help noticing some pleasingly familiar designs in the grand flight sequence atop the dragon, including an angry face in the cloud that could fit right into the show. I like the detail of the dragon’s wings keeping it afloat rather than a magical weightlessness: flapping creates lift; not flapping causes it to fall. The movements of creatures and animals is superb.
The protagonists make an entertaining and believable pair of siblings; it’s a nice touch to include their ‘untold’ adventures between the last two chapters and reveal the ‘real’ versions of images from the credits. The sheep who is attracted by the street musician’s heavy metal and offended by the suggestion to go home had me guffawing. The final level is exceedingly well done with its outer space setting and outstanding animation. I found myself wishing I could live in that world.
The puzzles were tough for me to decipher and solve, as someone who always struggles on that front, but well constructed. My favourite by far is the wonderful Rapunzel spoof and its time-traveling pages. On a very minor note, it’s annoying that although the game works perfectly with my PlayStation 5 controller all the prompts are labeled for an Xbox controller.
A visual sampling
