Lemma is indie’s answer to first-person parkour, it blends freedom of creation with a linear story. You play as Joan Emerson, a physics grad student. When one of her colleagues makes a discovery of a new world, called Lemma, you follow him into it; think of the C.S. Lewis Narnia books.
As you run through levels, you can create walls and surfaces for parkour actions on the fly. It’s not simply “press-a-button-to-create,” you have to be moving in real time in some way. When you want to create a surface you just need to be moving in the corresponding direction and anything you create needs to be attached to a preexisting surface, be it a wall or some other type of structure. You won’t be able to create floating walls to run along, or magic beams to run across.
The entire story is told via text messages through a phone Joan is carrying, and yes you get to interact with the phone by replying to the texts, but it does look like there are only set responses. This gives Lemma four possible endings.
The creator of Lemma, Evan Todd, made a Kickstarter, but it was unfortunately not funded. Talking on why he wanted to create this game Todd said:
I love first person games, there is just a distinct lack of first-person parkour in the world, and I want to fix that.
When asked to describe Lemma in four words, Todd said:
@SpazldRust “First-person parkour puzzler”? Yeah we’ll go with that.
— Evan Todd (@et1337) May 12, 2015
Lemma is available now on Steam, and has 10% off till May 19th. You can also buy it from Itch.io.
If you want to know more about Lemma, take a look at Evan Todd’s YouTube channel.
