I didn’t have a demo in the lineup for this week, so I was browsing the Steam store for anything, and nothing came up, so I went to Twitter. Twitter sometimes comes in the clutch because indie developers will share games, which is what happened for this week’s game. Caravan Sandwitch shared that Lorn’s Lure was released on the 20th, and people should go buy it or at least play the demo, So I did just that. I played exactly one 15-minute level this week and will talk about it; this week was Lorn’s Lure.

Lorn’s Lure is an action-adventure platformer from Rubeki Games. The game was released on September 20th on Steam, and it retails for $15.

There is a brief explanation in the beginning, and what I got out of it was that you play as an android who has been stupidly looking for something and wandered into a seemingly infinite abyss. It has been somewhere around 250 years, and your android battery life is going to hell, so you NEED to find a way out, so you venture out looking for the exit and what the hell the place is.

Gameplay from the single level that the demo contained is strictly a platformer. You are introduced to jumping and how the camera works, and you are sent on your merry way. The metal tomb that you are trapped in has a bunch of places to platform and climb. After a while, you are then introduced to the climbing axes, and a whole new world opens up. You are then instructed to just go down, which may be easy because of the new toys you have, but a stamina bar and drop limit (instant death) are obstacles that you need to overcome to master the traversal of this game.

Gameplay, from the one single level in the demo, is pretty straight forward. You are jumping, climbing, and falling to get onto platforms that connect to higher platforms. The climbing axes do a great job of shortcutting the previous section, and the stamina bar is pretty forgiving, allowing the player to climb for a significant amount of time before losing grip.

The drop limit before death is highlighted on the very already limited UI, so it is easy to see, and while you are falling, two brackets will either highlight or not, and at two, it is time to restart. It is a system that requires some experiment to understand how far you can fall, which is kinda fun to master while you are exploring its damp, drab world.

You can take the game slow, or you can go fast; it is up to you, and the game allows you either playstyle.

Lorn’s Lure looks like a PS1 game with all of these smooth and blocky textures. The game is also pretty gray and dark, which is fair because you are in a little metal hole in the ground. Lorn’s Lure may be dark, but it is never frustratingly dark where I have no idea where to go, and dropping isn’t a gambit. There are visual cues to show you where to go to advance. The dark, coupled with the spooky sounds, make for a really tense platforming experience.

Lorn’s Lure is quiet. This metal trap you are in has wind that blows through it, creating an even more isolating experience. You are alone; no one else is here, and the clangs from jumping on metal bars resonate through the area while a spooky, deep melody breaks the silence. It is all very spooky, and it makes it hard to platform properly when the atmosphere of the game is so debilitating.

Lorn’s Lure is a fun game based on the 15 minutes that I spent playing it. I don’t know if it is a tactic to have someone play something so small to entice them into buying the full game or just the game is relatively short, and one level was all that they could give; regardless, the game is super fun. I like experimenting with how far my stamina bar could take me while climbing and seeing how long I could fall before I was forced to restart. Nothing ever really got frustrating because It was always just my mistakes that made me restart.

Tight controls, fun platforming, fun climbing, and a really spooky atmosphere. Lorn’s Lure has me wanting more, and I played for only 15 minutes.