Lumini was first released into the wild back in 2015 by then developer Speelbaars. At that time the only way to experience it was on PC but now, five years on, 2Awesome Studio has picked up the publishing rights and ported the game over to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The latter of which I will be reviewing today.
Unfortunately, at least in terms of the Nintendo Switch version, there are substantial performance issues. During my time with the game I encountered a lot of frame rate drops, which doesn’t always bother me in games but given the games relaxing tone really affected the experience. I have however been told by friends who have played on PS4 that the performance is much better.
You start off controlling one single lumini and add more as you progress. There are four colours of lumini in the game and you will choose which one leads your flock based on the task at hand. The game does feature combat, but it is often more frustrating than rewarding. Enemies disguised as plants will shoot you with little time for you to react and others will chase you at a greater speed than you are able to move at.
Setting the blue lumini to lead your flock does allow a boost which helps you escape certain doom, while the red one has a pulse attack that damages nearby enemies. These special abilities do add some depth to the game, but using the boost for example also tends to send the frame rate into a downward spiral.
The soundtrack is nice and does add to the ambiance, but again whenever you find yourself getting lost in the game, the stuttering gameplay kicks in and takes you out of the moment. This is particularly frustrating because I feel like I should be enjoying the art in front of me more. Perhaps a patch can fix some of these issues, or maybe it is limited by the hardware.
Overall, Lumini (on Switch) is a missed opportunity. I do think a decent game lives beneath all of the technical hiccups though and thus, at some point in the near future I plan to pick this up on PlayStation 4 and play with headphones on. I want to sample the full experience and see if the game clicks with me. For now though, I cannot recommend the game on Nintendo’s platform.
-Terry
