The Babble Bruh Reviews

Oh boy, here I go exploring a pit of mystery and doom again!

There’s something about the adventure of exploring an unknown void that just tickles my monkey brain in all the right ways. This week’s guilty pleasure is Lorn’s Lure, a first-person indie adventure in which you’re a robot who’s been exploring a very deep hole for over 250 years. Bored of his village on the surface, he felt the call of the void and has been wandering around the endless halls of some never-ending and ever-sprawling megastructure ever since. By the time we jump in, our hero has just encountered something new and odd. Is it a ghost? A glitch in his hardware? Possibly a creepy lure of some kind? No idea, but it’s large, floating, and beckoning us to follow it deeper into the unknown. And who are we to turn down the call of a potentially dangerous adventure?

I love stories like these. Whether it’s a sprawling tower that reaches into the stars or a hole that goes on forever, I just can’t say no to finding out more. Like any curious monkey, I look at these settings and think, “Monkey need know what down hole now,” and then a rush overcomes me as all my banana-shaped neurons activate to the sound of the Donkey Kong Rap. OKAYY!

Much like the plot, the gameplay starts out very barebones and simple. All we can do is jump and mantle from one ruined platform to another, avoiding a fall to definite death, which, trust me, will most definitely happen—a lot. The game is hard, like really hard. There’s very little guidance outside of our friendly phantom sitting on the horizon, indicating where we need to go. Other than that, we learn by falling and dying—a lot. It’s trial and error, plain and simple. But it’s fine because every time you’re on solid ground, the game checkpoints for you. So even though it’ll take you 20 tries to make a hard jump, it goes quickly, with each death instantly resetting you back to the checkpoint. After flinging ourselves around for a bit, we get our first set of upgrades: some badass climbing picks. Now, like the evolving marsupial we are, we’ve graduated from simple ledge jumper to handsome and cool wall-climber. Tools good. Tools strong.

And it doesn’t stop there. As the game progresses, you get access to a whole toolkit of neat gadgets and tricks to help you along your journey. By the end of the game, you’ll be skiing and Spiderman-swinging at max speeds through all sorts of crazy stuff. It’s awesome. But don’t worry—your monkey butt is still going to be cooked, splattered, and lost in the dark a few hundred times, if not thousands. But it’s all worth it when it comes to finding out what’s at the bottom of the pit.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is just how awesome the world and aesthetic of this game feels. Just like the protagonist, you have no idea where you are. Every biome you enter is impossibly large and seemingly stretches infinitely in every direction. It’s a sight to behold. All we know is that something is guiding us deeper and deeper down this giant enigma of a place, so we jump, climb, and scoot our way toward the ever-moving phantom that’s always just out of reach. This chase, mixed with the 90s PC game graphics aesthetic, easily lets you get immersed in your adventure as you slowly get better at moving your character and learning what you can and cannot do. There’s a very chill and quiet soundtrack, sometimes with no music at all depending on what biome you’re in, and it really brings everything together into an awesome vibe that had me easily lose a ton of hours as I got lost in this weird and cool world.

One of my favorite sections of the game was a zone that’s just pitch-black darkness. It’s like a biome that’s a massive sewer pipe system with no lights at all. You get a little rechargeable flare shooter, and the only way forward is through this very cramped hole in the wall of a pipe. That’s when I remembered this game was also a horror game! I won’t spoil the fun, but that level and some other sections definitely fit the bill of “horror.” Seeing the “Mission Cleared” screen at the end and finally being able to unclench my butthole after an hour or so of high anxiety is now going to be a cherished gamer memory for me. But that just feeds into how well the aesthetic of this game works. If my asshole could give a Ted Talk on immersion, I’m sure the speech on that level would be enlightening.

All in all, this is a journey that’s fresh, welcoming, and really, really fun. I would easily recommend it to anyone who likes the idea of exploring the unknown. And platforming—you need to like the idea of climbing and jumping. The journey isn’t too long; my playthrough, which missed a lot of collectibles and extra side levels, took me about 10 hours. This monkey heavily enjoyed his time exploring the mechanical jungle and would easily give this developer 5 bananas out of 5. So go on out there and follow that ghost to see what’s at the bottom of the world—it won’t disappoint.