Lumo

My favourite game as a kid, no, in my entire life** is Head Over Heels, a monochrome 8-bit isometric puzzle game I played as a teenager on my Commodore 64 and replayed as an adult when I one day discovered, like it was all my birthdays at once, a faithfully updated PC shareware version, and so mad Head Over Heels fan that I am, the idea of Lumo, which adopts the style and contains nostalgic references to Head Over Heels, excited me and even though I'd read it was a short game I enthusiastically sat down to play it, only to realise fairly quickly that nothing is ever going to rival the joy I experienced waddling as Head the dog or as Heels the cat, backwards and forwards, from room to room marvelling at the stylings of five or six distinct and expansive worlds, wanting to end the game not a mere Novice, wondering how many rooms there were in total and whether I'd visited them all, and breathlessly anticipating what else the punishing game was going to throw at me, and so of course, thirty years later, Lumo underwhelmed me with its less engaging, not as cute hero, less precise 3D gameplay, less imaginative puzzles, and uninspired coin- and secret-object collecting side missions which did not encourage me to play the game over again.

**Disclaimer: I reserve the right to also claim that Detective, Wizball, Resident Evil, the original Prince of Persia, and many other games of my childhood are also my all-time favourite games in my life, in subsequent game reviews.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS