The Lost Condor Review – Explore Machu Picchu Through a Walking Simulator! Or Maybe Stonehenge?

Where do you want to go in life? Do you want to ascend the steps of the Statue of Liberty? Perhaps taking a ride on the elevator up the Eiffel Tower is on your bucket list? Or maybe seeing the cherry blossoms in Japan is a hope of yours? A great thing about video games is that they allow players to experience things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. One recent game I played that gave me that feeling was The Lost Condor, which allowed me to virtually visit Machu Picchu in Peru.

As many of us know it is an abandoned city from the 15^th century in South America. I’m sure that thousands of photos of it have been taken. Many of them show the citadel from on top of a hill looking down at it. From such a vantage point, it’s possible to see its various pathways and buildings, while also admiring its distinctive appearance.

Gameplay

The Lost Condor is a Walking Simulator that allows you to walk around that city in an abbreviated, simplified form. The game begins in an area near a waterfall with some trees and other foliage around you. In front, near the horizon, is a small bridge. Its human-made construction beckoned for me to go toward it. Once I made my way across it, I could see the outskirts of the city down below.

As one would expect, you move around with simple FPS-style controls. WASD allow you to move in 3D space, while the mouse is used to look up and down, and to the sides. Just like one would expect for turning one’s head. Pressing the space bar causes you to jump. There’s a way to sprint in the game as well, but I almost never used it; immersion was better if I took my time and went slow through the game. Afterall, if I ever went to Machu Picchu in real life, I doubt I would be running through it at a fast pace.

According to the game menus, you can play it using an analogue controller as well, but I couldn’t get it to work with my 8BitDo Pro2 controller. As I played, I noticed that the mouse movement was extremely sensitive and fast, distractingly so! This was a bit irritating. At least I was able to reduce the sensitivity of it to 0.2, from its default setting of 1.0, but I couldn’t tell that much of a difference.

An unusual aspect about The Lost Condor is that there are almost no video game elements in it. Yes, you manually control your character as you walk around. But,

• There’s no time limit,
• No goals to achieve,
• No means of interacting with the environment,
• No ways to die,
• No one to talk with,
• No story or narration,
• Or even means to learn more about what you are looking at.

You literally walk around at your own pace, look at the buildings and textures, listen to the sound effects, and when you are done, all that’s left is to close out of the game.

Graphics

Despite its self-imposed shortcomings and limitations, I couldn’t help but be impressed by The Lost Condor, at least from a visual perspective. I was immediately drawn to how the game looked. During my first play session, I felt like I was having a special experience. I even wished the game was in VR! The waterfall at the beginning was striking (in a simple sort of way), and the views of the far-off mountains were a sight to behold. I was excited about what I might find once I reached the city.

As I traveled toward it, I enjoyed soaking up everything I could see. I imagined myself being there in person, and then some shrubs popped in near the horizon which took me out of the moment. This was the first thing that had a negative impact on my impression of the game visually. Even setting the game’s graphics to its highest preset didn’t keep me from noticing the popup of plants and shrubs as I went along the path. Another oddity was that your character walks up steps in a very unnatural manner. Despite not using the game’s sprint option, it seemed like I was always running up them. Bounding up five to eight individual steps in a second was not uncommon while playing. This part in particular was jarring and odd to watch.

Still, once I reached Machu Picchu there were moments of majesty as I explored the ruins. Although it’s hard to describe, I think my sense of awe stemmed from exploring a facsimile of an ancient place that I’ll probably never visit. I’d even say it was striking. At the highest graphical settings, the textures look good, and the distance of your field of view is exciting at times.

But, I’m sad to say that my opinion of the game’s graphics changed as I continued to play it. I’ll give more details about that near the end of the review.

Music and Sound Effects

Like the graphics, the first impression I had of The Lost Condor’s sound design was quite positive. The title screen music is calm, but also intriguing. It’s reasonable considering the site that you get to explore. However, I can’t say much about that because that’s the only point where I could find music in the game.

Upon starting your walk, the sound of a nearby waterfall can be heard. Along with various birds. They both add a sense of being there, which was cool to experience. There’re also sound effects for walking around, which are repetitive, but I didn’t find them too distracting. I actually liked the rhythmic aspect to the sounds of the walking and animals. This fit with the tone of the game, surprisingly.

One odd aspect was that even though I could hear animals as I played, I almost never saw any. In fact, when I was first working on this review, I thought that there were no animals to be found, even though they could be heard. However, I later located a point on the map where a bird could be seen flying in the air if you look up at the sky in that area. So, from my own experience, I was only able to see one single animal in the game.

Which is fine, except that you can hear a bunch of them as you walk around. This conflict between the number of sound effects and what you can actually see is another example of The Lost Condor’s design taking me out of the experience.

Final Thoughts

Which is a real shame, because my first response to the game was positive all around. Yet, as I played it more, cracks began to form. Not only was there the problem of more sound effects than the number of animals you can see, but also the game feels like a glitchy diorama.

It’s pretty to look at, and fascinating at times, but it just falls apart upon closer inspection.

For instance, when exploring the citadel, it is very easy to walk up to a wall, turn around, and then see through the wall due to clipping issues. The game doesn’t use invisible walls where they could be helpful either. It was neat to be able to walk near the side of the mountains near the beginning of the game, but that’s only the case until the ground below me would become invisible.

Finally, after I played it for some time, I changed the graphics settings from “Very High” to “Epic,” it made it so that nearly all the plants float in the air! I tried to fix this issue in multiple ways, even going so far as to delete my game files and redownload it from itch.io. Unfortunately, once the plants started to float, I could never fix the problem.

Obviously, such issues compel me to rate the game lower than what my first impressions would have led me to do. However, before sharing the rating, I’d like to reiterate something that I stressed earlier.

The Lost Condor has very few gameplay elements. As shared on the game’s itch.io page, “There is no story, objective, or interactive objects.  You can walk through a large portion of it in about 10 minutes. I played it a few times by myself and with my kids. We all liked it a good deal, although as we journeyed through it repeatedly, the game’s glitches became harder to ignore.

Consequently, while I wanted to rate the game as Positive, I feel forced to mark it down as Mixed instead. If the developer wasn’t so forthcoming about the game’s length or lack of gameplay aspects, then I would have rated it even further down. I appreciate the honest nature of how the game is presented to potential buyers. The developer doesn’t promise a lot of gameplay in this experience, and we are given what is promised.

Finally, I will say that the version I played was the itch.io release. The Steam version has a different art style. Separate from The Lost Condor is also a demo of a Stonehenge experience that is similar to this one. I discuss it after the review summary.

Title: The Lost Condor – Walking Simulator – Itch.io Edition (Website)
Genre: Walking Simulator
Year Released: 2022
Developer: thelastcondor, which is the developer name on itch.io (developer page). On Steam, the developer simply goes by The Lost Condor Dev.
Available On: Itch.io and Steam
Price Paid: Free, as part of a public offer to add the game to one’s itch.io library.

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid. Please see my Review Rating Scale to know more of how I rate games.

Stonehenge Demo Review

As stated in the review above, the developer of The Lost Condor also produced a Stonehenge demo that places you at that famous site in England. It is extremely similar to the main game, with it sharing the same gameplay philosophy, controls, and some sound effects.

Since it is on a much smaller scale, it can be walked around in just a few moments. All the while you can look at the sun (which doesn’t move), admire the grass and shadows, and stand in wonder at the famous structure. As I played, I noticed that the texture quality of the stones isn’t as good as in The Lost Condor, which was slightly disappointing.

I did like that the area is bigger than at first glance, but there isn’t anything to do after you leave the main site. Like in the Manchu Picchu game, you can fall off the map, and keep going. There is no way to die in the demo, and you cannot interact with the stones or cause them to move.

It is a neat little experience and I think it is good to try out for those interested in The Lost Condor. If you like the demo, you’ll probably enjoy the main game as well.