Find and photograph cryptids in 2D adventure Lone Pine

You can keep "jump", the best verb in videogames is "examine". When an adventure game like Lone Pine lets me examine a campfire and also a bin, then has the protagonist comment on them in a way that says something about her as well as about the object she's looking at, I know I'm in good hands.

Lone Pine is an adventure game about exploring a national park with only your wits and a backpack you can fill with items that might then be combined with each other to solve puzzles. Oh, and a camera for taking photos of cryptids with.

Lone Pine National Park contains several undocumented species and it's your job to document them. First you'll have to lure them out, which means learning a little about each one, and then solving a puzzle to get their attention.

The photography minigame is surprisingly involved, with shutter speed and aperture to control as well as zoom. It's not complicated enough to be a faff, at least not in the demo I played at PAX Australia, but it makes "photograph" a pleasing addition to the short list of verbs Lone Pine gives you.

The one thing that gave me pause was a puzzle that I got stuck on because I couldn't match two drawings of a dog's head. One was just a touch too abstract for me to figure out what it was. A friend of mine playing the demo had the exact same problem. It's funny how a puzzle can be stalled by how we interpret images—it's been fascinating to see how many people get stuck on the puzzles in Silent Hill F that assume you'll be able to figure out what a character's pose implies about their emotional state or, like, which of a group of foxes is a thief.

At least in this case the developers are aware of the issue, and say the puzzle will be revised in the full game, which will hopefully be out in the next year. You can keep track of Lone Pine on its Steam page.