A Point-and-click Sherlock-like experience, Lamplight City is a Victorian mystery game with steampunk flair and supernatural elements.

Lamplight City is a game told as a series of individual point-and-click mysteries whose interconnections reveal themselves as you get deeper into the game. While many point-and-click games rely on item-combining puzzles and wacky improbable inventions, Lamplight is more grounded. The humor is more dialogue-based, as is the gameplay. Your investigations involve numerous social interactions with witnesses, including interrogations with multiple options on how to proceed.

You won’t be combining a rake with a garden hose to make a showerhead. This isn’t that sort of game.

What you WILL be doing is watching suspects and witnesses in a portrait mode as you ask questions. The voice acting is good enough that you can pick up on when people are getting defensive, angry, or nervous. The portrait will also show changes in facial expression as your subject reacts to your line of interrogation.

Details matter. People will LIE TO YOU. They will have reasons, and if you pick at enough threads, you can put together a full picture of the games various crimes from the pieces given.

There are also consequences. You can choose how to go about extracting your information. Do you sweet-talk a barfly? Badger a grieving widow? Lie to your wife? You need to read the room and decide the kind of investigator you want to be.

You CAN fail cases if you ruin your chances with certain key witnesses, so if you want the best ending, be sure to pay attention to who you’re talking to and how best to approach them.

This all adds up to a game that looks like a standard pixel-art point-and-click more than it plays like one. The developers clearly spent their efforts more on story and voice talent as opposed to hiring cryptographers and mathematicians to devise diabolical puzzles.

The pointing and clicking is simplistic. The mystery solving will take both brainpower and attention to detail.