Lamplight City

Lamplight City is a point-and-click detective story with old pixel style graphics. You play as Miles Fordham. Previously, he was the best detective on the police force, but after losing a case and spiraling, he is now sitting around doing nothing until something draws him back into solving crimes. Now he acts more like a private detective, and he might just solve the case that got away from him during that time.

Find it on Steam.

Lamplight City is in a fictionalized world of sorts where steam machines are coming into prominence and something called aethericity is being theorized about. This is all background information, though, and the game doesn’t really make use of it. You don’t even really see too much steam machinery, only the normal stuff like water boilers and heaters. It does seem like a missed opportunity since talking to people, a lot of citizens are divided on whether they like all this newfangled steam tech or not.

The game is divided up into multiple cases. Each one has you investigating crime scenes, talking to witnesses and suspects and then making a conclusion. Since you are operating out of Lamplight City, you sometimes will run into people from past cases or people that have connections with past cases, which is fun. It makes the city feel like a character that remembers what you do.

Gameplay primarily revolves around talking to people and picking up clues. To help you along the way, there is a casebook. The casebook itself gives big hints sometimes since you might think you’re done with a place or character, but the casebook still has the objective to investigate. There is rarely picking up items, and you don’t have an inventory to really look through. If you need to use an item, it’ll come up in dialogue choices instead. So the main focus is on you picking up clues and then figuring things out.

Along the way, you’ll meet a large cast of characters. Some are important, others are less so. Do be careful about how you interact with people, though. Doing certain actions might make them not want to talk to you and render certain clues missed.

There are multiple ways to end each case. You can also declare a case unsolvable if you somehow lose all the needed clues. Yes, it is possible to do badly enough that you can’t actually solve the case, though I didn’t have that happen to me. There are correct suspects for each case, but that’s up to you to determine.

Lamplight City is a detective game set in the fictionalized world of steam technology. Drawn in a charming old pixel style, there is a lot going on in the city. Most of it doesn’t matter to Miles. Miles is here to solve the case that got away from him, and maybe pick up the pieces of his life afterwards. The results of the cases depends on how much you put into it. Whether you are able to point to the right suspect or not is all up to your investigative ability.

Find it on Steam.