Lumin's Path

I am going to recommend this game based on its POTENTIAL, not based on its current form. (+) THE GOOD 1. Collectibles! (red diamonds) 2. Cute metallic protagonist thingy (Lumin) 3. Good environmental storytelling elements (benches, houses, blue fluorescent flora etc) 4. Interesting light-switch mechanic 5. Challenging platforming sections 6. Fair checkpointing 7. Gradual difficulty increase to keep players challenged and invested (-) THE BAD a. Reported problems with controller input and responsiveness b. Inability to access certain areas of levels c. Vague signposting/level flow (especially for collectibles) d. Achievements failing to pop Breaking it down: (+) THE GOOD 1. Collectibles Each level (there are currently three available, it is a short game) contains 4 collectible red diamonds. Any completionist will no doubt have these on their radar. The problem here is that not all of them are accessible, or at least, the path which would normally allow players to access them is not clearly defined. This needs to be rectified so players have clear instructions on how to access them. There is a big difference between "I know how to get x but I can't" (skill ceiling, can be fixed through practice/good luck) and "I don't know how to get x and I can't". It should be the former. Update: seems I am an idiot and was looking at the lower platform Lumin had just come from the whole time haha! Oh goodness. Nevermind. Will leave this untouched for clarity. 2. Cute metallic protagonist thingy Lumin is cool. He is like a baby C3PO. I like the design and he moves pretty well. I like the double jump. I'll admit, whenever a 3D platformer lacks double jump I get irritated a little. It helps so much in traversing gaps and feels so satisfying to prolong airtime. Thanks for including it! 3. Good environmental storytelling elements (benches, houses, blue fluorescent flora etc) I can't begin to describe how important it is to have little details in the background. That stuff might be 'on the side' but you really don't want your game looking bland and boring. I recently 100 percented Super Lucky's Tale (not achievements, just collected all the clovers) and I was CONSTANTLY in admiration of the 'extras'. Plants, vines, stars, flowers, tiny mice, chairs, books, it's seriously like a storybook. I love how Lumin's Path makes an attempt here. I would double everything to be honest. Feature MORE background stuff. Little changes, big impact. 4. Interesting light-switch mechanic This is totally fundamental to the gameplay. You absolutely need to be intimately acquainted with it and have very quick reflexes if you want to conquer more tricky platforming sections (see the Pyramid). I liked switching off Lumin's light to access purple pads, and switching it on to access yellow pads, because it felt familiar and intuitive. This mechanic isn't original, it is featured in tons of games, but really stretching it out to its full potential is not typical. For example, I just finished A Hat in Time and the Dweller mask allows you to temporarily access invisible platforms. After a few seconds the platforms disappear and you need to be on solid ground again and wait for the mask to 'recharge' to use it again. There's also a level in Super lucky's Tale (Spookington) which allows you to access invisible platforms only when holding a lamp. But what unites these games is the invisible platforms are only a PART of the level, not a major chunk of it, which is the case in Lumin's Path. Buckle Up Games has done a good job implementing this mechanic, particularly in the final stage/Pyramid, which I will discuss next. 5. Challenging platforming sections Apart from speed sections with disappearing vines, one of the most difficult platforming challenges in Lumin's Path was the Pyramid/final stage. Wow. That was so brutal at first. You need to be SUPER fast to avoid the black vine overgrowth catching up with you while leaping across the pads AND avoid switching your light off because you need to keep it on so the fireflies can reach the next lamp. While initially frustrating, I kept at it and felt extremely satisfied once I had conquered it. I would really enjoy a longer version of this level with a few more checkpoints thrown in. Seriously, this is like some Crash Bandicoot stuff. Milk it! Go to town. 6. Fair checkpointing There's no communication with regards to saving progress, so you don't know where Lumin will reset when he dies. That's something that should be improved. However, the checkpointing is pretty good in this game. No putting you back to the start of the level or anything like that. Very reasonable. No major complaints except one thing: Something I really liked in A Hat in Time was how Gears For Breakfast didn't make players start the level again (I'm talking about time rifts specifically) (and sit through an unskippable cutscene!) if they've made it to a checkpoint somewhere. Just restart them there. 7. Gradual difficulty increase to keep players challenged and invested The first stage was easy and a good, safe introduction to the light switch mechanic. No crazy vine acrobatics or mad rushing away from black overgrowth. The second stage features a lot more timed sections (eg hurry and reach the red diamond before the vine disappears) and feels a lot longer and riskier. The third and final stage is the most brutal of the lot. But comparatively speaking is also the most rewarding when completed. I would work on the difficulty curve a little. It feels like a big jump between the second and third stage, so maybe put an extra stage between them to bring players up to speed. Other than that, no suggestions. I was invested until the end and never bored. Great job! (-) THE BAD a. Reported problems with controller input and responsiveness While I personally had no issues with this, I have read accounts from other players who have experienced controller input problems. In a 3D platformer, many players don't like using keyboard/mouse combo (I naturally gravitate towards controllers myself, blame Nintendo) because it's hard to change the camera with the mouse while moving and jumping with the keys. Cognitively difficult. Feels much easier and more natural to do on controller. Therefore, any issues with this should be immediately ironed out. b. Inability to access certain areas of levels Ah, this is so frustrating. It's the classic Scrat problem from Ice Age: me see acorn, me want to get acorn, me can't get acorn. Levels feel incomplete because you can't access (or have no clear path to access) certain areas. At the same time, they tempt you with mushrooms and platforming pads which suggest you should be able to go there. This has a MAJOR impact on the game, especially in terms of collectibles. If you can't access an area, you can't indulge in your completionist tendencies (fantasies). c. Vague signposting/level flow (especially for collectibles) Extending the previous point is the general level flow. I found myself guessing a few times how to navigate to the next area. It's not as bad as the Yooka-Laylee hub, mind you. That was just very difficult to memorise, hence the subsequent implementation of directional arrows. I feel like arrows wouldn't hurt here either. Or, perhaps, a dynamic camera, sort of like how in stage one the camera directs you to focus on the black vines. d. Achievements failing to pop I've only been able to unlock one achievement so far (starting a new game). I'm pretty sure I've jumped into canyons more times than I'd like to admit (ha) and am confused as to why the 'Make up your mind', 'Smooth joints' and 'Don't break your crystal' chieves aren't being tracked. I have no idea how I'm doing in terms of progress. Dysfunctional achievements should be fixed in a future update. 2025 update: Achievements not tracking anymore. #3DPlatformerRenaissance [url=https://kkatlas.wordpress.com/2018/05/23/3d-platformer-watchlist/] [/url]

Мне нравится проделанная работа! Очень многообещающая концепция, рад, что поиграл в нее, и с нетерпением жду дальнейших дополнений! Изменить: новый второй уровень потрясающий!

Lumin's Path is a student project by a team with no prior development experience, who made this game as part of their classwork, and it... kind of shows. There are some big ideas in here. This game is both graphically and especially musically gorgeous. We had to watch the trailer more than once when we saw this in our Steam Discovery Queue just because the song was so beautiful and soothing that we just wanted to hear it again. It has an absolute mountain of great things going for it, and then it... stumbles in execution. You are a robot with a light that can be turned off and on at will. The environment reacts accordingly: some vines block your way when it's dark, and you need to shine your light so they recede. Other vines block your way when it's light, and you need to turn your light off so they recede. (The tutorial confusingly claims these ones are attracted to your light and that they "may help," which is completely untrue.) Some floating platforms are only solid when lit, others only when not lit. These elements are all creatively arranged to make jumping segments and such. Watch the trailer and you'll get the basic idea. A PS2-looking 3D platformer such as this tends to live or die based on its movement and object physics, though, and that is this game's biggest weakness. Your robot will fall off of giant vines that are supposed to be platforms but somehow register as slopes. It will mysteriously stop running when it encounters invisible walls and other forms of wonky object collision. It will get stuck inside things. Don't even get me started on the camera. This game is not very long, a mere three stages (each of which have secret collectible gems,) and it's free. And I already said this before but it bears repeating: it's gorgeous. The premise and ideas are clever, every screenshot is a work of art, the soundtrack is so charming that I really want it to exist on someone's Bandcamp page or something somewhere. (Seriously, the music is fantastic, can we please get a soundtrack release?) But after finishing the first stage with 100% completion and finishing the second with 3/4 gems (overall progress which took about 70 minutes according to our gameplay stats, but I assure you that at least 20 of them were spent trying to get the gem in the starting room which appears to have been masterfully hidden within an actual labyrinth of invisible force field-like object collision glitches) I just got tired of fighting this game's actual gameplay. I want so badly to like it, but at the end of the day it simply won't let us.

"Lumin's Path" is a simple student project, a low poly third person platformer. It's short, the graphics aren't great, and it needs more polish. What do you do in the game? Third person platforming though this short homework assignment. Has anyone considered that it's not necessarily good for gamers if every educational instution in the world dumps their student homework assignments onto Steam? Of course not, why would they consider what's good for gamers? In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D visuals which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.

Lumin's Path ist ein kostenloser Plattformer, der von einigen Freunden innert 7 Wochen zusammengeschustert wurde. Und für das ist das Produkt durchaus ansehnlich. Die Grafik erinnert an andere 3D-Platformer früherer Jahre und wirkt im ersten Moment durchaus vielversprechend. Und die Tatsache, dass man von so einem "Studiumsprojekt" nicht höchste Qualität erwarten sollte, muss man ja auch in die Berechnung einbeziehen, oder?Naja, kommt ganz darauf an, was man erwartet. Wenn man vor allem interessiert daran ist, was ein paar Studenten in kürzerer Zeit hinbekommen haben, dann sehr wohl. Wenn man jedoch den spielerischen Aspekt anschaut, dann spielt die Entstehung nunmal keine Rolle, sondern zählen alleine die inhaltlichen Werte. Und da lässt sich das Spiel ganz kurz zusammenfassen in: Unfertig und unpoliert.Das Ganze wirkt wie eine frühe Betaversion, was unterstrichen wird durch die Versionsanzeige im Hauptmenü. Entsprechend fehlt auch vieles, was so ein Spiel auszeichnen könnte: Eine Story oder zumindest Hintergrundinfos zur Figur und Spielewelt, ein echtes Ziel oder eine runde Gameplaymechanik. Gerade letzteres schmerzt besonders. Das Spielen mit Gamepad war für mich unmöglich, da die Kameradrehungen viel zu wild waren. Also wird mit Maus und Tastatur gespielt. Aber auch da erweist sich die Hüpferei als äusserst unpräzise und frustrierend. Da nützt die an und für sich interessante Licht-an-aus-Mechanik auch nicht mehr viel. Und ohne irgendein konkretes Ziel gibt es überhaupt keinen Grund sich nach dem x-ten GameOver nochmals daran zu setzen und von ganz vorne die ganze mühsame Hüpferei nochmals auf sich zu nehmenFazit: Eine unfertige Betaversion, bei der kein Spielspass aufkommt. Auch kostenlos im jetzigen Zustand die Zeit leider nicht wert.

I can tell you've put decent work into this game but it is far from playable. It feels very swimmy, and many many of the platforms cannot be stood on. Not to mention, the setting reset every time the game loads leaving your camera spinning out of control. Go play the first few spyro games. Use those as a guide for your platforming.