Lorn’s Lure Review
Lorn’s Lure is a delightfully frustrating first-person precision platformer.
Lorn’s Lure. (Credit: Rubeki Games)
Lorn’s Lure from Rubeki is a haunting, dark, first-person parkour platformer with retro PS1-style graphics. Difficult and with minimum hand-holding, it encourages you to experiment with its mechanics to traverse seemingly impossible alien landscapes. Whenever I got frustrated with its difficulty, I soon found a path forward and was drawn back in by my desire to see what would come next. The game originated on the 2021 Haunted PS1 Demo Disc.
From Steam:
Leaving his home colony while tracking a mysterious glitch, an android finds himself in the midst of a vast and dangerous structure, completely hidden from his people's knowledge. Unable to go back, you must keep going to find out where he is being led... And why he left in the first place.
Lorn’s Lure. (Credit: Rubeki Games)
In Lorn’s Lure, you traverse massive structures, running and climbing on precariously small platforms, often at dizzying heights. Each of the game’s levels has a different feel and will present new challenges. You’ll scale cliff walls with no visible bottom, climb towers by running on thin pipes that protrude from industrial machinery, explore pitch-black tunnels lit only by your flares, navigate stone aqueducts, and more. Every level is a massive, ingeniously designed vertical maze. Sometimes, half the challenge is figuring out where you need to go, with an optional waypoint system as your only guide.
It’s a tough game, to say the least. It demands absolute precision in your movement and jumps, which feel great thanks to the game’s tight controls. Leaping from platform to platform and using your pickaxes to climb vertical surfaces feels natural. As soon as you feel comfortable, the game will throw in a new gameplay mechanic like wall-running to keep things fresh and increase the challenge. Pulling off moves like that feels clunky at first, leading to frustration, but it didn’t take long for it to click and then feel completely natural. The game has a great built-in tolerance for error thanks to a generous checkpoint system that will almost always spawn you just before your last death-defying leap if you die. And you’ll die hundreds of times. The game will let you know how many deaths at the end of each level.
Lorn’s Lure. (Credit: Rubeki Games)
Lorn’s Lure features a retro PS1 art style with chunky, low-poly environments and flat-looking textures. It uses mist and fog for ambiance and atmospheric perspective, making levels feel even more massive than they already are. The only downside of the game’s look is that sometimes it’s very easy to get lost because things might look the same in any direction. Even so, I often paused to admire the game’s vistas.
The game’s sound design and music contribute to its haunting ambiance. Your actions echo in the cavernous depths, and the sound of wind reinforces the danger of precariously dangling from great heights. Most of the music is minimalistic and creates an air of wonder and mystery.
Lorn’s Lure. (Credit: Rubeki Games)
Lorn’s Lure is a fantastic game. It’s tense, frustrating, and will make your hands soak your controller in nervous sweat, but you’ll feel great every time you achieve another death-defying feat. It’s a wonderfully designed first-person precision platformer, and if you’re into that, you shouldn’t overlook it.
Lorn’s Lure is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
