This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Highly recommend this game if you like good atmospheric psychological horror with puzzles.
I had been looking for a game in a similar vein to SOMA for a while and LEMPO carried the torch beautifully.
What I love about these games is that atmosphere is treated as king with the respect it deserves. You'll find yourself wandering around in silence with an eerie wind blowing and heart-plunking strings screeching at you in tense moments. The sound design is great at keeping the player in a state of unease, wondering what's around the corner and second guessing their next move. Over the years, I've noticed the best games out there prioritise good sound design and this is one of them.
The story is quite bizarre and mysterious but that's not why I play these games. The bizarreness is why I play these games. I don't really need to understand what's going on in a story, as long as I feel like I'm embarking on something magical. If you're like that then you'll probably like this game.
The main game-play consists of exploring eerie and super-natural settings, solving puzzles as you try to make sense of the bizarre situation you've found yourself in. You find traces of those who perished before you, trying to put the pieces to and escape your nightmarish prison. I don't want to spoil the puzzles and will let you find out yourself.
Some of the puzzles I found to be a little more obscure and confusing than they needed to be and did frustrate me. An example was where a musical instrument and sheet was put before you to play. I have 0 understanding of musical theory and did not know how to interpret the musical notations; whether to play the string from the line at the top of the note or the circle at the bottom a few strings down. Another example was when a page of electrical symbols was given to solve a puzzle that needed to be interpreted to find the solution. Thirdly, another puzzle required the player to look for a back of an obscure page to find the answer.
These frustrating puzzles I encountered were mandatory in order to finish the game and I think making them too obscure was harsh for the player. I was frustrated a few times and momentarily considered not continuing to finish the game. instead I went online to find the solution in a walk-through. I think if a player is met with such a dilemma it is not a good game design decision as you want them to ideally finish the game.
The main criticism I have for the game is the lack of usefulness of the navigation tools - the compass and the map. I found myself trial-and-erroring, relying on memory and getting lost and wandering around way more than was necessary. I can appreciate if this was part of the devs thinking to get the player 'lost' and immersed as if they were, but it led to frustration that I felt was detrimental to the player's experience in comparison to the immersion given.
I didn't understand how the compass worked till one of the fine devs explained it to me and even then it still felt lacking. He said the red needle always points north but I think north should be hard printed at the top of the compass and the needle faces what direction you are facing in relation to north. This is an easier and more efficient way to quickly nagivate than to subtractively decipher which direction you are going in relation to a moving north needle. I don't know maybe my brain is weird :S but that's how I've used compasses on most games. The first map of the game also showed north on the left side of the map whereas the 2nd map of the game moved it to the top of the map, again sowing confusion.
In saying all these criticisms I still think Lempo is a great game because it offers something different and exciting which many developers are too risk averse to do these days. The great atmosphere and puzzles really pulled Lempo out of any shortcomings it had. This is the first debut game from Finnish game devs One Trick Entertainment, a 3 man team! They punched way above their class as newcomers and I am already anticipating their next game. This might end up being one of those "cult-classic" type games people come back to 10 years later...
~ 8/10
~ 8.5/10 if fixes to the navigation issues were implemented. Cost me hours haha!… Expand
