The latest from the creators of Islanders is a proper treat.
Thronefall really reminds me of Lumines.
And yet Lumines is a block matching puzzle game.
What’s going on?
We’ll get to that in a minute.
First, some basics.
Thronefall’s out now in Early Access.
And spoiler: it’s a treat.
Some structures straddle the line between defence and economy, rather brilliantly.
It’s clever stuff and it’s filled with little choices like this.
It’s all very streamlined, very clean in its thinking.
So where does Lumines come in?
It comes in with the texture of Thronefall, which is tricksy and ever-changing.
It gives things a lovely tweedy kind of texture.
Thronefall, like Lumines, never feels like one thing for very long.
But complicating the question of range is that Lumines approach to speed.
Maybe you’re set up for handling that.
But it also varies the texture of what you don’t have quite enough resources to do constantly.
Weak and numerous, then strong but few.
The Early Access build is built for experimentation with all these elements.
There are four maps, but lots of perks and mutations and load-outs to unlock and mess around with.
In this moment I had time to see how beautiful this world is.
Thronefall is pretty special, then.
And this is still just the beginning of it, hopefully.
