Put in simplest terms, Lucah: Born of a Dream is an action RPG in which you'll find fast paced combat akin to Hyper Light Drifter and design decisions that take a lot of inspiration from soulslikes; the game's world is full of bonfire equivalents scattered across its levels that respawn enemies and refill your limited health resource whenever you rest at one. However, what makes Lucah interesting is not the similarities it shares with other games, but in how it differs. While a very mechanically tight and satisfying to play game, it is also very willing to make decisions that are simply uncommon to see in video games. It's this willingness to make surprising decisions where its greatest strengths lie, and the first one of these decisions that you'll notice is the art.
Although Lucah's art is comprised of pixel art (as one would expect from a small indie game), it rejects having a clean pixel art aesthetic designed to get people who've played dozens of similarly clean looking indie games interested in it. Instead, it is often sharp, jagged, and sometimes even monotonous to look at. Many of the games areas are comprised of rough white shapes that occasionally only loosely represent the environments they're supposed to convey, all plastered over a pure black background. In some of the more empty looking areas of the game, the art can blend into itself from room to room, and can create the feeling of making no progress at all – contributing to an uneasy atmosphere that the game's eerie music and the strange red beasts known as nightmares that you encounter throughout help create.
That's not to say that Lucah isn't a great looking game. When it chooses to be it can be quite visually striking, and it often does choose to; in fact it's one of the best looking games I've ever played in my opinion. From the way the bright red nightmares stain the black and white environments they roam, to gorgeous skylines created out of a simple gradient and a few sketches of clouds, Lucah is regularly beautiful to look at. But there's definitely a willingness to forgo making something with a marketable art style in favor of creating an uneasy and somewhat lifeless tone that follows you throughout the game. And it is a fantastic decision that pairs well with the game's bleak story.
The story, same as the art, resists being simple and straightforward. Although there's recurring characters throughout, and one can glean with a decent amount of certainty a few bits of their stories here and there, the game mostly exists in the realm of metaphors and repeating themes. It is fairly safe to say that the game is partially about queer kids who have suffered deeply from growing up under some stifling and unaccepting christian religion, and suicidal thoughts come up with some regularity as the final expression of the guilt that growing up being told that your very nature is wrong instills in a person. Beyond those themes though, the game is mostly left open for interpretation – in a way that is both deeply interesting and often adds to the upsetting nature of what the story is about.
It is even unclear whether the events that take place in the game are meant to be taken as the reality of what is happening to its characters, or simply a fantastical retelling of their lives. The game deploys this dreamlike quality of its story well though, giving you just enough of a picture of what has happened to its characters to encourage you to interpret what is left up to the imagination. This vague story is often portrayed through bold white text on top of the same black background that serves as the backdrop of the game, the raw emotion of its characters shown clearly but divorced from explicit details of what is going on, with occasional flashes of art that is (often abstract) depictions of what is happening. All of this combined to make a story that I found hard to get out of my head even when not playing the game, and a sense of mystery about what was taking place in it that made the rare moments when the game peels back the curtain just enough to give you a more concrete idea of what has caused all the pain its characters feel hit hard.
In its gameplay mechanics is where Lucah most feels like it is playing it safe and building its ideas off of other games. As you explore the world you'll go from one of the games bonfire equivalents to another where you can save, level up, and in true dark souls fashion both refresh the limited uses of your health resource and respawn all the non-boss enemies in the game. Adding to the tension as you try to make your way to the next bonfire to regain your health, is regular and often unavoidable combat.
Combat in Lucah consists of a mix of melee and ranged abilities. The ranged abilities available in the game that can be used without entering an attack animation that leaves you vulnerable cost a resource called charge, which you gain by hitting enemies with regular melee attacks. Meanwhile, regular melee attacks cost stamina, which you regain over time when not executing moves that cost stamina (performing regular attacks, dodging and running). In combination these two mechanics give the game's combat a rhythm of running in to hit enemies and then, once you're low on stamina, focusing on defense and pelting enemies from whatever distance you can maintain between you and them with ranged abilities while your stamina builds back up. It's quite a lot of fun to try and maintain the two resources of stamina and charge and keep up the flow of combat. That said, the combat might be at its most fun when your game plan all falls apart in a fight and the rhythm is totally lost: when you find yourself stuck desperately trying to avoid enemy attacks until you can execute a perfect dodge that leaves an enemy vulnerable or perform a parry that stops an enemy in its track – thus resetting the momentum of combat and allowing you to regain the rhythm of managing stamina and charge. That feeling of getting back on track is perhaps even more satisfying than perfectly getting through a combat encounter.
As you near the end of the story, which you'll need to play a much harder version of the game in new game+ to see all of, you'll find that the difficulty of the game's combat vastly increases and it can become a bit of a frustrating endurance test. And it's at this point in a new game+ playthrough that even in its gameplay Lucah begins to slightly strain against the norms of game design. Difficulty spikes leading to frustration are nothing rare in games, but Lucah's efforts to frustrate you begin to feel almost like an intentional dare. It's as if the game is asking you if you're willing to grind resources and struggle through increasingly hard fights with enemies that soak up a lot of damage – all because it wants you to earn beating the game, so that when it congratulates you for doing so and offers a reward through the fantastic end to its story, its praise won't feel hollow.
If Lucah really is trying to deliberately frustrate in its last couple of hours, is it a good choice? Much like the rest of its somewhat uncommon decisions, I'd say yes. The strange world depicted so uniquely through its art, the vague and compelling story that slowly builds throughout the game, and its fantastic combat – all these elements make a game well worth playing. And when, finally, Lucah challenges you to struggle to complete it if you can, those same elements make a game well worth seeing through to the end and the difficulty in doing so satisfying once overcome.
Although Lucah's art is comprised of pixel art (as one would expect from a small indie game), it rejects having a clean pixel art aesthetic designed to get people who've played dozens of similarly clean looking indie games interested in it. Instead, it is often sharp, jagged, and sometimes even monotonous to look at. Many of the games areas are comprised of rough white shapes that occasionally only loosely represent the environments they're supposed to convey, all plastered over a pure black background. In some of the more empty looking areas of the game, the art can blend into itself from room to room, and can create the feeling of making no progress at all – contributing to an uneasy atmosphere that the game's eerie music and the strange red beasts known as nightmares that you encounter throughout help create.
That's not to say that Lucah isn't a great looking game. When it chooses to be it can be quite visually striking, and it often does choose to; in fact it's one of the best looking games I've ever played in my opinion. From the way the bright red nightmares stain the black and white environments they roam, to gorgeous skylines created out of a simple gradient and a few sketches of clouds, Lucah is regularly beautiful to look at. But there's definitely a willingness to forgo making something with a marketable art style in favor of creating an uneasy and somewhat lifeless tone that follows you throughout the game. And it is a fantastic decision that pairs well with the game's bleak story.
The story, same as the art, resists being simple and straightforward. Although there's recurring characters throughout, and one can glean with a decent amount of certainty a few bits of their stories here and there, the game mostly exists in the realm of metaphors and repeating themes. It is fairly safe to say that the game is partially about queer kids who have suffered deeply from growing up under some stifling and unaccepting christian religion, and suicidal thoughts come up with some regularity as the final expression of the guilt that growing up being told that your very nature is wrong instills in a person. Beyond those themes though, the game is mostly left open for interpretation – in a way that is both deeply interesting and often adds to the upsetting nature of what the story is about.
It is even unclear whether the events that take place in the game are meant to be taken as the reality of what is happening to its characters, or simply a fantastical retelling of their lives. The game deploys this dreamlike quality of its story well though, giving you just enough of a picture of what has happened to its characters to encourage you to interpret what is left up to the imagination. This vague story is often portrayed through bold white text on top of the same black background that serves as the backdrop of the game, the raw emotion of its characters shown clearly but divorced from explicit details of what is going on, with occasional flashes of art that is (often abstract) depictions of what is happening. All of this combined to make a story that I found hard to get out of my head even when not playing the game, and a sense of mystery about what was taking place in it that made the rare moments when the game peels back the curtain just enough to give you a more concrete idea of what has caused all the pain its characters feel hit hard.
In its gameplay mechanics is where Lucah most feels like it is playing it safe and building its ideas off of other games. As you explore the world you'll go from one of the games bonfire equivalents to another where you can save, level up, and in true dark souls fashion both refresh the limited uses of your health resource and respawn all the non-boss enemies in the game. Adding to the tension as you try to make your way to the next bonfire to regain your health, is regular and often unavoidable combat.
Combat in Lucah consists of a mix of melee and ranged abilities. The ranged abilities available in the game that can be used without entering an attack animation that leaves you vulnerable cost a resource called charge, which you gain by hitting enemies with regular melee attacks. Meanwhile, regular melee attacks cost stamina, which you regain over time when not executing moves that cost stamina (performing regular attacks, dodging and running). In combination these two mechanics give the game's combat a rhythm of running in to hit enemies and then, once you're low on stamina, focusing on defense and pelting enemies from whatever distance you can maintain between you and them with ranged abilities while your stamina builds back up. It's quite a lot of fun to try and maintain the two resources of stamina and charge and keep up the flow of combat. That said, the combat might be at its most fun when your game plan all falls apart in a fight and the rhythm is totally lost: when you find yourself stuck desperately trying to avoid enemy attacks until you can execute a perfect dodge that leaves an enemy vulnerable or perform a parry that stops an enemy in its track – thus resetting the momentum of combat and allowing you to regain the rhythm of managing stamina and charge. That feeling of getting back on track is perhaps even more satisfying than perfectly getting through a combat encounter.
As you near the end of the story, which you'll need to play a much harder version of the game in new game+ to see all of, you'll find that the difficulty of the game's combat vastly increases and it can become a bit of a frustrating endurance test. And it's at this point in a new game+ playthrough that even in its gameplay Lucah begins to slightly strain against the norms of game design. Difficulty spikes leading to frustration are nothing rare in games, but Lucah's efforts to frustrate you begin to feel almost like an intentional dare. It's as if the game is asking you if you're willing to grind resources and struggle through increasingly hard fights with enemies that soak up a lot of damage – all because it wants you to earn beating the game, so that when it congratulates you for doing so and offers a reward through the fantastic end to its story, its praise won't feel hollow.
If Lucah really is trying to deliberately frustrate in its last couple of hours, is it a good choice? Much like the rest of its somewhat uncommon decisions, I'd say yes. The strange world depicted so uniquely through its art, the vague and compelling story that slowly builds throughout the game, and its fantastic combat – all these elements make a game well worth playing. And when, finally, Lucah challenges you to struggle to complete it if you can, those same elements make a game well worth seeing through to the end and the difficulty in doing so satisfying once overcome.