Lemnis Gate

This game is truly innovative and creative, and the developers deserve a LOT of credit for creating this new game. Lemnis gate does take some time to adapt to, but if you like deep games coupled with the FPS genre, this is going to really surprise you pleasantly. I'm very impressed, and I hope that more games incorporate features like Lemnis Gate has done. Truly excellent.

In the same way that Poker is not about the cards, Lemnis Gate is not about the shooting. You don't play the game, you play your opponent. Lemnis Gate is a first-person shooter played asynchronously in 25 second turns. Each turn you select a unique character class and must attempt to complete objectives while preventing your opponent from doing the same thing. After each turn the whole level resets and the next player picks another character and plays the same 25 seconds alongside all the previously picked characters in a time loop style. As you pick more and more characters the battlefield becomes clustered and your mind starts working overtime trying to figure out who needs to die and when. After everyone has played all their characters the time loop is run a final time and the state of the objectives at the end of the final loop determines the winner. The beauty of this game is that when you kill a character in a previous loop then all their actions are negated. This has compounding effects. You might first play Kapitan, a classic Solider 76 type character, to blow up their resistors to win the match. Your opponent responds with Striker, the sniper class, and picks off your Kapitan, thus saving their resistors. Then, a twist, you play Striker and eliminate their Striker before they can kill Kapitan. Now Kapitan lives again and the resisters are destroyed. In this way Lemnis Gate is like chess, you must carefully trade pieces and positions to counter the opponent's plays while making sure you keep answers in your pocket to counter later attacks. Nothing is more fun than running around the map dodging chaos just to kill a single person at the correct time. This is where the deception comes in. The causal train of your actions can be complex and requires you to think forward and do actions that may not make sense in the current loop. You may want to make a late play that keeps two of your characters alive, now the opponent has two threats to deal with in a single turn. Most of the shooting in Lemnis Gate might be uncomfortable to long-time shooter fans who are used to making real-time reactions and on-the-move thinking. Lemnis Gate is less about getting that sweet flick headshot and more about making sure that headshot is shooting the correct person. Lemnis Gate is about forcing your opponent to do increasingly difficult actions to foil your plans. There are few flaws in Lemnis Gate but for the purposes of constructive criticism I will enumerate them here. The movement mechanics aren't ideal, they are clunky and inconsistent, there is a sliding mechanic that is the fastest way to move but can also slow you right down if you don't execute it well. The jump pads are annoying and you can't use them backwards as the in-air movement control is too low to change your trajectory mid-air. In maps where you can fall off the level, jump pads were the cause of 90% of my falls. The roster of characters is great but I would like some more, they are great characters (especially Karl) but there are only 7. At least the game is balanced as each match is perfectly symmetrical. Some of the hero abilities aren't clear, i.e. I still can't figure out how to shield allies with Karl, I only realized after 10 hours that Toxin doesn't take damage from another Toxin's toxin on the floor. The player base is healthy enough for now as I can always find a match, this is helped by the game being asynchronous removing ping concerns, and allowing me to play with anyone around the world. Still, I would also like bot matches for when/if the player base drops too low. Lemnis Gate is a complex tactical game that keeps me coming back for that thrill of dominating your opponent's mind and executing your own perfect sequence of moves. To quote the great Mikhail Tal to win "you must take your opponent into a deep, dark forest where 2+2=5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."