Lumberhill – Review
With Very Very Valet still fresh in our minds, a new contender has arrived at the scene, namely Lumberhill. This new game jumps on the party-game bandwagon and tries to cash in on the success of the genre’s revival. Many developers attempt to do this with their party game, be it in the form of Overcooked clones, or easy-to-play brawlers, but not that many succeed in putting down a memorable experience. While Lumberhill looked cute at first, we wondered what else it had on offer. Soon we found ourselves swept away by this charmingly short party game that allows for remote play, as well as regular online play. Cute animals, nice environments, proper mechanics, and a bit of chaos will make for an amusing and successful formula.
Story
Lumberhill is void of any story content. The game does have different themes for its environments, but there is no narrative to be found when playing the game. While this is not a bad thing for a game in this genre, it would have been nice to have a bit more framework for the different themes.
Graphics
Graphically the game is very pleasant to the eyes. Lumberhill utilizes different themes to diversify its different worlds, even though many have similar gameplay mechanics to complete the tasks at hand in them. Nonetheless, you’ll easily recognize where you have to go, and the color palette used is also very soft. This means, even though the game is very colorful, it also emits a very relaxing atmosphere, allowing you to zone out doing menial tasks, such as herding animals and chopping wood. The only things that could have used a bit more polish are the facial features of the characters, as they are completely void of any, except for a pair of eyebrows now and then. The animals in the levels, however, are so adorably designed that you’ll actually feel sad when you accidentally throw yet another baby panda off a cliff.
Sound
The overall sound quality is quite nice. The game has upbeat music, which never starts to annoy throughout the course of the game. The soundtrack may be appealing, but isn’t extremely memorable or will not linger in your head when turning off the game. Sound effects suffice for what is going on. Except for the sounds the different creatures make when throwing them in the air, nothing truly stands out.
Gameplay
Lumberhill is a party game in the same vein as Overcooked. You’ll get small assignments to complete in a specific timeframe, to earn points per completed task, hopefully getting a better star rating for completion of a level. As the name may imply, you’ll be playing as a cast of lumberjacks of different origins, coming together to chop wood and collect animals. Chopped wood goes into its respective lumbermill and animals go in their pen. Each different world presents different fauna and flora.
If we have to be completely honest, the gameplay does not get much more complicated than that. Sure, every animal does have different ways of luring it, where adult pandas will chase you only when you have a bamboo stick in your hands, while you can just pick up the little ones and carry them around. To lure a big triceratops, you’ll have to nab one of its little ones in close proximity, etc. Then, on top of that, you’ll also have to deal with more and more hazards in the levels, that range from random forest fires to maneating sharks, rampaging dinosaurs, and so on. The game is really very self-explanatory and comes at a fairly low difficulty. Getting three stars on most levels will not be too difficult to accomplish, especially when playing with three or more people; when each player handles one specific task over and over again. The game supports remote play and regular online and offline co-op. You can also mix and match, where you play a game with a local player, invite a friend who has their own copy and another friend who you invite via remote play, forming a full party.
We do have to say, that the build we played had loads of bugs in it, including many game-breaking ones. We did get the information that this build was final and fully finished, save for a few controller input problems, and a few minor details not really having anything to do with the gameplay. We did patch through all the present bugs and hope these are addressed shortly after release.
Conclusion
Lumbermill is a surprisingly entertaining party game in the same vein as the Overcooked series. Sure, it does have a different setting and goal, but it’s undeniably the same type of game. Nonetheless, the gameplay loop in Lumbermill stays quite easy for newcomers to the genre as well, making sure everyone can progress at a steady pace. Some levels may be trickier than others, but if you play with other people, and communicate a bit, you should never truly experience anything that halts your progress. Overall, we did very much enjoy this small title, but it could have used a bit more meat on its bones, as it is quite short.
Lumberhill - Review,
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