[h1]Introduction:[/h1]
Behold here a game that has no appeal beyond the short time it takes to 100% the 7 achievements. It is fighting to be among the most boring walking simulators made – and would be, were it not for the fact it is mercifully short. With a non-existent story, unimpressive visuals, a mediocre soundtrack and totally uninspired gameplay, Loverowind does nothing to capture the atmosphere of spring. Go outside instead. The graphics are lovely this time of year.
[h1]Visuals:[/h1]
Loverowind seemed like it had no theme in its visual style. You start in a building where the few assets around were not visually consistent (some are ugly and bold, like the fire brazier things, others were worn and muted). The building was bigger than it had to be, and felt empty and soulless.
Outside, there are two different fields where the rest of the game is set. They have different colour palettes – neither very appealing to my taste. Lighting was sometimes harsh; dark areas were too dark, and light areas were overblown. Environment textures were poor by today’s standards and not in a way that felt styled, but rather simply low-quality. Colour was bold and ugly, or washed out – it never got it right. Both fields were barren apart from a floor of grass and flowers dotted by trees which didn’t cover the view distance (they faded in as you moved), and less than a handful of landmarks like a mill, some alter-like things, and a pond.
Loverowind was fairly unappealing, with poorly detailed environments making exploration pointless and tedious. It failed to capture much of an atmosphere and overall felt amateur and lazily put together. I was playing this on ultra graphics and everything looked just a bit grainy or blurry, and the view distances were marred by glowing orbs all over, which serve as power-ups, making you walk faster.
[h1]Gameplay:[/h1]
In gameplay, Loverowind nothing worthy of commendation. You rotate some stairs, you pick up some glowing flowers on opposite sides of the map, click on those alters I mentioned, chase a green ball, and go back into the castle/cave thing. No context or reason is given for this. Little fun is to be had from doing it.
[h1]Audio:[/h1]
The soundtrack was fine as soundtracks go – it was a soft, peaceful piano piece, but it was neither memorable or moving. It would, over a better game, have captured the dreamy weightlessness that one might feel walking in nature, but here it was just background noise that will be forgotten as soon as you exit.
[h1]Story:[/h1]
There is no story conveyed in this Loverowind. You find yourself inexplicably in a room, connected by a cave-like corridor to what looks a bit like a castle. You emerge from the side of a mountain, run around an empty, soulless valley twice completing non-sensical, and mind-numbingly easy ‘puzzles’, and then you watch a short cutscene that makes no sense before the game ends.
[h1]Conclusion:[/h1]
The only reason I can think of to recommend Loverowind is the short time it takes to 100%, to help boost your profile completion rate. Except its profile features are limited by Steam because it hasn’t met certain engagement metrics, so until it does, it’s not even useful for that. The piano music might be nice, but you can find better on YouTube for free. And so I am left, regrettably, with a simple conclusion to perhaps my briefest review yet. There’s no reason to buy this. It fails, audibly and visually, to capture the experience of wind in spring in any meaningful, moving, or memorable way.
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