Lorelei has extremely stylish art direction and a solid, emotionally grounded story. I absolutely love that this is a pen-and-paper kind of game. Be warned, this is a HARD puzzle game-- I started playing this a full week after it was released, and there wasn't a single walkthrough or guide online that had puzzle hints for anything past my personal 3-hour mark.

I love when games don't hold your hand, and appreciated the game's confidence that I'd just figure it out. But, I found myself feeling a bit too lost and frustrated at multiple points, especially at "bottleneck" spots where one or more puzzles blocked forward progress. A good handful of the puzzles were just a bit too convoluted for me, with too many hoops to jump through and not enough context to solve organically.

The game is, to its credit, very good at misdirection, with many puzzles being far simpler to solve than they seem at first (or second, or third) glance. It's easy when playing through Lorelei to get hung up on your own assumptions of what a puzzle is about. By the end, I found myself wishing this game had some sort of gentle hint system, just to help redirect you through those moments to avoid having to put the game down and ask someone online for help! Even if the hints themselves were riddles to solve, that would be more helpful than nothing at all.

I think the game would have been stronger if it had been about half as long, though the length of your playthrough will be determined by how many puzzles you get stumped by. (Mine was 23 hours, so Lorelei unfortunately overstayed her welcome.) But, there is so much to love here in this game, and it really stuck the landing for me at the end. I will be thinking about it for a long time.

Lorelei has extremely stylish art direction and a solid, emotionally grounded story. I absolutely love that this is a pen-and-paper kind of game. Be warned, this is a HARD puzzle game-- I started playing this a full week after it was released, and there wasn't a single walkthrough or guide online that had puzzle hints for anything past my personal 3-hour mark.

I love when games don't hold your hand, and appreciated the game's confidence that I'd just figure it out. But, I found myself feeling a bit too lost and frustrated at multiple points, especially at "bottleneck" spots where one or more puzzles blocked forward progress. A good handful of the puzzles were just a bit too convoluted for me, with too many hoops to jump through and not enough context to solve organically.

The game is, to its credit, very good at misdirection, with many puzzles being far simpler to solve than they seem at first (or second, or third) glance. It's easy when playing through Lorelei to get hung up on your own assumptions of what a puzzle is about. By the end, I found myself wishing this game had some sort of gentle hint system, just to help redirect you through those moments to avoid having to put the game down and ask someone online for help! Even if the hints themselves were riddles to solve, that would be more helpful than nothing at all.

I think the game would have been stronger if it had been about half as long, though the length of your playthrough will be determined by how many puzzles you get stumped by. (Mine was 23 hours, so Lorelei unfortunately overstayed her welcome.) But, there is so much to love here in this game, and it really stuck the landing for me at the end. I will be thinking about it for a long time.