Lamm

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I am 32 years old.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing.

Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side.

With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.

After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like.

Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends.

Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together.

Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.

I enjoyed my time with this, yes it's hard but it's not unrelentingly punishing. Git Gud and the game treats you fairly. Sadly I can't Git Gud.

6/10

Lamm is a minimalistic black-gray-white puzzle-platformer that looks like Super Meat Boy got lost in Limbo. The game mechanic is a nice fresh take on the 2D platforming genre: you can do zero, single, double, triple or quintuple jumps depending on which power-up orb you last collected – the puzzles are based on figuring out the right sequence of collecting the orbs & pressing buttons to be able to reach the end of the level. The puzzle solving aspect of this game is just as important as the platforming (which can actually be quite challenging in certain levels). There are 6 chapters each containing six levels. To complicate matters, each level contains a firefly, which is always difficult to spot and to reach. You need to collect all fireflies to unlock bonus levels and the final chapter. After completing the final chapter you unlock the game’s ending, which is a single but pretty long and difficult level titled LAMM in which you get a new power: unlimited jumping. The level are optimized for speedrunning and LAMM includes a handy timer, but unfortunately no leaderboards. The game is rather short, but as it is cheap it is worth its price.

The soundtrack is very good, composed by MetalRenard, who I had never heard of before. Unfortunately the soundtrack is not available as DLC on Steam and it is also not on Spotify. But you can listen to (for free) and even buy it on https://metalrenardmusic.bandcamp.com/album/lamm-ost.

LAMM was great fun to play. I am surprised it is not more well known. If you like Super Meat Boy you will like this game too. The game certainly has replay value if you want try to improve on your own previous best times.

However, the game is not without its problems, but they are mostly minor and certainly not deal breakers.
- My main grime is that hitboxes around many enemies, especially bullets, are impossibly large – resulting in many deaths that feel unfair. I guess this was necessary to make avoiding the bullets not too easy, but I think it would have been a better option to make the bullets larger.
- Scrolling not always feels completely fluent, even though my PC has a GeForce 1080 Ti card.
- I had trouble getting my Xbox One controller to work with LAMM. I had to bind the buttons to keyboard keys to get it to work.
- Full screen mode did not properly work the first few times I started the game but suddenly it worked (and kept working) just fine.

I really did enjoy this game, it's quick and super simple to learn with levels that progressively get harder and harder. If you love platforming games, then get this super cheap super fun game.

Verdict: 7/10

Visually minimalistic platformer with a touch of puzzle mechanics. Don’t get fooled by the looks, it’s hard, real hard. You will die, and die, and die, … and die yet again. But you will get up and try again, and again, and again …, until you succeed …, or give up in sheer frustration.

PrivateJoh’s personal (re)view:

Honestly, for a guy that is not particularly interested in tough platformers, Lamm is a blast to play. Controls cannot be simpler: right, left and jump; that’s it. The mechanics (number of allowed jumps depending on the color of the “marble” you take) work flawlessly. The puzzle aspect of the game offers a new layer to the challenge.

And talking about challenge, there is plenty of it in Lamm. Early levels are simple enough, but as you advance in game, brace yourself for a steep completion curve. Figuring out how to solve the puzzle is just the first easy step to actually manage to successfully complete the platforming aspect. Myself, I even had problems sometimes figuring out how to advance from one world to the next one once all levels were completed. That is how difficult it is …, or how inept I am.

It is interesting to see how our brain works. First time you try a level, your fingers feel so clumsy. Tenth time, you feel confident. Twentieth time, your fingers work for themselves without your brain even noticing. That shows you about the reality of improvement by repetition. Kids, there is a lesson to learn here.

Another interesting aspect of the game is the music. I find it fits the theme very well, and it’s nice … for a certain amount of time. Once you start failing to complete levels, it can get irritating.

In summary: a minimalistic but highly challenging platformer with a hint of puzzle mechanics. In Metallica’s own words: Die, die, die my darling, don’t utter a single word, die, die, die my darling, just shut your pretty eyes, I’ll be seeing you again, I’ll be seeing you … in hell. Yes, you will die countless times but will be back for more.

For more PrivateJoh’s personal (re)views you can check HERE .

I came across this game by looking in the indie category, and I am so glad I did.

This game can definetly get fraustrating as it has very simple levels, as well as, increasingly hard levels.
I enjoy a challenge so this is a good game for me and for those like me.
Uniques concept and art style (I personally like these aspects quite a lot).

I must express that this game is NOT for everybody, however i would recommened giving it a go as it is only $2.99.

7/10 - Really good but could use adjustments as it is somewhat of a web browser game.

Lamm is a puzzle platformer game.

There is absolutely no story that I could see.

The gameplay involves collecting coloured orbs which give you a certain number of kumps. For example white orbs give 1 jump,yellow 2 and so on with a maximum of 5. The black orbs reset you to no jumps and if you have the yellow orb and then collect the white orb you will be resetted to one jump. The game is more of a puzzle game where you have to figure out which orbs to collect in what order to beat the level. The game has 6 worlds each having 6 levels and a 7th level is unlocked if you collect something called fireflies which are 1 each in the level which are placed in difficult to reach places and require backtracking to collect the same. The levels are very short about a minute each and basically the game is also built for speedrunning. The first 5 worlds are unique with new mechanics introduced which are elements in the world like water,platforms that disappear,switches and so on. The platforming is difficult and is made a bit frustrating by the controls not being that accurate but only very few levels require atmost precision platforming.

I enjoyed the game till world 5. world 6 requires you to collect 30 of the 35 fireflies spread across the prior levels and this world is very poorly designed with most of the level in darkness or with flickering lights. I hated this world as it was very difficult to figure out where to go. Also the fireflies located in these levels I could not locate one among the 6 levels. I could not get to the unlocked world 6 stage and a secret stage at the end.

Overall an enjoyable game until world 5 but the last world is very frustrating due to poor level design. Would still recommend for the remaining levels to all gamers who enhoy puzzle platformers. The puzzles here might not seem obvious initially but worlds 2,3 and 5 are slow paced and involve collecting orbs in a particular sequence(there is no wall of death following you) and world 4 is pure fast paced platforming with a giant approaching wall of the death from the left or above.
The music nicely blends in and does not get frustrating in world 4 where you are surely to die a lot.

Overall recommend this game for the asking price.

This is what the games looks like:

https://youtu.be/nQzZ9CuZZ8U

Lamm is frustratingly difficult and at the same time deeply satisfying. The artwork combined with the music and the increasingly difficult puzzles will have you pull your hair out and dance on the table at the same time. Definitely worth the price.

Pros:
- Really good puzzle game.
- Incredible use of as simple a thing as jumping.
- Great artworks (granted, I'm a sucker for the whole B&W theme).
- The control of the little black dude is very good. It feels very natural.
- Worth every penny.

Cons:
- To few levels.
- Music tend to quite uniform in nature.
- Took me some time to figure out the mechanics (compared to how simple it is).