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 puzzle
01:44designs written by David Lynch. I worked out the telephone number of a dead person and when I called
01:48them, they answered. I've had a fortune teller tell me a set of directions using compass points
01:53inside the theatre of the mind. My most dangerous venture was navigating a maze in a weird astral
01:58plane where magicians armed with revolvers quizzed me about the hotel's history and if I answered a
02:03question wrong, I got a bullet between my brows. But Lorelei's biggest puzzle is piecing together
02:08its 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.
02:27Keeping track of who's who and what role they play in this twisted story is all interwined
02:31with the strange, surreal iconography. The story is engrossing and is always keeping you on your toes
02:36until the very end. The most impressive aspect of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is how the story and
02:41puzzles are so closely interconnected. Puzzles aren't just plonked in the middle of its story but are
02:46deeply embedded in its worldbuilding. Details found in story snippets are often the answers to puzzles
02:51and vice versa. What's a clue and what's just a story detail begin to blur, and often phase into one.
02:56I've never played a game where the distinction between puzzle solutions and story beats are so
03:00closely intertwined around each other. No singular piece of information is an island, but a wider part
03:06of interconnected maps of puzzles and story. But this is where Lorelei can feel especially overwhelming,
03:11because it has no issue throwing you head first into the deep end. Rifling through your notes and
03:16knowing what piece of information to apply to the right puzzle is a puzzle in itself, and there were
03:22several times where I was met with analysis paralysis. I had a whole library of information,
03:26but couldn't work out what needed to be applied where. I didn't understand what the puzzles wanted
03:31from me, and so I could bounce from room to room searching for the smallest connection to my pages
03:36upon pages of notes. This downtime, although infrequent, can be frustrating. I felt like a
03:41rat in a maze going in circles, scratching at the walls. The game does do its best to help you while
03:46also keeping an elusive distance. There's a log tracking what you've done, a checklist of things
03:51you need to do, and every piece of information you've discovered is readily available in a handy
03:55photographic memory menu. Clues to puzzles will be highlighted with dashes and blots of red paint,
04:00but even with all that sometimes it's not enough, and it feels like you're drowning in information.
04:05But when you do get back on track, it's like a rapid flow of puzzle solving. Since everything
04:10is connected, one solution will cascade into working out and solving others. The key takeaway
04:15from each puzzle is not the solution itself, but how you solved it, and once I embraced that rule,
04:21it was like my brain was directly connected to Lorelei's Matrix, and I had a much deeper
04:26understanding of the game. It's strange, but in this way Lorelei almost feels like a Metroidvania.
04:31I'm working my way through space, with many of its areas locked away, but instead of tools and
04:36upgrades, I have mentally stored information. Together with a dusty book on astrology, an ace of
04:41spades stained with a coffee ring, and a ripped poster for a movie about a man's obsession with
04:45a dead cat. There are echoes of Tunic, The Witness, and Return of the Obra Dinn in its puzzle design,
04:50the surreal atmosphere of Kentucky Route Zero, and the previously mentioned control and what
04:55remains of Edith Finch. But above all else, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an entirely new and
05:01contemporary kind of puzzle game. Up until the very end, I was never quite sure if I was exploring a
05:05hotel, a living art exhibition, an elaborate magic trick, a grand deception, or an eccentric artist's
05:12final statement. No doubt you're part of some sort of performance, but Lorelei's biggest mystery is
05:17what role will you play? We give it 4.5 stars out of 5.
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