The Lost City Review – A pleasing adventure game for Myst nostalgics

It didn't take long for developers to see the iPhone's potential as a platform to bring back good old-fashioned pointy-clicky adventure games. The Monkey Island series and Broken Sword have had great ports, but until now there hasn't been a quality game in this genre m ade just for the iPhone. With The Lost City, this has now changed. In this game, the vague plot sees you travel to the jungle after you Grandma gave you a mysterious artefact which suggests that there is some kind of lost city there; hence the title, Lost City. After the brief back-story, you're thrown into the jungle, where the puzzles begin. The game has a mock-1st-person view in which you get a single perspective on each location you move through. It's your job to look for things in these locations that can be interacted with or picked up. Bits of broken tile, levers, puzzles, slots for you to stuff things into, it's all there. While the game starts off easy, it soon becomes an engrossing challenge as you'll be racking your brain to find out what fits where in this pretty jungle world. And it is a pretty world. Combining old-fashioned, photo-realistic static scenery with beautifully-rendered water effects and  other subtle movements, The Lost City is an aesthetic treat to move through. The soundtrack is equally mesmerising, and adds to the mysterious atmosphere of the game. Inevitably, the game can get confusing at times, what with all the locations and odds and ends you'll be picking up, but the dev's have clearly considered this by including a journal and map for you to reference; both essential tools in avoiding getting hopelessly lost in the game. The Lost City is a beautiful, iPhone-exclusive hark back to the classics of point-and-click adventure. Its visuals are unique and appealing, and its puzzles are challenging and oh-so-satisfying to solve. Naturally, you'll have moments of feeling a little lost in it all, but that's part of the fun.