Lorn’s Lure
The Megastructure and You
Even on its surface, Lorn’s Lure is a unique game. We’ve seen climbing games before, but few set in a world as unclimbable and hostile as the endless machine this game takes place in, dubbed “The Structure.” As much as that sounds like a criticism, this inhospitality is an important theme. It’s strange to say I enjoyed feeling like a bug diving down a wood chipper, but I did. So much, it moved me to write this whole post. So – if you’ll let me – I’d like to tell you about why this game is so special to me.
Believe it or not, there is a person in this image
In this game, you play as a kind of android explorer called an observer, implied to be once organic, now fully mechanical, and several hundred years old. The world as we know it today doesn’t seem to exist. Instead, you and your fellow androids live in a colony, somewhere in the upper levels of the structure. That is, until the vision of an owl leads you below, and you follow. Your motives for this are unclear, but ornithological interest is unlikely. I’m not convinced our MC knows what a bird is.
You are ushered through a quick tutorial, but the game begins proper once you find your climbing picks. A few things jump out early on. For one, there is a lot more resource management involved than I’d expected. Climbing and jumping take up sparse stamina, and the obstacles are precision built to use up all of it. My second observation is just how much the environment resists your efforts. Nothing here feels like it’s meant to be climbed – and it isn’t. Of course, it’s a game intended to be played, but in the context of the story, this place wasn’t made for you. The structure is far too large and complex to be understood. You scamper on pipes large enough to fit ten of you across their diameter. Draw distance is high, but still insufficient to see the walls of the enormous spaces – and the floor, often times. Nobody knows how old it is, nobody knows who built it. I can’t say for sure that it was built. It’s impossible to distill any logic or purpose from the mess of rebar and concrete you scale.
Why are my palms tingly?
Another thing that seeps through is a sense of futility and solitude. You do find other observers, just not many living ones. The aforementioned climbing tools are picked off an unfortunate explorer, who didn’t quite manage their stamina correctly. One story that stayed with me is a log entry on an abandoned computer. It was written in the final days of an observer, who describes having to stay put in a single location for multiple decades after their joints locked up.
Eventually you pick up more abilities besides the picks and the basic mantle. Next is the walljump – which the game calls tic-tac, interestingly. It’s serviceable, but far from the best implementation of a walljump. What I do like about the additional movement options is that the level design needs to accommodate you even less. Again, that sounds like a criticism, and maybe it is, but it enhances what is unique about the experience. This game is a pattern of despairing at sheer walls and impossible jumps, and then finding a way regardless. After two fairly long levels you’re starting to take it in stride.
And then you enter the caves.
Average single male living space
Lorn’s Lure is unsettling all the way through, but once or twice it dips into outright horror, and level 3 is excellent horror. Not in the pant-shitting way (if I managed it can’t be that bad), but a impending-doom kind of way. After sending you through halls that seem too big to navigate, the game crams you down a hole entirely too small next. It’s the least natural cave I can visualize, but it’s not man-made either. Sharp, misaligned edges everywhere, black pools, distant moans, and pitch black on top of that. You are not afforded a flashlight, only rechargeable flares. The layout is purposely disorienting. It’s possibly one of the most distressing gaming experiences I’ve had. Here, too, are signs of the hopelessness within this setting. In their last moments, observers wrote about coming to the tunnels, despite knowing the dangers, and none of them are able to say exactly why.
The game never stopped surprising me this way until the very end. As much as I want to talk about every twist and turn, I would hate to remove the tension. Just keep in mind, you’ve never seen the last of it.
I’ve done my share of gymnastics to twist the weaknesses of Lorn’s Lure into strengths, but I do have genuine gripes with the game too. The air-dash ability you find towards the end of the game is not well implemented. It works fine, but to me it flattens the core gameplay loop. I’d hoped that, like the tic-tac, it would lead to even more extreme and interesting climbs, but too often the solution turns out to be to dash twice towards your desired destination and that’s it. Some maddening stunts are still required, I just wish it was the norm and not the exception. Maybe the creator thought that players would be tired of the slow movement by this point, and maybe that’s true, that’s just my view on the topic. There are also timed sequences, and I didn’t love them. You’ll be resetting a lot at the best of times, and during these sequences it gets turned up to 11. The high-energy drum-and-bass gets grating after the 20th restart.
This game can be frustrating and miserable, but it’s also rewarding and genuinely gorgeous at times. Despite all my backhanded criticisms, you do reach a flow-state with the movement mechanics where it’s just plain fun, and if you’re immersed in the world and the narrative you accept the frustrations as part of the whole. Speaking of narrative, Lorn’s Lure tells it subtly. There is a kind of self-destructive loneliness within many characters, including your own. They crave digging deeper, descending further, and they don’t fully understand why. They don’t hate the places they leave behind – our character even describes some locations as beautiful, then leaves them anyways. They’re always looking for something more, or at least something else. That’s the lure in Lorn’s Lure. The frantic desire for some kind of resolution. It’s hard not to relate to that. We all exist in an infinite machine that’s become too big and messy for any single person to understand. It doesn’t feel like it was made for us to live in. Searching for meaning within that can lead you to dark places. The actual “meaning of it all” isn’t a question this game takes a swing at, but it asserts that nobody can give it to you. Anyone who offers it is not to be trusted.
I should call a plumber about this
To sum up, please please play Lorn’s Lure. I’m not sure my rambling convinced you to do that, so I’ll resort to begging. If it looks and sounds at all interesting, please give it a shot. Personally, I’m very interested in playing Rubeki’s other games. Particularly Hatch seems interesting and – at least visually – connected to Lorn’s Lure. I also want to read the works of Tsutomu Nihei now (Blame!, Biomega), which I'm curious to know if it inspired the game somewhat. I’m very excited to see what else this creator makes, and I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing my thoughts. Thanks for reading!
Bonus image: Minecraft Bedrock cameo