Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Review

GamesRadar

Lorelei and the Lazer Eyes is a complex puzzle box of interconnected elements. While it can occasionally feel overwhelming, this stylish noir's captivating puzzle anthology and enchanting story ultimately create a fresh and modern take on the puzzle game genre.

Transcript

00:00The game begins in a hotel which is a sprawling building hiding a labyrinth

00:05of rooms and a bloody history. Playing as an unnamed woman summoned by a

00:08mysterious letter you're tasked with exploring the building and solving its

00:12many many puzzles. Almost immediately you're inundated with its impossible

00:16architecture and abundance of locked doors and strange objects. The first

00:20handful of rooms house keypads with odd symbols, a clock featuring zodiac signs

00:24instead of numbers, a group of twisted statues, a broken elevator and red

00:28footprints, probably, maybe, blood, that lead further into the hotel coaxing you

00:33deeper into its jaws. It's a place with incredible presence and during my first

00:37hour I simply mapped out the hotel. One aspect that particularly drove my

00:41curiosity, as strange as this might sound, is trying to work out when it is.

00:46There's an odd mix of set pieces, like how the hotel's aesthetic feels like it's from

00:50the 1960s but there are antiques from the 1800s and computers from the 2010s. The

00:55hotel is an enigma and wouldn't feel out of place on the same street as the

00:59twisting Finch family home in what remains of Edith Finch and the ominous

01:03oldest house in Remedy's Control. It's intimidating, if utterly alluring. Instead

01:07of the familiar hotel welcome of biscoffs and earplugs, you're bombarded with a

01:12torrent of puzzles. There's pattern spotting, maths problems, wordplay, riddles,

01:16hidden symbols, cipher decoding and they're baked into every nook and cranny of the hotel.

01:21The way they're presented changes too. There are puzzles with text-based commands,

01:26object interactions, perception shifting and environmental manipulation.

01:30I can't emphasise how important it is for you to take some notes in this game.

01:34My personal notebook was covered in scribbles with everything from the Roman numeral system

01:38to the moon phases during one week in 1846. It's like a mesmerising anthology of different

01:43puzzle designs written by David Lynch. I worked out the telephone number of a dead person and when I

01:48called them, they answered. I've had a fortune teller tell me a set of directions using compass

01:53points inside the theatre of the mind. My most dangerous venture was navigating a maze in a weird

01:57astral plane where magicians armed with revolvers quizzed me about the hotel's history. And if I

02:03answered a question wrong, I got a bullet between my brows. But Lorelei's biggest puzzle is piecing

02:08together its fractured history. These are told via the information you gather as you're solving puzzles.

02:12There are dates to memorise, different timelines to follow and histories to unravel that may or may not

02:17include a super secret society and a not so metaphorical crimson beast skulking somewhere in

02:22the hotel. There's also the strange cast of characters who all seem connected to this hotel. Keeping

02:27track of who's who and what role they play in this twisted story is all interwined with the strange,

02:32surreal iconography. The story is engrossing and is always keeping you on your toes until the very

02:37end. The most impressive aspect of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is how the story and puzzles are so

02:42closely interconnected. Puzzles aren't just plonked in the middle of its story but are deeply embedded in

02:47its worldbuilding. Details found in story snippets are often the answers to puzzles and vice versa.

02:52What's a clue and what's just a story detail begin to blur, and often phase into one. I've never

02:57played a game where the distinction between puzzle solutions and story beats are so closely intertwined

03:02around each other. No singular piece of information is an island, but a wider part of interconnected maps

03:07of puzzles and story. But this is where Lorelei can feel especially overwhelming, because it has no

03:12issue throwing you head first into the deep end. Rifling through your notes and knowing what piece

03:17of information to apply to the right puzzle is a puzzle in itself, and there were several times

03:22where I was met with analysis paralysis. I had a whole library of information, but couldn't work

03:27out what needed to be applied where. I didn't understand what the puzzles wanted from me, and so I could

03:32bounce from room to room, searching for the smallest connection to my pages upon pages of notes.

03:37This downtime, although infrequent, can be frustrating. I felt like a rat in a maze going

03:42in circles, scratching at the walls. The game does do its best to help you while also keeping

03:46an elusive distance. There's a log tracking what you've done, a checklist of things you need to do,

03:51and every piece of information you've discovered is readily available in a handy photographic memory

03:56menu. Clues to puzzles will be highlighted with dashes and blots of red paint, but even with all that

04:01sometimes it's not enough, and it feels like you're drowning in information. But when you do get back

04:06on track, it's like a rapid flow of puzzle solving. Since everything is connected,

04:10one solution will cascade into working out and solving others. The key takeaway from each puzzle

04:15is not the solution itself, but how you solved it, and once I embraced that rule, it was like my brain

04:22was directly connected to Lorelei's Matrix, and I had a much deeper understanding of the game. It's

04:28strange, but in this way Lorelei almost feels like a Metroidvania. I'm working my way through space,

04:33with many of its areas locked away, but instead of tools and upgrades I have mentally stored

04:38information. Together with a dusty book on astrology, an ace of spades stained with a

04:42coffee ring, and a ripped poster for a movie about a man's obsession with a dead cat. There are echoes of

04:47Tunic, The Witness, and Return of the Obra Dinn in its puzzle design, the surreal atmosphere of

04:52Kentucky Route Zero, and the previously mentioned Control and What Remains of Edith Finch. But above all

04:58else, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an entirely new and contemporary kind of puzzle game. Up until

05:03the very end, I was never quite sure if I was exploring a hotel, a living art exhibition, an

05:08elaborate magic trick, a grand deception, or an eccentric artist's final statement. No doubt

05:13you're part of some sort of performance, but Lorelei's biggest mystery is, what role will you play?

05:18We give it four and a half stars out of five.

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