Lorelei has a very interesting setup that fails to live up to the expectations it sets.

I really enjoyed how non-linear most of the game is. The mansion the game takes place in is large and open, there's several ways to progress right from the start. The game spreads out puzzles you can solve immediately and puzzles that'll take additional context pretty evenly throughout the world, giving the game a feeling of complex interconnectedness. Whenever I'd get access to a new part of the mansion I'd be paying heavy attention to whatever I came across, trying to recontextualize it in the context of puzzles I'd come across previously and seemingly couldn't solve.

This gameplay loop felt very satisfying for a while but puzzles are usually much simpler than they appear. The solution to puzzles will often be just noticing a code you saw earlier fits the number of inputs on a lock.

For example, I'd come across a lock let's me input a 7 digit code but nothing in the room would point to the answer. Later on I'd solve another puzzle and the reward is a slip of paper with a 7 digit code on it. Then it'd click I had somewhere to input that code, and I'd walk back to the 7 digit lock and punch the code in. This wasn't satisfying to solve and it sadly makes up a majority of the puzzle's solutions.

There were still a few really good puzzles, especially the game's "main" one. Solving that made me wish the rest of the game's big puzzles were that complex, but nothing else even comes close.

There are parts of the game that are downright tedious. The game has manual saves and in certain sections you can get game overs. There are save points everywhere and you know when you'll encounter potential game overs, but this makes those sections feel especially pointless.

I might be a dumbass for running into an extremely slow moving enemy without saving, but the punishment of losing progress feels too harsh and the tension this provides isn't worth it. Plus the game randomizes a good chunk of puzzles, so I found myself having to resolve some after dying because the solution changed upon reloading.

Can't say much without spoiling it but the story fell flat for me and failed to have any impact. I think it's presented in an interesting way throughout the game but the actual climax is lacking.

I've bought enough new games over the past few weeks that it would have taken a lot for me to stomach adding another title to the pile. Or so I thought, until the soundtrack for this popped up in my YouTube Music recommendations and I found out that it was the next game from the Sayonara Wild Hearts team. I mean, what was I going to do? Listen to it without getting the proper context first?

So I ended up going into this totally blind, and it's a trip. The game cold opens on your character standing next to a car with nothing to orient yourself beyond the objective "meet him at the hotel". The controls are minimalist as they come - directional movement plus one contextual "interact" action that's mapped to every button - which means the game doesn't even need to give you the familiarity of throwing up those familiar button prompts. It's an intimidating start, and kicks off a vibe of unfamiliarity that persists through the whole game, but beneath that feeling the puzzle design is actually quite forgiving. Both the puzzles and the information you need to solve them is pretty clearly signposted, so even if you haven't figured out how to manipulate that information to get an answer yet, it never feels like you might be missing something.

I've seen other reviews treat Lorelei as a sort of "meta" puzzle game, in the vein of recent hits Void Stranger or Animal Well, and although the surreal presentation and frequent use of mixed-media sequences lend themselves to that impression, I think fundamentally it's a much more traditional style of puzzle game. I've also seen people liken it to the puzzle sections of classic survival horror games, and while that's not wrong (there are a few sections that make this influence quite obvious) the lack of combat and horror make the sentiment kind of misleading. Personally, I'd describe it as something more akin to room escape games from the Flash game era, or maybe Safecracker (does anyone else remember Safecracker?). Just with more substance, and a heck of a lot more style. The game is also a lot more convenient with its storage of information than its presentation might lead you to believe, although I'd definitely still echo its recommendation to keep a physical notebook handy.

A lot of factors go into making the puzzles in Lorelei feel special, though. The hotel that serves as the setting has a great sense of place to it: rooms like the library and the art gallery are densely packed with puzzles and information in a way that other rooms aren't, simply because it would make sense for a real person to organize things that way. That choice lends itself to a weird kind of pacing, where the player often receives huge bursts of information at once, and it can feel overwhelming to try and keep track of it all. But the setting is small and dense enough that you don't really have to; you can just meander in any direction and you'll probably make progress somewhere before too long. Additionally, the puzzles are all deeply intertwined with the setting, characters, and story. This contributes to the initial feeling of confusion when you first start, since even the most basic details about what you're doing are used as puzzle elements, but it also means that you'll be paying attention to and piecing together the story naturally as you work your way through the puzzles.

Mechanically, there are some very interesting vectors by which puzzles are presented and solved which I won't spoil, but the vast majority of your time will be spent finding codes to open locks. This could easily get tiresome, but Lorelei puts in the work to make even opening locks feel good by providing a wide variety of lock types and giving each one a nice tactile feel despite the simplified control scheme. I do wish the dedication to minimalism hadn't spread to the UI, though, as you'll be referencing your handy photographic memory a lot and without a dedicated "back" button it takes as long to navigate back out of a particular file as it does to navigate into it.

If you know Simogo's previous work, I probably don't have to tell you that the game looks and sounds fantastic. It can be hard to parse visually at times, especially at the beginning before you've grown used to the effects, but the signposting is clear enough that this doesn't get in the way of gameplay. One effect I particularly like is the way the geometry in the hotel seems to be textured or masked with fragments of photographs, which sells the anachronistic feel in a very visceral way. The soundtrack is also great, although being isolated to in-world phonographs that you have to find and start means that I didn't actually get to listen to it as much as I would have preferred. Obviously there are not an EP's worth of bangin' vocal tracks here the way there were in Sayonara Wild Hearts, and I won't hold that against the game. But it's a shame that the only vocal track we do get (outside of the credits) is only 90 seconds long, because it's been stuck in my head since the moment I first heard it.

In summary, I highly recommend Lorelei and the Laser Eyes to any fan of room-escape style puzzle games. It does a lot to seem inaccessible, in both story and gameplay, but it does at least as much work actually being quite accessible on both fronts.

(I still have no clue what the shortcut puzzle about the teeth is supposed to mean though)

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is best described as a Resident Evil game that's a fully puzzle game.

Throughout the game you explore a mysterious mansion, solve puzzles, collect objects, open shortcuts, etc. The game is extremely stylish, and laying out puzzles in the game world makes them feel so much more rewarding.

I wouldn't describe it as a hard game. I believe if you write down things and remember your notes which you always have access to from the game, you'll solve most of it with no problem. However, every puzzle feels unique. There's nothing that I can point at that feels like a repeat, and thanks to that there are likely going to be places where you will be stumped, since our brains are all wired differently.

For me, Bug Report 2 was probably the biggest obstacle. However, at the beginning this format also works againts the game a little bit. When you don't yet know how the puzzles work, it's easy to get stuck due to a simple mistake and start "solving" things that are impossible, thinking that you have enough pieces, while you have two out of three.

I do wish the game wasn't as insistent on underlining important information in its notes, because that makes some things really easy, and even by the end of the game you'll be finding long pages with something like "TUESDAY" underlined.

That said, I loved my time with Lorelei. Beaten the game in 13 hours, which is a lot more than I would expect from an exploratory puzzle game.

As you would probably expect from my description, there is a story, and this might be the biggest meta puzzle that connects everything you know. Frankly, I'm still not sure about some things that happened. Because of this I can't say the story grabbed me, as throughout the game it was just weird and I couldn't connect with anyone, but it's so stylish and abstract that it was still fun interacting with it.

It's a unique haunting experience that I won't soon forget, and if you like puzzles or want something strange, this is the game for you.

7/10

Another complex, multifaceted, and enigmatic videogame. The second this year.

As Indika, the core of the game is how it mixes narrative themes, modes, and a self-reflexive meta-commentary on games. Its world is inspired by Resnais and Lynch, it's both ambiguous and funny, different realities meet and clash in a same space.

It's an inner journey of self-redescovery only on a surface level. Many (and more interesting) things move beneath.

I must think about it. For now, so far 2024 looks a great year for games :o

Functioning as a game-long puzzle box, including a piece-it-together narrative which becomes a puzzle of its own in the game's coda, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes demonstrates the rewards of an experience which never once holds the player by the hand except in providing goals to complete. Comparisons to Outer Wilds have been made (as with another 2024 release, Animal Well), yet the sole similarity is in a broad belief the player can go through the world and its obstacles without training wheels or handrails. Simogo accomplishes a beautiful layering of logic points to identify symbols, numbers, and repeated solutions to create the intricate paths by which the player can solve more and more puzzles, and by the end of the game these connections aid not only comprehension in solving the hotel's puzzles but those of the obtuse narrative. Genre conventions of the Gothic setting—a location full of secrets—and a developed examination of art and the artist, criticisms of auteurism and commercialization, enjoin a meta perspective to provide frequent humor and an interrupted dirge to a game whose gameplay is as much the story as any of the interstitial cutscenes. Though it is a few steps from the magnificent Void Stranger, Lorelei is another recent example of how the medium and its flexibilities in form while adhering to recognizable gameplay formulas can still innovate by simply trusting the player in their own capabilities as a not stupid, to be pandered to consumer of another product.

Absolutely brilliant. A game that knows exactly what it wants to be, and nails it. A tribute to the quiet moments of survival horror, and an exploration of the tension between art and profit.

The puzzles are pitched just right - not usually any tougher than you'd find in an escape room, but sturdy enough to trip you up from time to time. (I needed two hints to finish the game, and both were because I missed the bleeding obvious. One of those times was me struggling to unlock a door after forgetting I had the key.) Any repetition in the find-code-to-unlock-door structure is counteracted by a huge amount of variety and creativity in how the puzzle pieces are presented to you. The standout puzzles are those that tip the hat to a very particular survival horror game while riffing on the "haunted media" genre of creepypasta - they might ultimately just boil down to note-taking exercises, but they're too much fun for me to care.

The story is the greatest puzzle. The ending reveals risk being trite, but get away with it with fair foreshadowing, excellent presentation, and sheer vibes. There's just enough left unexplained, just enough that could be taken a different way, to give you a sense of a much greater horror under the surface. What happened in Sulawesi?

This is the closest I'll get to playing an actual horror game. I don't think it's supposed to be that scary, but I did hit the ceiling once or twice.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a phenomenal experience from start to finish! My playthrough clocked in at around 13 hours, and I had a great time the whole way through. The puzzles were incredibly satisfying to solve. The game recommends you use a physical notebook to write things down, and while my notebook ended up looking like the scrawls of a madman, having something simple to look through on the fly was really useful. None of the puzzles are too difficult, but there was so much variety and always another puzzle to be solved if one was giving me trouble. The controls are extremely simple, with just directional inputs and an action button (though a back button would have been nice). This game just oozes style. I loved the fixed camera angles and the game goes a lot of places (both physically and story-wise) that I was not expecting. Enhancing the experience was the incredible soundtrack, and some of those songs will definitely be joining my playlist. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a gorgeous puzzle game that I would recommend to anyone who is in to games where you have to think, but it still manages to be an approachable, wonderful experience.

It took me 14 hours and 8 pages of hand-written notes to solve this thing - and I loved every minute of it. None of the puzzles are especially difficult in themselves. But they hit you with so many different areas to investigate and avenues to explore that the resulting overwhelmed confusion prevents you from getting to the core of them. I spent most of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes understanding its internal logic. Which is exactly the right combination of actual logic and magical thinking to make it just work for me. The puzzles are of the "really good escape room"-type and manage to be quite unique despite their sheer amount. The visual design and atmosphere bring the entire experience home for me: The entire game is filled to the brim with eerie vibes. It's haunting. Its puzzles haunted me throughout my day. Just as Lorelei is haunted. And now, I'll leave the rest of the game's secrets to smarter people. Godspeed, discord servers of the world!

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a puzzle masterpiece, soaked in the black and reds of a haunted past and paranoid espressos. A surreal experience that interpellates us through the screen and into the scratches of page after page of symbols, numbers, and patterns from ball-point ink. It burrows until we can’t look away, crystallizing until we start to see it with LASER eyes. In that liminal void are the sinister reflections of smudged memories and the unrelenting trauma of a past we can’t let go of - a gripping foray into the maze of the interior gothic. A purgatory we must unearth. It’s as beautiful and charming as it is maddening, with my mind steadily forming a sense of aphophenia as it yearned to decode and decode and decode. Truly a special experience I won’t soon forget.

Haven’t felt this strongly about an independent release since Signalis.

Truth recovery: 96.5%
American dollars: 82/100
Play time: 19:37

Starring: Some weird dude who's probably David Lynch

I took a gamble on this game due to the glowing reviews and the likes of Sam Barlow highly recommending it. I won't lie that I was skeptical given Simogo's last game being Sayonara Wild Hearts which lacked interactivity despite its great style. Good thing I took a gamble because I hit the jackpot.

As with most other reviews for this game, I'll try to avoid giving much away because I believe going in with minimal expectations is wise. Needless to say, the game is a puzzle exploration game where you explore a hotel and try to unravel a bizarre mystery. I heard someone say describe this as "Resident Evil but with puzzles instead of zombies" and I think that's one of the most accurate descriptions. You come to be deeply familiar with the hotel as you explores its nooks and crannies and slowly open it up. The game is practically a rat's nest of information for various puzzles. Puzzles fall back on certain themes and ideas, but consistently force you to determine where the answer is hiding. It's a really cool method that feels incredibly intricate and encourages you to engross yourself in the game's setting.

I won't lie that I did look up a couple hints. The shortcut puzzles can be kinda hard to understand at times and I just felt as though staring at them for ages was not in the spirit of the experience. I did also look up an answer for the piano puzzle, as it felt a bit obtuse (all the information you need to solve it is in the room with you), and I did look up how to finally solve the supercomputer puzzle when I was about 98% of the way through it as I struggled to interpret some of the final pieces and wanted to wrap things up. You may view that as cowardly, I view it as "I gave it an honest try and didn't want to sit on the puzzle for ages".

I need to emphasize though that, for the majority of the runtime, I didn't look up any hints. I trusted that I could decipher things and would simply come back later if something didn't make sense. And that mostly worked! It was a constant stream of "Eureka!" moments that had me feeling clever as I slowly peeled away this game's layers.

Presentation is really cool with artful camera angles and a sharp use of reds in an otherwise monochromatic game. Controls are definitely a bit janky though. There are directional inputs, a start menu button, and an interaction button. That's it. So every single thing you do from accessing your recorded information to inputting numbers on a lock is done with basically one button. While I appreciate the attempt at minimalist design, it does result in some annoying navigation issues from time to time.

I do need to emphasize though that these control issues are a minor complaint when considering that this game is essentially the new gold standard for puzzle design. It's so deeply compelling with its narrative and puzzles interwoven and the ways in which it asks you to flip your thinking and re-assess what you know are so damn cool. Also, I just wish more games would utilize numerical puzzles like this.

Simogo have already developed an insanely large and well thought out title and I hope that we get another from them some time and also see this as the starting point for a new breed of puzzle design.

I'm only an hour into this, but I feel very comfortable rating this an excellent puzzle game that I'm deeply invested in completing.

I lost interest in and never finished The Witness because of how disconnected and abstract the puzzles felt from the world. But I'm already very intrigued by the many questions that have been posed. Who am I? Why have I been summoned to this hotel in the middle of the woods? Why is some eccentric rich guy tasking me with solving puzzles in order to reach him?

My one minor complaint is the lack of a dedicated back button. It's very annoying that I have to constantly scroll up to hit the "X" button in a menu or force a bad solve in a puzzle screen in order to go back.