Annapurna Interactive finally gave us a release date for the upcoming title Lorelei and the Laser Eyes at this week’s Nintendo Indie World Showcase. The moody, noirish puzzler releases on PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch on May 16. I got the chance to preview the title, and from what I saw so far, it’s quite the brain teaser. What it lacks in accessible story or spoken dialogue, it makes up for in puzzles — so, so many puzzles.
In Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, developed by Simogo, you play a mysterious woman who arrives at a hotel, invited by a mysterious patron for a mysterious project. Using only context clues and good old-fashioned clues-clues, you must piece together who you are, what you’re doing, what the mysterious person wants from you and how you’re going to go about doing that.
As a veteran of the point-and-click puzzle adventure game era that birthed the Nancy Drew games, I consider myself uniquely qualified for a game like Lorelei. This isn’t my first pen-and-paper note-taking rodeo — I’m no stranger to drawing maps, writing down weird number formulas and remembering patterns and shapes for future reference. And Lorelei is the kind of game where doing that is mandatory. You need a notebook handy because you’re going to have to work out the puzzles on your own time.
Write that down, write that down!
Starting out on Lorelei, I was reminded a little bit of the original Resident Evil: You enter a big, mostly empty mansion with a whole host of locked doors. In order to progress, you must find carefully review all of the materials available to you — which you can find by exploring the parts of the hotel that are open upon your arrival — in order to determine which solutions are currently available to you. It’s got a touch of Metroidvania to it, in that when you open one area, it’ll general contain the means of opening another.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes also reminds me of Chinatown Detective Agency, in that it expects the reader to either be familiar with certain concepts, whether it be basic mathematics, timekeeping, etc; or to have the means and savvy to be able to research that outside the game. While for the most part the game gives you the tools you need in order to solve each of the puzzles, it’s certainly not going to hand you the solution.
The puzzles start out relatively simple, but they do get harder as you progress through the game. Some of them are devilish little brain teasers, but the ones that cause the most trouble are the straightforward ones that seem like they should be more difficult than they are, such that your brain rejects the obvious (and correct) solution.
Lorelei does take pity on the player in one way: The protagonist has an eidetic memory, and as such every single clue, scrap of paper or image she sees on her journey is recorded in her brain. The in-game menu offers all of these clues for the player to peruse, meaning that you don’t have to backtrack in order to check that scrap of paper with a clue you forgot to note down.
In the (laser) eye of the beholder
I don’t have any major complaints about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes thus far, but there is one point in the game that I think will be a make-or-break for some players: The art design. The entire game is done in black, white and shades of grey, similar to Return of the Obra Dinn. The only visual difference to this neutral-toned world is a splash of red and pink in almost every environment, from red paint footprints on the floor to red leaves on a tree to bright pink lights.
Personally, I enjoy this design. I think it makes the whole game feel moody, atmospheric and clean in a way. However, I will admit it can make it difficult to visually distinguish the environments from each other sometimes. Each floor and room of the hotel can blend together a bit, especially in the early game, and it makes it difficult to keep track of where things are or where you are. Again, this is what notes are for, but for some gamers the added hassle of keeping track of which room is which could tip the balance from “pleasant, challenging puzzler” to “fling notebook out of window in frustration.”
That being said, I think Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is going to be a treat for any puzzle game fans. It’s the kind of game that’s worth the effort to understand. If you’re ready for a challenge, it’s going to be a delight.