Game: Lanternium
Genre: adventure puzzle
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers| Publishers: Victory Road| Blazing Planet Studio
Price: USA$9.99|UK £8.99
Age Rating: USA E |UK 3+
Release Date: 1st October 2019
Review code used, with many thanks to Victory Road
Alarm: someone is steeling your cookies!
Our story opens with a nameless raccoon ( who I have nicknamed Rocky) asleep in his comfortable bed in his house. A portal appears in the room and a fox jumps out of the portal and has a nosy around Rockys house. The daring fox finds Rockys prized possession and proceeds to steal the raccoons favourite food….his chocolate chip cookies! How dare he!!
Rocky the raccoon awakens just in time to see the fox steal his cookies and dart back through the portal again. Well, Rocky won’t stand for that and promptly gives chase. Fearlessly he jumps into the portal after the fox.
So begins the raccoons’ chase of the fox through 60 levels situated in 3 different locations to retrieve his precious chocolate chip cookie.
It’s a dangerous business going out your door!
You take control of the raccoon and once on the first level of this strange world our hero meets a snail who informs him that all is not as it should be in this world. Long ago the snails world was frozen and all the inhabitants left. The snail tells Rocky Raccoon that the area is dangerous, full of many traps. Rocky is given a lantern to carry which has magical powers to change the coloured cubes to solid colours which in turn allows the raccoon to proceed down the path. The reverse is also in effect: if you change the colour of the lantern while the raccoon is standing on a cube he falls to his doom and the level restarts.
Pick up the colour fireflies which the raccoon encounters on the puzzles and you use these to get new colours on the colour wheel in the corner of the screen. A click of the ZL or ZR buttons changes the colour of the lantern which automatically changes the colour of the cubes.
Plan ahead for the best route
Lanternium starts of simple enough and the difficulty goes up as you progress through the levels adding in extra traps or obstructions blocking the path. For instance, there are wooden paths that disappear when the raccoon walks over them and icy ramps that the raccoon slips on. I know it’s not nice, but the animation for the raccoon slipping and sliding on the icy ramps is hilarious and It did give me a laugh out loud moment.
On some levels you need to plan your route to the exit door but if you don’t and make a mistake Rocky raccoon is sent back to the entrance of the level for you to try again. Levels are not timed and you can take as long as you need to get to the exit door.
JoyCon or Touchscreen?
The camera is not free moving. You can only really move it to swing around the puzzle area to it predetermined point and it only zooms in slightly. I would have preferred a completely free moving camera and a closer zoom-in option as I think this would improve the players’ views of the puzzle.
You can control the game via the joy-cons and it works fine, touchscreen control is available as well. I found the joy-con control to be the one that suited me best.
Lanternium cartoon style graphics are crisp and bright. There’s upbeat music and well animated cut screens throughout Lanternium. The game even includes voice acting which brings the characters to life for the player and makes the story more enjoyable.
Conclusion
Lanternium would be a great game for a family to play together with older children. For younger children the colour wheel might be harder for them to understand.
The game is enjoyable and the difficulty of the levels is never to the point it gets frustrating. Though repeating a puzzle over and over can make it repetitive so planing ahead is the key.
Verdict: I like it
