Lorelai, a brand new emotional horror ride from the maker of The Cat Lady and Downfall, tells a coming of age story of a young girl trying to escape the hell of her toxic family home. But adulthood is like waking up from a long dream. There will be times you will wish you were asleep again... But you can never go back to the same dream.
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Worthy conclusion to the "Devil came through here" trilogy of horror games. I liked it much better than Downfall but it didn't quite come close to Cat Lady (but then again what game does?^^). Visually very cool ideas, I really liked Lorelai as a character and I also thought it was cool that the lore of the world was illuminated a bit more, good game.
This review contains spoilers
Lorelai is a point & click horror adventure game developed by Harvester Games, behind previous titles like the brutal “The Cat Lady” and “Downfall”. I don’t remember much of where I know of this game, I just know that I discovered Harvester Games through youtubist Grimbeard, and as such they looked interesting enough for me to pick up. Like the previous titles games in the trilogy, I haven’t really felt the urge to play them until recently when a friend I've been streaming for said she wanted to watch it. Having gone through the entire trilogy, how's the finale to the “Devil Came Through Here” saga?
The story starts off with Lorelai having come home from work while dealing with a terrible home life. Her step-father John is a creepy alcoholic who lost his job at a brick factory due to its closure, her mother Miranda is depressed and deals with it because of money and the two had a baby, Bethany, together. Lorelai wants to take the child away and move to a better place without John but that doesn’t happen due to her mother’s passivity. There’s also her neighbor Zach, a socially awkward video game dev who has a huge crush on Lorelai and can’t spit it out. The story at first is tense, then it gets dark real quick when her mother goes silent in the bathroom after a huge rant where her mom can basically tell you why everything sucks. Lorelai gets worried and asks Zach for help; breaking through the door, the two find mom hung in the bathroom. Her step-father comes through and cruelly makes fun of his now dead wife before tempers flare and he accidentally kills Lorelai and knocks Zach out. From here you recount a dream of when you got your first job at a nursing home before traveling through a nightmare and meet up with the main force behind the trilogy: The Queen of Maggots.
There isn’t much in the way of twists here aside from bits here and there, it’s more of a case of struggling to save your infant sister as fate deems it that ol’ stepdad will kill her. In this case, she’s willing to make deals with the Queen in order to come back to life and stop John. However, along the way she dies a lot, meets a dream traveler, can help/harm a man in his fight against alcoholism and finally kills her step-dad (who's trying to cover up a LOT of murders) while dealing with the queen’s trickery. Of course, she has no intention of letting you go from your contract, instead planning on Lorelai taking the mantle as the next queen. The decisions you make change your ending, but it’s not as hardcore as the previous games so you don’t have to worry about decision skulls as much as you have to use common sense and not forgetting to light the candles/not feeding the crow later on.
Overall, the plot is fantastic; while not crazy in-depth about depression enough to make me shed literal tears like Cat Lady, I felt like it did a great job still keeping the darker atmosphere while also making me feel hope. Zach and Lorelai, to me fit pretty well as a couple and I shipped the hell out of them due to the likability of the two, who both have a habit of referencing video games constantly like Skyrim and Dark Souls. In fact that’s something I noticed that there are references between Breaking Bad to Final Fantasy 7 that kind of take me out of it a LITTLE bit though with Zach’s main hobby being a video game developer I guess I’m not too surprised. The game to me is a story about struggling, that things can always change for the better and that even though life is hellish, it can be overcome to find slices of happiness even if it’s bit by bit. Hope, something that feels rare in this world but can be felt even if only for a brief second.
What’s the gameplay like? Well for the most part as always it’s the same as The Cat Lady and Downfall: you can pick stuff up, solve puzzles, combine items, talk to people and choose from different dialogue options and etc. There isn’t much I can really say in this department other than “it’s good” and if it’s your style of gameplay then I think you’ll like it all the same, though I also used a guide (link below). In fact, the main takeaway I got from this is that it has pretty good controller support if you don’t feel like picking up the mouse and keyboard and want a more casual experience. I think where you’ll get the most out of this is the aforementioned plot mixed in with the atmosphere and sound design.
The art direction and atmosphere is fantastic, it’s a lot of the same 2D hand drawn graphics but it feels polished and colorful while mixed in with 3D animations. This delivers a vibe that can range from downright creepy to straight up beautiful. Like, what I can say about it is that sometimes it looks weird and off kilter, but it feels like it’s a design choice more than an actual misstep. For example the real Queen of Maggots being terrifying yet low res. Also the game has this tendency of zooming in, sometimes with great effect and sometimes it feels off but it works. In fact, the amount of times that I’ve sat down and stared in awe at one of the hand animated/painted environments is a lot and I feel like it also adds to the hope that the game seeks to portray as opposed to The Cat Lady’s and Downfall’s bleakness. There’ll still be horrifying imagery, but also beauty as well that can’t be understated. It’s a strange mix between the dream world and the depressing state of real life and whether it has color or it doesn’t they all blend in together to create a consistency that I enjoy. The character models are pretty well drawn and unique too, with Lorelai herself being the main outlier as someone who’s definitely goth influenced.
The sound design is also solid, starting with the voice actors/actresses. I can’t name one bad performance at all, everyone from Maisy Kay as Lorelai to the returning Margaret Cowen as the Queen of Maggots does a fantastic job. Two voices are ones that I recognize from IMDB, one being YongYea who I used to follow on Youtube for a while did great as Jimmy the Traveler and apparently Stephanie Sterling played someone in the “Alcoholics Anonymous” section which I didn’t even notice. The music is also pretty solid and balanced and in more conjunction with tone! Everything fits together and sounds great in the moment whether it sounds like a mid 2000s sad boy song or string pieces created by someone named micAmic. The actual environment sounds are pretty immersive too, no complaints and honestly something I want to point out: in Chapter 4 there was a train puzzle of sorts where if you flip the switch a lot it sounds like something out of the Silent Hill main menu and I’ll be honest these sounds make me cream my pants bro on god. The only thing I could really complain about is that sometimes the dialogue cuts out near the end and that’s kind of annoying and I have no clue what it could possibly be that I would need to fix it either.
Overall, is it worth playing? The answer is yes, it’s a highly satisfying conclusion to the “Queen of Maggots” saga while retaining its own plot that you can experience solo. While not as emotionally heart wrenching as The Cat Lady gives you a feeling of hope (at least with the Golden Ending), it's a lot more polished in pretty much most areas and delivers a vibe that's warmer. I would say that at the end of the day, while I view Downfall as the worst one, I don’t know if I could choose between The Cat Lady or Lorelai on which is better. Both are unique in their own reasons, yet worth the purchase regardless. Get this game by any means, get them all.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zloMePZGWMw&ab_channel=GrimBeard
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Lorelai
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7865582/
https://micamic.bandcamp.com/album/lorelai-original-soundtrack
https://steamcommunity.com/app/593960/discussions/0/1675812484350149887/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2547378399
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The story starts off with Lorelai having come home from work while dealing with a terrible home life. Her step-father John is a creepy alcoholic who lost his job at a brick factory due to its closure, her mother Miranda is depressed and deals with it because of money and the two had a baby, Bethany, together. Lorelai wants to take the child away and move to a better place without John but that doesn’t happen due to her mother’s passivity. There’s also her neighbor Zach, a socially awkward video game dev who has a huge crush on Lorelai and can’t spit it out. The story at first is tense, then it gets dark real quick when her mother goes silent in the bathroom after a huge rant where her mom can basically tell you why everything sucks. Lorelai gets worried and asks Zach for help; breaking through the door, the two find mom hung in the bathroom. Her step-father comes through and cruelly makes fun of his now dead wife before tempers flare and he accidentally kills Lorelai and knocks Zach out. From here you recount a dream of when you got your first job at a nursing home before traveling through a nightmare and meet up with the main force behind the trilogy: The Queen of Maggots.
There isn’t much in the way of twists here aside from bits here and there, it’s more of a case of struggling to save your infant sister as fate deems it that ol’ stepdad will kill her. In this case, she’s willing to make deals with the Queen in order to come back to life and stop John. However, along the way she dies a lot, meets a dream traveler, can help/harm a man in his fight against alcoholism and finally kills her step-dad (who's trying to cover up a LOT of murders) while dealing with the queen’s trickery. Of course, she has no intention of letting you go from your contract, instead planning on Lorelai taking the mantle as the next queen. The decisions you make change your ending, but it’s not as hardcore as the previous games so you don’t have to worry about decision skulls as much as you have to use common sense and not forgetting to light the candles/not feeding the crow later on.
Overall, the plot is fantastic; while not crazy in-depth about depression enough to make me shed literal tears like Cat Lady, I felt like it did a great job still keeping the darker atmosphere while also making me feel hope. Zach and Lorelai, to me fit pretty well as a couple and I shipped the hell out of them due to the likability of the two, who both have a habit of referencing video games constantly like Skyrim and Dark Souls. In fact that’s something I noticed that there are references between Breaking Bad to Final Fantasy 7 that kind of take me out of it a LITTLE bit though with Zach’s main hobby being a video game developer I guess I’m not too surprised. The game to me is a story about struggling, that things can always change for the better and that even though life is hellish, it can be overcome to find slices of happiness even if it’s bit by bit. Hope, something that feels rare in this world but can be felt even if only for a brief second.
What’s the gameplay like? Well for the most part as always it’s the same as The Cat Lady and Downfall: you can pick stuff up, solve puzzles, combine items, talk to people and choose from different dialogue options and etc. There isn’t much I can really say in this department other than “it’s good” and if it’s your style of gameplay then I think you’ll like it all the same, though I also used a guide (link below). In fact, the main takeaway I got from this is that it has pretty good controller support if you don’t feel like picking up the mouse and keyboard and want a more casual experience. I think where you’ll get the most out of this is the aforementioned plot mixed in with the atmosphere and sound design.
The art direction and atmosphere is fantastic, it’s a lot of the same 2D hand drawn graphics but it feels polished and colorful while mixed in with 3D animations. This delivers a vibe that can range from downright creepy to straight up beautiful. Like, what I can say about it is that sometimes it looks weird and off kilter, but it feels like it’s a design choice more than an actual misstep. For example the real Queen of Maggots being terrifying yet low res. Also the game has this tendency of zooming in, sometimes with great effect and sometimes it feels off but it works. In fact, the amount of times that I’ve sat down and stared in awe at one of the hand animated/painted environments is a lot and I feel like it also adds to the hope that the game seeks to portray as opposed to The Cat Lady’s and Downfall’s bleakness. There’ll still be horrifying imagery, but also beauty as well that can’t be understated. It’s a strange mix between the dream world and the depressing state of real life and whether it has color or it doesn’t they all blend in together to create a consistency that I enjoy. The character models are pretty well drawn and unique too, with Lorelai herself being the main outlier as someone who’s definitely goth influenced.
The sound design is also solid, starting with the voice actors/actresses. I can’t name one bad performance at all, everyone from Maisy Kay as Lorelai to the returning Margaret Cowen as the Queen of Maggots does a fantastic job. Two voices are ones that I recognize from IMDB, one being YongYea who I used to follow on Youtube for a while did great as Jimmy the Traveler and apparently Stephanie Sterling played someone in the “Alcoholics Anonymous” section which I didn’t even notice. The music is also pretty solid and balanced and in more conjunction with tone! Everything fits together and sounds great in the moment whether it sounds like a mid 2000s sad boy song or string pieces created by someone named micAmic. The actual environment sounds are pretty immersive too, no complaints and honestly something I want to point out: in Chapter 4 there was a train puzzle of sorts where if you flip the switch a lot it sounds like something out of the Silent Hill main menu and I’ll be honest these sounds make me cream my pants bro on god. The only thing I could really complain about is that sometimes the dialogue cuts out near the end and that’s kind of annoying and I have no clue what it could possibly be that I would need to fix it either.
Overall, is it worth playing? The answer is yes, it’s a highly satisfying conclusion to the “Queen of Maggots” saga while retaining its own plot that you can experience solo. While not as emotionally heart wrenching as The Cat Lady gives you a feeling of hope (at least with the Golden Ending), it's a lot more polished in pretty much most areas and delivers a vibe that's warmer. I would say that at the end of the day, while I view Downfall as the worst one, I don’t know if I could choose between The Cat Lady or Lorelai on which is better. Both are unique in their own reasons, yet worth the purchase regardless. Get this game by any means, get them all.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zloMePZGWMw&ab_channel=GrimBeard
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/Lorelai
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7865582/
https://micamic.bandcamp.com/album/lorelai-original-soundtrack
https://steamcommunity.com/app/593960/discussions/0/1675812484350149887/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2547378399
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
It's so interesting to me how this game follows the same point and click formula, general artstyle, emo characters, and dark themes of The Cat Lady... and yet this game feels like a totally different genre. It's weird! But not bad. Where TCL feels abstract and dream-like, this game feels grounded and methodical. This is the telling of a very specific story, a story looking at a week in the life of a girl, a story looking at the real world through the perspective of the god of death, and how those characters interact. And I think all of that really works. I like it just as much, if not more, than that of TCL. My one critique is that there is NO reason for Zach to be THAT invested in his random ass neighbor like... the game does nothing to develop their history so that romance feels a bit random and unrealistic. I know men are depraved and will do anything to get some, but like... damn lmao. I do like that the devs humanize and build on side characters more than TCL, it helps to show the real world of Lorelai. And the dark themes, gore, and existential motifs work well in this context. Love the golden ending, its a very satisfying conclusion to this trilogy of games.
Overall, I get why this one might not resonate w ppl as much as TCL, but I think it really works. And is really good!
Also I NEED to mention just how much this game reminds me of Life is Strange, like Lorelai is basically Max and Chloe combined. And her inner thoughts were VIOLENTLY giving the same vibe as that game lmaoooo. It's giving adults not knowing how to write teenagers. But it still works! It just kept taking me out, hitting me with psychic damage lmao
Overall, I get why this one might not resonate w ppl as much as TCL, but I think it really works. And is really good!
Also I NEED to mention just how much this game reminds me of Life is Strange, like Lorelai is basically Max and Chloe combined. And her inner thoughts were VIOLENTLY giving the same vibe as that game lmaoooo. It's giving adults not knowing how to write teenagers. But it still works! It just kept taking me out, hitting me with psychic damage lmao
se nao fosse a ma otimizaçao, seria um jogo 5 estrelas e meia, o plot é psicotico e meio esquisito mas eu gostei
My Very Short Review:
https://www.tiktok.com/@gameludens
https://www.tiktok.com/@gameludens
the weakest of the trilogy, doesn't do anything outstanding or new with the main concept, just mid overall