In Looming, you play as September, a man exploring the ruins of a place called Looming. You use the arrow keys to move around, X to interact with objects and C to open your inventory. You roam around, collecting artifacts to piece together the story of Looming. There are 9 endings to unlock, each varying on a set of items or the time spent in Looming.
WARNING: SPOILERS
In terms of story, this game has it all. It has a love story, a mystery, a tragic hero and opposing factions. The game starts off with September writing a letter to his lover; January, and every ending has a different letter written to January. This alone manages to give the world of Looming a melancholy feel, for whenever September leaves to investigate the ruins of Looming, he is away from his lover's embrace. The atmosphere of Looming itself is detached, mysterious, forlorn and despondent. As you wander through the wasteland of Looming, you discover the story of two peoples, and a beast called the OarBoar. The two peoples, the Lorem and the Seecha represent two different philosophies of engineering. The literal, focusing only on creating machines and the literal, observable aspect of the world, and the theoretical, focusing on subjects like mathematics, biology, psychology and physics, developing those theories, making calculations, but never actually building. Observing the interactions of these two factions is the OarBoar, possibly the only permanent resident of Looming, whose bones and messages are scattered across the land.
The art style of Looming is gorgeous. Huge gears, machines and temples left behind by the people litter the land, adding the the sense of insignificance and eeriness. The ambient sound effects are unnerving to say the least. They include gusting wind and strange voices chanting a forgotten language (which is actually the word "Looming" played backwards). The little birds that roam the landscape serve two purposes, to distract the player from the hard-to-see items required to find all the endings, and to add a sense of emptiness and barrenness to the world. I've never played a game where I felt so alone and desolate as this game. These stories, while simple on their own, are intertwined and complex together, they all effect each other. The poetic letters from September that mark each ending tie the endings together, and give the game a satisfying completeness. When you win, you don't want to stop playing, the beauty of the game is astounding.
Gregory Weir makes gorgeous games, I'm looking forward to reviewing more of them in the future.
The art style of Looming is gorgeous. Huge gears, machines and temples left behind by the people litter the land, adding the the sense of insignificance and eeriness. The ambient sound effects are unnerving to say the least. They include gusting wind and strange voices chanting a forgotten language (which is actually the word "Looming" played backwards). The little birds that roam the landscape serve two purposes, to distract the player from the hard-to-see items required to find all the endings, and to add a sense of emptiness and barrenness to the world. I've never played a game where I felt so alone and desolate as this game. These stories, while simple on their own, are intertwined and complex together, they all effect each other. The poetic letters from September that mark each ending tie the endings together, and give the game a satisfying completeness. When you win, you don't want to stop playing, the beauty of the game is astounding.
Gregory Weir makes gorgeous games, I'm looking forward to reviewing more of them in the future.
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