Lumino City is a point-and-click adventure game released for Steam in 2014 and iOS/tvOS in 2015. It features a charming story, intricate puzzles, and an accessible interface — but its most subtle feature is also its most astonishing: the entire world of Lumino City was hand-crafted as a physical set.

In this interview, Luke Whittaker of State of Play Games discusses why they chose this route over 3D modeling and animation; the year of design and building that culminated in a single day of filming; documenting the process and history of the game’s design; what’s happened to the set, now that the game is available; the relationship between the protagonist and her grandfather; and being one of the first game developers for the new, fourth-generation Apple TV.

Watch the video above, or download the audio edition from Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Pandora, Amazon Music, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Full disclosure: a review copy of this game was supplied to me by the developer.