Photography is an art form that seems easy. I mean, you just take a camera and snap a few pictures of whatever interests you. Like I said – easy, right? Well after spending copious amounts of hours in Lushfoil Photography Sim, my view has changed on the subject. So, I figured it was a good time to start learning how to take pictures. After all, a game is the only way a game journalist learns something.
Lushfoil Photography Sim is a concept developed by Matt Newell, a 3D artist, developer, and avid photographer. The idea was to allow anyone, yes, including you, to fall in love with photography. This is an amazing idea that has turned into the first full release for Matt after development for Lushfoil lasted over three years. So, was the time well spent, or would you be better just buying a camera and exploring your own backyard?
Finding the Perfect Spot
So, I know what you are thinking. How could there be any story for walking around and taking photos? You would be correct, and I would ask that you get out of my head. Lushfoil puts photography first and foremost to an almost detrimental degree at first. You will be thrown into the first environment and told to take photos. It feels almost directionless at first. The world blurs together as you explore an environment that, while beautiful, feels empty.
The emptiness of the world at first left me feeling void of an appropriate subject to photograph. It’s oppressive at times, especially as I was looking for a butterfly or a flower to focus on. However, this feeling disappeared once I finally found the photoboard. The board shows anywhere between six and nine photos that you need to photograph.
These objectives really help focus the game and finally made me feel like I was working towards something. Even though the driving force of Lushfoil Photography Sim is to take your own time and discover a love for photography, I think that while noble, anybody who isn’t already interested in photography is going to feel lost. However, having these objectives to keep an eye out for made looking at the environment different. I would get excited as I whipped out my camera to take the picture, and hoped that I had found one of the subjects. The moment I felt this excitement was when Lushfoil truly felt enjoyable in a meaningful way.
Limited Space Unlimited Possibilities
So, I spoke a lot about the environment and how it feels to take pictures, but what else can you do? Well, when you aren’t taking pictures, you can only walk and walk slightly faster. The movement feels sluggish at best, and the locations can be big, making walking from one end to the other a hassle. Luckily, there is a teleportation mechanic that you can make use of.
You can simply take a picture of anything, and while looking at your photo album, you can teleport to the spot where you took the picture. This can be disorienting at first because you will reappear as if you just took the photo, but once you get the hang of it, it is very convenient. Although there is a problem that I had while I played on the PlayStation 5, which revolves around a bug with disk space.
So, after taking, I would say around fifty photos, I was bombarded by a message that my disk space was full. I checked and my PlayStation 5 still had at least twenty gigs of space, more than enough for at least a thousand photos. I then had to figure out exactly how to free up space, because I wanted to keep the photos for this very review. There was only a single solution I could come up with. I had to pull the photos from the hard drive and then delete them all.
This felt counterintuitive as I would quickly start to limit what pictures I would take and try to relegate them to important sections. In the end, the game indirectly limited the teleportation function as I would need to delete photos after I finished exploring a location. The game would even tell me to take more pictures as my camera would remind me that I needed to delete more photos. This simple limitation hindered the enjoyment I felt and felt contradictory to the main message of the game.
A Much Needed Rest
Lushfoil Photography Sim does the job that it’s supposed to do: get you to take photos. However, many will at first feel lost without the presence of objectives in a land where wildlife is absent. Photography is compelling, but each location being devoid of wildlife makes me feel like I am at a studio and not out on location. Then, having to delete my photos due to a bug after taking only thirty of them hurt a lot.
However, once you get past the bug regarding saving your photos, Lushfoil Photography Sim can be a wonderful time. Exploring the locations and looking for the objective photospots was the best part I had. I feel that I have a new appreciation for photography overall, and I’m already starting to notice things in environments I might not have previously. So, you can throw on some music and start looking for your next photo shoot. After all, you may decide that the only way to express yourself is with a camera.
Disclaimer: Annapurna Interactive provided Final Weapon with a PlayStation 5 copy of Lushfoil Photography Sim for review purposes.
