Even navigating the menu with a gamepad made me feel like I was going insane. It must be said that it’s entirely possible I’d have enjoyed Luciform exponentially more had I played with a controller, rather than with a mouse and keyboard, however the game made this functionally impossible. For these reasons, precision platformers are often the go-to for beginning game designers, and while Chaos Minds’ Luciform presents some interesting mechanics and levels, the inconsistency of its aesthetic and its frustrating difficulty make it feel like the developer’s practice project the larval stage of something more refined. To a developer, this style of game presents a unique challenge an opportunity to flex their level-design muscles and focus solely on making a meticulous arrangement of blocks and walls intrinsically exciting to jump around on. From a player’s perspective, the genre offers unrivalled mechanical purity, unfettered by such trappings as skill trees or enemy combatants.

There is an undeniable allure to the precision platformer.

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