Luxora: The Floating City That Wouldn't Let Me Put My Phone Down

I'll be honest — I almost skipped Luxora. The screenshots looked pretty but I've been burned by pretty games with nothing underneath. Then I gave it twenty minutes, and those twenty minutes turned into a full afternoon on the couch.

The setup is simple: you're a courier in a city that stacks upward into the clouds, and you deliver things. But the delivery is just a thread pulling you through this gorgeous hand-drawn world. Climbing walls, gliding between towers, discovering a hidden staircase that opens a whole new district — that's the actual game, and it's a joy.

The controls deserve a paragraph of their own. Luxora plays in portrait, mostly one-thumbed, with a glide flick that feels weightless once you learn it. A couple of the higher platforming sections got tense on my smaller phone, but I never blamed the game. The characters you meet along the routes give it warmth, too — small conversations that quietly open new paths.

My advice: don't rush the deliveries. Wander. Talk to the odd merchant on the fifth tier. Sit still and watch the light shift. Luxora isn't a game to beat, it's a place to spend time in. Easily one of my favorite indie finds this year.