Doesn't systemise being a detective incredibly well, preferring to be a twist on old point and clicks. However, a good degree of choice, strong characters, story, soundtrack and art make a good buy.

Appalling spate of littering.

Systemising detective work in games is difficult to do well. That's why my interest was naturally piqued when hearing of City's absence of a failure state. I've enjoyed various other games experimenting with text entry and linking/contradicting evidence to allow the player to truly embody the role, so the ability to 'fail' was suggestive of a promising amount of player agency. Playing Lamplight City remains a joyous experience, but it isn't so much in its systems that it entertains, but its presentation, stories and characters. As a modern take on the 90s point and click it truly thrives.

You can indeed mess up cases and be forced to settle on the only suspect you have remaining or even give up, but as far as I'm aware, with one exception, this is down to misjudging a dialogue selection (wherein you would usually have had a one in three chance regardless). Characters can take offence, become unreceptive and hold back a crucial lead you can't recover from losing. It's not consistently so. For some characters, you can successfully roll through all the reasons they should divulge, say, an address, with no repercussions. That means you can truly blitz through those cases without any resistance. Naturally, I was hoping failure might come in the form of time pressures, wrongly connecting evidence, following bad leads, etc, etc, but that's just not the kind of game this is. Of course, you get to choose your suspect when multiple are viable, but I don't think too many people will be trumped by the options.

The reality is, City is less a detective simulator of any sort and more just an excellent lateral thinking adventure game of old. You won't be connecting evidence unless you're reasoning through the suspects at the end, but you will be solving puzzles as to how to get past various obstacles or finding information to use for dialogue to further the case. It's stripped away the classic inventory 'drag to environment' system for one in which you passively have items and automatically use them if you select what they interact with or need them for dialogue. It may sound like oversimplification, but this successfully shifts the game from being an object hunt to more of an information hunt. More often than not, the real puzzle will be one of jumping around various people to use their informational nuggets, which does require deduction at times. For instance, you can deduce that if you want to work out which anti-steam terrorist best to pursue, you might ask a steam-supporting scientist if they received any threats and cross-reference that with police records. Or if you know a police officer in your way is new to the force and likely to help a woman in need, you could ask your wife for a favour. Of course, you can eventually brute force most of these by doing your rounds and clicking like a maniac, but more often than not the thought is needed. They can make for some satisfying puzzles.

I can't not see an ecstatic skull finding its brain.

The actual cases are all very distinctive and excellent stories that are fun to unfurl in themselves. I love that you can read the newspaper upon the next case and see the consequences of your last arrest. Sometimes the clues seem a little obvious and the route through said clues a bit bungling and overall lucky. One character even comments in incredulity at one point 'you found me from my name on a calendar?!' The more adventure game puzzle trappings of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' with various characters and even traditional puzzle activities like a minigame wherein you fix a boiler are a welcome aside, but can feel like they mess with the verisimilitude. It's all good fun, though.

It may not be the detective game I wanted, but I was otherwise hooked. The soundtrack from Mark Benis is both incredible and incredibly varied with around forty tracks detailed to the level of piano notes coinciding with the flickering of a street lamp. It feels like every new location is lent a unique feel. Known previously for collaborations on various fan projects, he's really delivered something here that gives the whole production a cinematic edge. It will be a while before any of the tracks leave my head.

Francisco's artwork is gorgeous in its own right and as a realisation of a bygone approach with its lower resolution pixel art. With its commitment to this style, I think you have to accept some of the foibles of presentation. You can never tell exactly what a character looks like until you're presented with a more detailed appearance in the dialogue window, for instance. Sometimes they look remarkably unalike! It's the same occasionally with dialogue. Over fifty voice actors and there isn't a weak link in there, but you will have to contend with a heated exchange suddenly turning very cordial or positive exchange doing a 180 to dismissive when the inflexible, default farewells kick in. Getting it fullscreen isn't immediately intuitive either. I found 'Direct3D, my screen resolution and fullscreen-fit' worked in the end.

Check any interrogation manual. Sneezing. It works.

Perhaps the main source of joy is the main characters. Miles is an incredibly well humanised and balanced a protagonist through his constant interactions with his wife and the voice of his dead partner, Bill. By having the usual protagonist's magnification glass explanation of an object taken over by the witty, disembodied partner, it's made oh so much more interesting and the game a much less lonely one. Annoying at first, but quickly endearing. One of, if not the most, interesting subplots is that of Miles' relationship with his wife, Adelaide; especially since you can shape it in various ways. Perhaps it's simply more mature a relationship than I'm used to seeing in a game, but it's incredibly captivating in itself. Nice to see a bit of good relationship practice promoted!

Thankfully I'm its audience, but it's very relentlessly a socially progressive game. Bill can be a bit of a broken record - using every item in a rich person's abode to cut them down. For good reason in-game, of course. Leveraging anti-worker consequences from fantastical Steampunk machines in an otherwise Victorian setting, it's an interesting way to have our two worlds meet socially and technologically. I like that it sticks to its political guns and does it so creatively. We need more clear political messages in games.

Lamplight City doesn't systemise being a detective incredibly well, preferring as it does to offer a twist on the point and clicks of old. More than redeeming this is its good degree of choice, strong characters, story, soundtrack and art. Both sometimes trapped in its old school wrapper and amazing for it, overall I can only highly recommend it.