Lona: Realm Of Colors Reviews

Beautiful mesmerising game. I love the art and music.

This game was wonderful. I tend to enjoy games that are more heavy on story, and the visual storytelling in this game is really excellent. All the colors, the dark and the light, the animations were very nice. It felt like someones dreams being expressed through paint. It was nice to just experience. My only complaint would have to be that clock puzzle. Haha. Part of the problem for myself was that there was no consistency in spacing between the numbers on the clocks. I now understand the ticks on the clock representing the numbers, but I was thinking of it as space on the clocks. I'd try to figure out where 12 was and then put the hand where I thought it was supposed to go. Other than that one puzzle, all of the other puzzles were really a joy to figure out. Every time I solved a part of the puzzle, I got the sense that I was beginning to understand more about the person having these dreams. I understood how things were connected. The cat was my favorite part. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes indie games and more experimental games. Solving each piece of each puzzle felt like flipping through a page in a beautiful picture book, and I think that's how I would describe it- an interactive picture book, telling someones story who has experienced terrible loss, new beginnings, and what that means for those feelings to all coexist within a person. Glad I played.

Irritating puzzles where half of the solutions seemed totally random and there was no narration, which meant that nothing had any context and the whole thing seemed flat and pointless. Such a waste of all that beautiful art!

I enjoyed the game which is why I'm recommending it; though, the notes made by the negative reviews are on point. I got caught up on parts because the there was no real indication to solve the "puzzle," sections where I had to click everything or just look up a play through which is very unfortunate. "Solutions are rarely signaled in any way, and far too often what should be intuitive is unintuitive for no apparent reason (eg applied anticlockwise, and only anticlockwise, despite nothing else in the screen working the same way)." -- AngoraFish It's aesthetically pleasing, peaceful but creepy, and I connected on an emotional level, so I still don't regret playing it. I do hope the creator(s) try again and take the notes into consideration.

It's nice, not *brilliant* but it's a nice way to unwind after spending 30-odd hours on "The Last of Us part 2", as I just have. It's a mediation on loss and how to deal with it presented in a beautiful hand drawn style. The point-and-click puzzles are on the simple (mechanical) side but are occasionally a little obtuse. I did resort to a video walk through for a couple of things, but I'd say that's par for the course. Anyway, it's all presented nicely and it's got a nice message, worth a go for a few pounds.

Beautiful game. I waited for it to come out since it was announced and finally got the chance to play it. It was worth it. The visuals, the art style, and the music are fantastic. Surreal, yet gorgeous.

Graphics and animation are amazing. Story is nothing original. Music is pleasant although it doesn't loop quite right in one place. Most of the puzzles are fairly straightforward but there are a couple that make very little sense and you end up clicking everything like a maniac although you'd do that with oldschool point and click games too. It's a short game which I like. Oh, it's also unapologetically girly just so you know what you're getting into. I like the cat. The cat is cool.

I enjoyed the animation, and the visual story-telling was decent enough, but for a game that only has about 1 hour of content, I spent half of it just hunting for unfair hotspots, if not more. Sure, looking for objects in the picture is part of the genre, but at the same time, if the game is doing a poor job at getting my attention with color-coding, I end up clicking on every part of the screen. Maybe you could make a cursor shine if you hover over something interactive, I felt like I had to click on everything, most of the 'interactive' objects don't stand out from the environment. Even if I knew the answer, I often overlooked the area which I already inspected - it should be more consistent with the area of effect. I thought most of the puzzles were extremely vague, sometimes I would solve the puzzle by accident, despite not knowing the solution before and after. Now I don't expect realistic logic in a surreal game, but I expect the game to be intuitive and not just make progress because I clicked on something at random. The game has an interesting gimmick where every level has 2 sides that I think represent 'acceptance and sorrow', and it's somewhat incorporated into the design of the puzzles - granted, I didn't like the way it was handled in the UI. I don't have too much to say in regards to the visual story-telling, I didn't mind it, but it's also a very overused theme these days, and while it had a decent atmosphere to it with the whole melancholy, it just didn't impact me in the end. Speaking of the ending, that felt very abrupt to me, I don't know, maybe it could use a few scenes for the closure. I didn't like that you had sound effects for some actions, but not for the other, and I wish you looped the music in a less distracting manner. I also noticed that when you start the game again, it will lock out the chapters that you already completed, but why, if I already beat the levels before, just keep the shortcuts. [h1] Pros: [/h1] [b] The visuals [/b] - I very much enjoyed taking the screenshots and the cool transitions between the worlds, especially the cat animation, it reminded me of 'GRIS' because it has that watercolor feel to it. Many games do it these days, but I still enjoy it, you essentially double-up on the game, and it creates some creative ideas for the puzzles. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] [u] Polish issues [/u] - some scenes have a foreground overlapping the cursor or an object that you move. Also, sometimes the cursor just goes away, and you have to click several times to get it back. If you change the world too fast it can create some strange glitches, for example, the game will think that you are in the last picture, and you can interact with objects from the previous world. If you start a new game, all the levels will be locked even if you already beat them. On a side note, I felt like the game didn't have enough sound effects for every action, and in general, I wish you looped the music without stopping the soundtrack. [u] Hotspots [/u] - I really think you should make the cursor shine if you hover over something interactive, or at least make it optional for the player. Some hotspots were a bit small, and the odd thing is that you have many of those with the decent area, but then some hotspots are just tiny, and I overlooked them despite knowing where it was. [u] The puzzle design [/u] - I know the game was not tested enough, partially because you would have fixed the foreground problems if it was, but also you would see that people click everywhere when the puzzles don't make sense. The puzzles were not difficult and you can brute force them eventually, but from a visual standpoint, you as a developer have to make sure that player does need to click everywhere, you can do better color coding with objects, or just make the areas of interest stand out more from the environment. As I said, I don't mind the surreal theme of the puzzles, but you should test the game more internally and see which puzzles don't feel intuitive. [b] Overall Thoughts: [/b] I would not be so hard on the game if the price was lower, but for such a short game you left too many polish issues, even those layer overlaps. I don't mean to be a Captain Hindsight, but this is why you need to do more internal testing, that way you would find those foreground and hotspot issues before the player does. Overall, I would enjoy the game even if it was very short, granted for $11 it should be a bit longer, and too many things felt distracting to the experience. [code]Review By: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]