Lorelei and the Laser Eyes review: A notebook puzzler with spooky vibes

I think the marketing for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes might have done it a bit of a disservice. When you watch the trailer for the first time, you’re left with the impression of some kind of game-shaped media of uncertain genre and style. They draw focus to its avant-garde French New Wave-film aesthetic and its vaguely spooky, borderline survival-horror vibes. That’s all well and good — and all of that is present and accounted for in the game — but Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes really is an old-fashioned, mind-bending puzzle game.

Lorelei’s story is told with minimal exposition and no introduction — you play a mysterious woman who arrives at the Hotel Letztes Jahr with a letter in her purse and a mission even she doesn’t seem to understand. You, the player, must help this woman piece together who she is and why she’s here, and what exactly it is the hotel’s strange denizens want with her. None of this information comes without effort — when I say, “piece together,” I mean in the almost-literal, jigsaw puzzle sense.