Really nice walking sim with a great take on the genre. Annapurna thankfully still has it; they find some really interesting niche projects to fund. I'm an avid analog photographer irl, so I was following this game as soon as I heard about it. The 35mm rangefinder was unexpected and really charmed me even if all it can do is take double exposures, as I was expecting the game to be fully DSLR/digicam focused. The developer is pretty quick about responding to requests and bug fixes in the Lushfoil Discord server, and solid about implementing minor requests quickly. I requested a B&W mode (I do 95% of my irl shooting on B&W film) and it was in the next patch. (Note that console version patches are handled/ported by Annapurna and will lag behind the PC updates; another reason PC gaming is king!)

For a single-person dev team I'm impressed. It's clear the developer is a photographer himself; even little things like the 14mm/24mm lenses having a wider DoF at large apertures than the longer lenses make the experience feel much more natural. *Some* things feel like they were possibly arranged so you could get a particular shot rather than feeling organic, but there's a lot of opportunity for natural looking photographs in just what's here a couple weeks after launch. I feel like the price is fair for what you get; this isn't an experience you race to 100% and I feel like I'll get my money's worth over time. I'm disabled, so I can't access the real-world equivalents to the remote environments in this game; the first location makes me feel like I'm back in the forests of my hometown and it feels nice, even if it's only a virtual experience. I'd recommend this game to any avid photographer who likes walking sims.

I've waited years for this game to come out.
I'm so glad I did.
Everything is perfect.

Matt, you are awesome.
Thank you for this masterpiece :)

I've always wanted to grab a DSLR camera and travel the world, but I already have too many expensive hobbies, & travelling isn't an option, so let's try the next best thing - VIDEO GAMES!

From the get-go, LPS impresses with its breathtaking vistas & top-tier visuals. Even if you ignore the photography completely and just want to walk around faithful recreations of some beautiful & varied locations, you'll still find yourself with a good few hours of content, bopping along to a relaxing OST as you go.

The photography itself is engaging and in-depth (at least to a beginner like myself). Some people take issue with having to move the dials one increment at a time with the arrow keys, but I like this, as it makes it feel just that little bit more tangible. There's a few basic tutorials scattered throughout each of the areas, but I personally would've liked to have seen more information frontloaded, since some rather key elements weren't discussed at all until I neared the final areas.

Progression from one area to another is achieved by collecting totems (which are thematic collectibles scattered around each zone), and recreating photographs found on a board somewhere on the map. It's very relaxing heading out to try and find those photo ops, and there's some other nice goodies to find along the way, such as tape/film cams, old digital cams, and even things like drones & a GPS handheld, which you can use to navigate your way to whatever totems you might've missed while exploring naturally.

I just want to give a huge shout-out to the games most inspired feature, and that is fast travel. It's a pretty big quality of life feature when the environments are so large, but the way you do it is by looking through your photo library, and travelling to that exact point where you took the photo. It's instant, it feels great, and it's such a clever way of doing things that I feel I just had to point it out.

OH! And it also creates a DCIM folder on your computer with all the snaps you've taken, so I'm on a mission to try and create a really good collection of usable portrait snaps to use as phone wallpapers in the future.

Overall, I learned a lot about photography, explored a lot of beautiful places, and had fun tracking down missing collectibles with my lil GPS tracker. If there's ever any DLC planned for the game, I'll more than likely be there on day one.