"Lamplight City" Behind the scenes - gamescom 2023
Event Information
We're part of the Games gamescom Steam Event from August 23 - August 27. We'll run multiple events and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
Lamplight City's developer Francisco Gonzalez plays the prologue of the game and reveals interesting behind the scenes information.
About Lamplight City
A steampunk-ish detective adventure from the creator of A Golden Wake and Shardlight! Can private investigator Miles Fordham find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
"Lamplight City" Behind the scenes - LudoNarraCon 2023
Event Information
We're part of the LudoNarraCon Event from May 4 - May 11. We'll run multiple events and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
Lamplight City's developer Francisco Gonzalez plays the prologue of the game and reveals interesting behind the scenes information.
About Lamplight City
A steampunk-ish detective adventure from the creator of A Golden Wake and Shardlight! Can private investigator Miles Fordham find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
"Lamplight City" Behind the scenes - LudoNarraCon 2023
Event Information
We're part of the LudoNarraCon Event from May 4 - May 11. We'll run multiple events and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
Lamplight City's developer Francisco Gonzalez plays the prologue of the game and reveals interesting behind the scenes information.
About Lamplight City
A steampunk-ish detective adventure from the creator of A Golden Wake and Shardlight! Can private investigator Miles Fordham find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
"Lamplight City" Behind the scenes - LudoNarraCon 2023
Event Information
We're part of the LudoNarraCon Event from May 4 - May 11. We'll run multiple events and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
Lamplight City's developer Francisco Gonzalez plays the prologue of the game and reveals interesting behind the scenes information.
About Lamplight City
A steampunk-ish detective adventure from the creator of A Golden Wake and Shardlight! Can private investigator Miles Fordham find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
We're part of the Big Adventure Event 2022 from Jan 20 - Jan 24. We'll run multiple streaming events and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
Lamplight City's developer Francisco Gonzalez plays the prologue of the game and reveals interesting behind the scenes information.
About Lamplight City
A steampunk-ish detective adventure from the creator of A Golden Wake and Shardlight! Can private investigator Miles Fordham find justice for his clients and track down his partner's killer before his entire world comes apart?
A fix for the "True Detective" achievement not unlocking.
Lamplight City Developer Commentary Update
Join developer Francisco Gonzalez, narrative consultant/editor Jess Haskins, and composer Mark Benis as they provide behind-the scenes information and insight into the making of Lamplight City.
Presented in an interactive format, the version 1.10 update adds a Commentary toggle in the Settings menu, which activates commentary nodes throughout the game. The player can click on them for Designer, Art, Narrative, and Music commentaries while playing through the game, with occasional non-interactive nodes appearing during cutscenes.
The commentary contains game spoilers, so completing the game at least once before listening is highly recommended.
This update will not invalidate previous save games.
Happy Birthday, Lamplight City!
Happy 1 year anniversary to Lamplight City! Special thanks to everyone who has played, reviewed, and supported the game in the last year.
For those unfamiliar, or who haven't had a chance to play yet, here are some frequently asked questions:
What does "a detective game where it's okay to fail" mean? In most detective games, the game pushes you towards the right solution no matter what. In Lamplight City, true detective work is required to reach the right conclusion, as each case has multiple suspects that can be accused (rightly or wrongly) and several leads or paths which might be closed off based on your actions.
However, restarting the game because you're completely stuck at a dead end is never required. Even if all your leads are closed off, the case can still be declared unsolvable, and the story will continue. While you may not see an optimal ending, you can still get to the end of the main story no matter what.
Do my decisions matter? Absolutely! Unlike most adventure games where dialogues usually consists of clicking on a topic until all are exhausted, Lamplight City encourages you to consider your choices carefully. Some characters might require a more forceful approach to part with information, while others might shut down completely and close off a lead if you handle them too roughly. It's up to you to read characters' emotions and attitudes and determine the best approach (also, the game will usually give you fair warning if you're entering a potentially risky situation!)
Why is there no inventory? The core of a detective game is investigation and interrogation. Therefore, it seemed tonally inconsistent to feature inventory combination puzzles. A real detective trying to catch a criminal wouldn't waste time constructing a fishing rod from a stick, a piece of string and some chewing gum. Instead, Lamplight City handles inventory in a context-sensitive way.
If you click on a locked door, but haven't yet found the key (or other means of entry) you might get a message saying that it's locked. If you return to it later once you have found an appropriate means of entry, the cursor will usually change to a hand (interact) and the item will automatically be used, or a menu will pop up allowing you to choose what to do next.
I've seen some reviews mention that there is a lot of talking in this game. Is that right? Yes. The bulk of the gameplay involves tracking down persons of interest and asking them questions in order to get information pertinent to your current case. However, while the game does feature over 50 characters to question, you won't necessarily encounter them all during a single playthrough. In addition, you're also required to investigate and explore crime scenes and other locations to search for clues and documents which will help you crack each case.
What is the casebook all about? The casebook acts as your archive for all items, clues, and documents collected in each case. At any time, you can open it to review these. It also keeps a list of objectives, so you'll always have an idea of what to do next, or have a reminder of what you've done if you need to put the game down and come back to it later.
Does this game have a branching storyline/multiple endings? It does! While the overarching story remains the same, each of the individual cases has different possible outcomes that, on some occasions, will affect events in other cases. For example, if you accuse a suspect in one case, you might encounter someone related to them in another case who might be angry at you for sending them to jail...or might be extremely grateful!
The game itself has 4 distinct endings, but it's up to you to find them all!
Will I see all five cases no matter what? Not necessarily! There are a couple of ways to get a special ending before Case 5, but again, that's for the detectives out there to discover.
In addition, a major update is being worked on: Developer Commentary! It will be rolled out as a free update before the end of the year. Developer Francisco Gonzalez, along with Narrative Consultant/Editor Jess Haskins and Composer Mark Benis will offer behind-the-scenes anecdotes and information about the game's development. Keep an eye out for the announcement!
Update to Version 1.09 and other news
End of year kudos
Lamplight City made it on to a few really nice lists and award nominations. Here are a few that we would like to mention:
Nominated for #TheBitAwards PC/CONSOLE GAME OF THE YEAR Playcrafting New York
Also big thanks to players who liked the game and told the world about it:
Top 10 Games I played in 2018 @symphonyofswans
Best Pixel Art Adventure Games of 2018
Top 10 pixel art adventure games of 2018 @Virtumente
Honorable mention to:
Games that should have been on this list by I haven't gotten around to playing them cuz I suck @GuyYuvalGP
and the people who posted in response to
Quote this tweet with 3 games you’re going to play before 2018 ends. @GameSpot
Details on the update to version 1.09
This small update fixes a pesky bug in Case 1:
If speaking to Sabine Martin about the back room and the option to drop the subject was chosen, it wouldn't set the flag to close off the lead which allows Albert Martin to be accused. This caused the game to become unwinnable if Andrew Montgomery was made angry.
Previous saves are unaffected, however if already stuck in this situation, a game restart or load from a previous save will be necessary to proceed.
Also the save game system has been overhauled to fix an issue where saves were automatically overwritten to the same slot if some previous saves were deleted. There is also a message added when the maximum number of save slots (50) is reached, rather than just overwriting the save.
Update to Version 1.08
Based on player feedback, this new patch allows cases to be declared unsolvable when a suspect is added to the Casebook, in addition to closing off all leads.
Previous save games will still work, however the option to declare the case unsolvable will not appear if a suspect has already been added.
