One More Go

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a game that has utterly consumed me. In the weeks following its release I spent every moment I could exploring the hallways of the Hotel Letztes Jahr, scouring its scattered pages, and trying to assemble them into an image I could make sense of. Our protagonist arrives at the hotel with nothing but an invite from its eccentric owner, it’s left to us to glean the wider context. Only, Lorelei‘s narrative isn’t doled out linearly, it’s disparate and dreamlike, seeded in supernatural visions, written biographies, and playable histories. Characters and timelines all overlap, forming a tangled mess that is all at once confusing and satisfying to unpick. Pushing deep into the night I felt like the protagonist’s parallel, fuelled by coffee, eyes ablaze, and barely scratching at the truth.

Lorelei plays like a digital escape room, with plenty of four digit padlocks and puzzle boxes barring your progress, but the ways in which the mechanics and clues of each puzzle are hidden and interpreted are exhaustive. I don’t know what the final count is, but there must be over a hundred discrete puzzles, and that the pull to solve the last one is just as strong as the first, is testament to how cleverly their formulas are twisted and presented as new. To avoid any friction and keep players moving, Lorelei has a handy log that keeps track of player’s actions and any puzzles they have yet to solve. An in-game to do list replete with symbols, questions, and a satisfying line through each completed task are visual aids much more eloquently presented than the mad scrawl of my own notebook.

Lorelei suggests keeping pen and paper nearby, and while other games have suggested the same, in Lorelei it’s not only valuable to jot notes, it elevates its puzzles from existing solely on screen. I’ve talked before about how analogue and physical supplements to a video game can help players inhabit the characters they’re controlling, but in Lorelei it also feeds into the mixed media narrative that’s presented. Throughout the game you’re reading books, listening to music, playing video games, and watching videos, so it seems natural for activities to extend beyond the confines of the game itself. Constructed of mostly monochrome greys, Lorelei is almost daring you to look away. To put the pieces together elsewhere and come back enlightened.

Greys and pinks aside, the spooky hotel setting and fixed camera perspectives evoke Spencer Manor and the other locales of early Resident Evil. Only here, the focus is firmly fixed on solving the hotel’s mysteries and piecing together its unusual narrative structure. Instead of butting up against the undead, our protagonist’s main struggle is busting through locked doors and boxes. Instead of the claustrophobic item management of a survival horror game, our protagonist is armed with a bottomless Poppins-esque handbag, and a photographic memory that allows for reviewing any previously uncovered clues. All accessible by the press of a button, in fact, almost everything can be achieved with a single button press.

For a game that might seem daunting, it’s very accessible. The control scheme consists of only directional buttons for movement and then one other context sensitive button for everything else. Fixed camera perspectives means that there’s no right stick to contend with, and the pre-requisite knowledge for solving any of its puzzles consist of being able to read a 24-hour clock and knowing the cardinal directions of a compass. Lorelei is easy to pick up for gamers and non-gamers alike, and while the controls can take a little getting used to, especially when navigating some of the menus, it’s a worthwhile trade-off to reach as wide an audience as possible.

That doesn’t mean this is an adventure without peril. Distressingly, the in-game manual warns of the finality of a raised revolver, a little something to add weight to some of Lorelei‘s puzzling and decision making. Contributing to the drama that surrounds the hotel, heightened by the erraticism of the supporting cast, and punctuated by the maze-headed characters and their deadly tests of observation.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a game so rich in ideas, interfaces, and style that you can’t helped but be wowed by it. That it is developed by Simogo should be absolutely no surprise, a team that create genre defying titles that always leaves you wanting more, often when their games are so dazzlingly bespoke that there is nothing else like them. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes certainly follows that trend, it has landed effortlessly into my list of favourite games, and I would love to wipe the memory of it from my mind and get lost in the madness once more.