Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a puzzle game unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Swedish developer Simogo, which has been innovating in the genre since at least 2013’s Year Walk, has crafted an immaculate interactive mystery dripping with style, rich with an enthralling story to unravel, and chock full of masterfully designed puzzles to obsess over. The game’s logic-heavy mechanics will immediately draw parallels to Lucas Pope’s seminal Return of the Obra Dinn. But just as that game’s innovations and influence made it a common point of reference for critics when reviewing games that followed, I can only assume we will start seeing critics drawing comparisons to Lorelei in much the same way. Simogo’s accomplishment is a step forward for not only the puzzle genre but video games as a whole.

It's like one big escape room. Some really good mysteries and flipping of the script, but also it does get really repetitive after a while, especially if you miss something crucial.

Additionally, as will probably come to light with future comments, it has one pretty obvious fatal flaw - there is no back button. And it's pretty near inexcusable. I gave it a pass for the first few hours, because I thought it was going to use this lack of back button in gameplay, but it really doesn't. There is no reason not to have a back button, especially since so many of these pieces of media take so long to access with the lack of one.

Anyway, the central mystery is pretty entertaining, and I always adore a game that requires you to have a notepad nearby. It communicates a lot of its puzzles very cleanly, but some of them seem to just be "oh, okay, this number goes here too", without too much of a reason why they should be linked, other than "well, you haven't used it yet, so you might as well try to put it there".

Again, I do think this is a great game (3.5/5 for me), but there are quite a few flaws holding back what would otherwise be an incredibly innovative staple of the puzzle genre.

Just because my above comment seems more negative than my overall opinion of it might be - it's a very interesting game. Check it out if you like escape rooms, and if you don't mind backtracking and an annoying lack of back button. If you crave what is overall quite a high level of quality escape room puzzles, with a central mystery that is dark and surreal, then this is the game for you.

I definitely was thrilled by it to start off with, but there were just too many hitches that by the end, it far outstayed its welcome. BUT I still enjoyed it a lot and may have binged it over an entire weekend, but there were plenty of times I was just throwing my hands up into the air in disbelief.

Play it if you like escape rooms and don't mind the possibility of getting stuck, or some light flow issues.

I'm just going to rewrite this after finishing the game cause my smooth ass brain formed wrinkles and I ACTUALLY BEAT IT. To preface my puzzle experience is very minimal i've 100%'ed games like Tunic and The Witness, with a sprinkle of hidden object games but other than that its not my genre of choice. Now I see Simogo, the LEGENDS of making good games put out cryptic teasers and eventually a trailer for their new puzzle game coming off of the momentum of the goated Sayonara Wild Hearts. So i picked it up day 1 and expected a leisurely tour through this manor solving logic puzzles and im stuck. So ya the game threw so much at me I got tangled in all the notes and I got stuck, this wouldnt be the first time this would happen also, but the moment I untangled my thoughts and progressed was euphoric. As im solving these puzzles, im floored at the visuals, sounds and vibe this game just emits. The puzzles themselves I really wanna make myself feel better and say they are hard, but even though some are easier than others they are really fun to figure out and solve, especially the later ones. The story is soaked in this thick veil that you can only see blotches and that process of making out whats going on isnt the easiest as its hidden behind cryptic wording and out-of-order sequencing, but piecing it together is as satisfying as everything else this game has. Oh and the godlike Trio (Jonathan Eng and Daniel Olsen and Linnea Olsson) coming back to create a phenomenal soundtrack is the cherry on top. This is a contender for GOTY for me, even of all time to be honest and it comes from major Simogo bias but even that aside, this game knows what it wants to bring to the table and its made to perfection, or simply just another banger by Simogo

good game but ended up being a mixed bag. the puzzles are very creative and satisfying but some turn repetitive. the narrative felt non present for a long stretch of the early game which is a shame bc the writing and presentation of the story is strong and it lets you puzzle the narrative together, however the ending knocks over a lot of that. its a commonly hated trope so i assume other ppl will likely feel the same. theres a lot of subtext here tho so maybe im missing sth.
lastly the controls are awfully inconvenient, especially for menuing which is a big part of the game. theres a stylistic reason for this but its just such a nuisance.
i sound overly negative here but the puzzles can be very good, i was just expecting more out of the story.

An effortlessly stylish puzzle/adventure game from the developers of Device 6, Year Walk, and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Loved the largely monochromatic aesthetic, the Resident Evil-style fixed camera angles, and the metafictional cross-media fuckery (they don't have Remedy money so there isn't an entire live-action short film you can actually watch or anything like that, but the narrative is very concerned with films, sculptures, music, paintings, art installations, intricate little puzzle boxes, and of course video games).

As for the puzzles, this is definitely one for the Tunic/FEZ/Void Stranger sickos out there who love nothing more than scribbling feverishly into a notebook (or in my case, a Notepad document and MS Paint canvas on my second monitor). I had a ton of fun playing this alongside my brother and racking our collective brains trying to figure out some abstractly presented math problem or which of the many, many documents in our possession held the pivotal clue for solving a puzzle.

Tremendous in its concept, execution and atmosphere. A puzzle game that combines open world-ish puzzle solving with the "open up paths" gameplay of something like Resident Evil 2 Remake leading to an absolute masterpiece.

Lorelei's genius comes from its structure: the Hotel & its surroundings are your play area for the entire game and are all interconnected. One of the first puzzles I encountered while playing the game was solved 12 hours deep as part of the ending sequence.

You'd think that this vast availability of options would lead to confusion as to which path can actually be taken, which solutions are possible based on current information, but it really doesn't because the game operates on the following principle: if you're looking at a puzzle and are confused about how it works, then you probably don't have the resources to solve it. Luckily, the game has so many avenues open that you can always jump to another question you have, slowly ticking off puzzles, opening doors and going further and further.

A real life notebook is required for this game. It took me 13 pages of notes to finish the game and that's with very conservative use of space. The in-game information menu is fantastic in its own right but cannot be accessed during puzzles and therefore only convenient for fixing your irl notes for the most part.

Aesthetically, the game rocks. Its art direction is gorgeous and so peculiar that it makes its most interesting pieces of imagery really pop. The music is fantastic as well.

Lorelei is definitely 2024's "off-radar" standout so far and continues a very, very strong indie release year along with Balatro, Pacific Drive and Animal Well.

8.7/10

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.

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.

Oh man, do NOT sleep on Lorelei and the Laser Eyes! One of the finest puzzle/escape room games I've ever played. Having a game to tear into with pen and paper is something I really needed even after Animal Well, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. There are very very small issues - the amount of backtracking was a little tedious, and there is no back button in the menus of the game. But if these are things that are unlikely to bother you, then I wholeheartedly recommend giving Lorelei a shot. If you plan on playing this, stop reading reviews. Run don't walk to the Steam page!

initially i buried the lede, but i'm angry enough that i won't: this is a story david cage would write wrapped in a game good enough that he would hate every second of it.

lorelei and the laser eyes is a flawless dollhouse construction of beautiful puzzleboxes. the art and design is excellent and when it pulls a gimmick it pulls it excellently. it pushes, dramatically, towards one-upping the mechanical center of outer wilds' climax (with several more moving parts, each with a highlights mathmania's worth of fun little tricks to solve).

the problem is that the game also wants to one up the emotional climax of outer wilds, and it doesn't know what the fuck a human being is. the best it can offer you is a mannequin, with a mannequin of that same mannequin off to the side, in the corner, winking solemnly. it is a sad joke, an attempt at a gut punch so limp that it made me the angriest i've been at a video game all year. it is rare that i am this impressed by a video game i feel for a moment i might actually hate.

the worst part is that i know these motherfuckers can do the work. there is good writing in many inches of the margins here, and, besides, they've made one bonafide goddamn video game narrative masterpiece (device 6, a much better game than this overall) so it's all the more disappointing.

at least the end credits song is basically another sayonara wild hearts track.

probably the most angry i've been at a video game in years. hell, even twelve minutes was funny to think about.

Didnt really know anything about this game going in other than 1) its published by annapurna and 2) its a game involving puzzles and patterns and ciphers and mysteries, aka a game for me. I did not expect to be as into this game as I was.
This is a really effective puzzle game, once you get going it completely ensnares you in its gameplay loop. There keep being new crumb trails to follow both in the puzzles you solve and the mystery you unravel. You probably need to take some notes while playing this which is a plus in my book.
The central mystery is incredibly intriguing (if pretentious, but i forgive it), and much of my gameplay time was spent reading and re-reading notes i found to try and piece together some tangible narrative, but it was not until the end that (most of) the full picture became clear (which I didnt mind, and honestly at that point i wouldve been happy NOT to get explicit answers from the game)
Obviously the one big flaw that many people have already talked about is the bizarre control scheme, especially when the player has no option to set custom controls. This is a weird choice and causes some frustration and confusion, but i personally didnt find it that detrimental to my enjoyment (plus i really truly got used to it. still a bad design choice, but tolerable)

Playing through "Lorelei and the Laser Eyes" is an experience I will long to relive. Very few video games have made me feel the way this game did, with Immortality, Echoes of the Eye & the original Ace Attorney trilogy being among them.

"Lorelei and the Laser Eyes" is developed by Simogo, hot off the heels of their previous game "Sayonara Wild Hearts", which could not be any more different in its tone & gameplay.

The story is difficult to discuss without spoilers, but I will say that the mystery had me completely sucked in during the 21 hours it took me to finish it. There are two layers to the story of "Lorelei". Despite the very artsy facade, there is a literal story being told here that does provide satisfying answers to the big questions you will likely have during the game, even going out of its way to spell things out for you during the finale. Beneath that layer, however, is an extremely complicated rumination on technology, art, capitalism, the audience's perspective vs. that of the artist and so forth. Symbols & how meaning is assigned to them is a heavy motif through the game, and are beautifully integrated into the actual puzzle solving.

The gameplay format of "Lorelei" is comparable to the early Resident Evil games, with the game's main location - the Hotel Lethz Jahr - being highly reminiscent of the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil 1. The key distinction between the two implementations of the Survival Horror format, is that Lorelei strips out the genre's typical combat and resource management, and focuses wholly on puzzles. There are two main categories of puzzles in this game. "Lock-and-key" puzzles ala Resident Evil, where you read a piece of evidence and have to match it with a "lock" somewhere else in the game. The more interesting category is the collection of abstract, logic puzzles where the directive is intuiting the logic of the puzzle itself. These all manifests through all the fake movie posters, weird locks, keypads, printers etc. that all abide by some strange, but intuitive logic. Notably, these puzzles will most likely require you to keep a notepad to track all the information not stored in your "Photographic Memory".

Figuring out the answer to the final puzzle is one of the most satisfying things I have ever done in a video game. The 2nd & 3rd components of the solution in particular, and the path to figuring them out, seems outright bizarre to anyone who hasn't played it, but will make sense to you since the game does such a good job of training you to pick up on subtle patterns.

I really cannot criticise any aspect of the game, aside from some miscommunication on how the red maze works. Yes, the lack of a 'back button' in menus and during puzzles is annoying, but I can't help but respect the developers for fully committing to it, even if I don't fully understand why it was made.

Lorelei & the Laser Eyes is easily my GOTY for 2024, and I would be seriously impressed if anything, even my beloved Silksong, manages to eclipse it. It's already been to my list of favourites.

STRONG recommend to any puzzle game lovers.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes feels like an anachronism. I don’t just mean this from how the game haphazardly scatters documents from 1847 and 2014 throughout the hotel set in 1962, or how it references multiple past eras of gaming with PS1 survival-horror fixed camera angles or DOS-inspired 1-bit adventure game segments hidden away on floppy disks, though these elements certainly play their part in creating what developer Simogo refers to as “collage of styles, ideas, and disparate inspirations.” No, what instantly caught my attention was how uncompromising yet thoughtful the game felt. In an era where most developers seem content to simply pay lip service to the great mystery/adventure games of old while over-simplifying their gameplay mechanics, Simogo seems to have figured out the formula of creating a final product that feels intricately designed, yet ultimately accessible.

I’ll admit that I’m not too familiar with Simogo’s previous work; the only other game I’ve played by them is Sayonara Wild Hearts. That said, I would not have immediately guessed that Lorelei was by the same developers from my first hour alone. In some ways, Lorelei presents an interesting foil to Sayonara. Sayonara’s persisting strength is its grasp on harmony: the epitome of what is essentially a playable music video, it’s pure and immediate gratification racking up points to the beat in this flashy and lush arcade game. On the other hand, Lorelei feels deliberately constructed to emphasize its dissonance. From the uncomfortably quiet manor clashing with the occasional audible off-screen disruption to the vibrating monochrome textures interspersed with low poly environment, nothing seems right in its place. It’s a much slower burn than Sayonara as well, with most players taking fifteen hours or more (in comparison to Sayonara’s two hour runtime) to navigate the sprawling hotel with no hand-holding provided whatsoever.

As different as these two titles appear however, they do have one thing in common: minimalism. For example, both games require just a d-pad/joystick and a single button to be played. Sayonara gets away with this because the available actions on input feel clearly telegraphed by the visuals and generally boil down to moving and timed dodges with the music. Lorelei similarly gets away with this because it deemphasizes more complex/technical interactions (i.e. the usage suite of adventure game verbs in look, touch, obtain, etc) with sheer puzzle intuition. Simogo describes this as forcing the player to “get a deeper understanding… and connection to [the world]” and just like Sayonara, “wanted the complexity of the game to revolve around this, and not dexterity.”

What makes this particularly impressive is how Simogo was able to strike a fair balance between simplicity and variety. According to the game’s development page, the game became “a very iterative toy box” where many different systems conceptualized over the game’s development cycle could interact and interplay with one another in different ways. Interestingly, I found that most of the solutions to these different puzzles were not that difficult or complex to determine. Even so, despite Lorelei’s simple controls and straightforward objective (figuring out passwords/key phrases to unlock new areas and information), the game is able to successfully obfuscate the means to achieve said objective by drastically changing the means in which information is presented to the player, for instance by using different camera angles and systems that allowed them to “change a lot of rendering parameters on the fly” from the aforementioned iterative toy box. Additionally, Simogo highlights key details from clues to ensure that players don’t get too confused, but leave enough ambiguity by never outright leading the players onto specific logic trains and refusing to provide any specific assistance (no in-game hint system and no specific feedback aside from telling players if they’re right/wrong). The result is a confident final product that understands the persisting strength of a good puzzle adventure game: a game that gives the player all the information they need to succeed while giving them the room to work out the connections themselves, and a game that constantly surprises the player with new opportunities to intuitively understand the world around them without ever feeling too frustrated by unfamiliar mechanics.

I do have to admit however, that there are a few instances where Lorelei’s minimalism and uncompromising nature can backfire. For instance, the lack of detailed player feedback aside from a right/wrong sound effect usually isn’t a significant deterrent, given that players can fine-tune most of the game’s one-variable solutions and are encouraged to tackle the hotel’s many branching paths and puzzles at their own pace, since they may not even have the pertinent information required and might have to work out other puzzles to obtain said information. However, certain late-game puzzles require multiple sets of answers (ex: a computer that requires three different types of phrases in a password), and it can be frustrating getting barricaded by such puzzles and not knowing which part of the answer requires more investigation. I’ll also echo some of the previous complaints regarding the controls, because while I appreciate that Simogo has crafted a base system where more complex controls aren’t required, I also don’t think that it’s a huge ask to add a “cancel/back” input for a second button. As a result, it takes significantly more scrolling to get out of menus or spamming random inputs to erroneously enter passwords if I want to back out of a puzzle, and the amount of wasted time per menu/puzzle really builds up over a playthrough.

While I did find the somewhat telegraphed ending slightly underwhelming given how elaborately the game wove its lore into its many clues, I nevertheless really savored my time with Lorelei. I might not have laser eyes, but I can certainly see this game’s approach upon system cohesion influencing many puzzle adventure games to come. As it stands, it’s another solid entry for Simogo’s innovative yet familiar library, and I’ll be thinking about its many secrets for quite some time. Perhaps it's finally time to delve into Device 6.

Full review here (Dutch): https://www.budgetgaming.nl/columns/columns-568.html

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is definitely not for everyone. However, players who love unraveling a good mystery and can really immerse themselves in it will adore this game. Some minor flaws in the gameplay prevent the game from being the top puzzle game it could have been, but this shouldn't spoil the fun. For fans of challenging brainteasers, this game offers an engaging experience with complex and intriguing puzzles that should not be overlooked.

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.

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.

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