Lushfoil drops you into a beautifully rendered virtual world, gives you a camera, and lets you have fun taking in-game photos. It’s like a spa day for my brain.
When I was growing up, video games were pretty much limited to Pac-Man and Mario, but, as with any art medium, gaming has come a long way since the early days of Namco and Nintendo. Today’s triple-A titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 have writing and acting that’s on par with the best of what Hollywood has on offer, but most are built around action and conflict. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to rob a train and escape on horseback in Red Dead, or fend off a horde of goblins in Baldur’s Gate for that matter, but gaming is a diverse space, with a healthy dose of options for folks looking for a cozier evening of play.
I enjoy these laid-back games quite a bit, and when I’m not working on a camera or drone review for PCMag, there’s a better-than-average chance that I’ve got a game controller in my hand. So when I heard about Lushfoil, a new video game about photography, I knew I had to try it. Lushfoil: A Walking Simulator, With Cameras
Lushfoil is, at its heart, a walking simulator. This type of game puts you in a virtual world and lets you walk around. There’s no danger of running into monsters or getting a Game Over screen with this type of game. Some walking games have a narrative arc or puzzles (like Myst), but with Lushfoil, it’s all about taking in the scenery and snapping pictures with an in-game camera. A new age soundtrack spins in the background to help set the mood. My wife described it as «day spa music», and that seems as good a description as any for the score and the game in general. It’s meant to help you wind down, take it easy, and enjoy some mental health self-care.
The game drops you right into the world. You start off on a wooded path with a shimmering blue lake nearby and snow-capped mountains in the distance, a version of Lago di Braies in South Tyrol, Italy. After a little wandering, I stumbled on a camera, a DSLR with a full kit of lenses (from fisheye to 100mm, with a magical 24-70mm F1.2 zoom).
Tips pop up and provide instructions on how to use the camera, plus a help menu is available if you get stuck. Shutterbugs won’t have a problem navigating the control panel—it has mode, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, EV compensation, contrast, and white balance settings, plus an array of filters that change color tone. If you don’t know your way around a camera, the game provides tips and tutorial assignments to teach you more about photography.
I ended up using the black-and-white option quite a bit, and also experimented mixing the color filters with white balance adjustments, which can give landscapes a surreal, alien look. I noticed that while the SLR’s interface shows focus points like you see in an optical viewfinder, the viewfinder image itself shows color filters and exposure adjustments, so in that way it’s more like a mirrorless camera.
