There's a lighthouse in the middle of Prussia A white house in a red square… (The Sisters of Mercy – Dominion / Mother Russia) If ever there was a puzzle game that deserves the label Lynchian , this is pretty much it. A game that is simply art, that doesn’t want nor need to be fully understood. A mystery at its (wild) heart, that is so compelling, it needs no final ultimate “resolution”. Media like this is always a bit difficult to approach. What does it all mean? What is it about? Well, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes simply is . The first one or two hours of the game were a weird and sometimes frustrating experience. I stumbled through seemingly endless hallways with a myriad of doors leading to a million different rooms filled with an infinity of puzzles, none of which I knew how to even approach. I solved a couple of shortcut puzzles (puzzles you need to solve in order to open a shortcut… duh) and a few minor side-puzzles but for the most part, I was just walking around in this huge mansion… aimlessly, without guidance or purpose, just… walking. I look back on these first hours and I realize something or rather, a couple of things: 1. I was just very unlucky. There is a de facto “main-path” that guides you through the main stages of the game and I just missed it. 2. I solved many more puzzles than I had any right to, meaning it’s a near miracle I solved anything at all given the little information about the world of the game I had at the time. 3. These first hours were actually pretty helpful in establishing the setting, the vibe and overall puzzle design of the game. They also helped me remember the layout of the mansion which would come in handy later on. Once I found my way to the main path again, things started picking up speed and I finally, successively started to understand what this game was about and why it is so beloved by so many people. Visuals, sound design, textures, lighting, character design, everything in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes comes together beautifully and hereby creates a unique vibe that is at the same time minimalist and modern but also eerie and mysterious. The grey of the environment mixed with a dark black and a starkly contrasting neon purple with pink variances just looks incredibly cool. Everything has a 1960s retro-futurist feel with a touch of Eastern Germany / Soviet charm and there is simply no other game that nails this combination so well. All is bathed in either ghostly sounding background music, erratic distortions or complete silence, depending on the mood a certain scene or location demands. All that is to say that the audiovisual design of this is on-point. Considering that we are talking about the people that gave us the flashy and stylish musical experience Sayonara Wild Hearts , that shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But what about the core of the matter in a puzzle game - the puzzle design? Well, this may be the cleverest puzzle game I have played thus far. My experience is limited of course. I’m just saying that Lorelei had some real brain-teasers. Mathematics, perspective, translation, attention - the pool from which these puzzles are drawn is varied and wide. Rarely do you get to use the same “tactics” twice. Thinking outside the box is pretty much the standard with which you have to approach this game which is funny because there literally is a rather extensive box-related puzzle. Since it is even recommended by the game itself, let me emphasize that you really should take notes outside of the game. Lorelei saves any crucial information on her own for you to look up later but you really do have to work out these solutions by yourself and a notebook helps a lot here. Sitting on a couch with a friend or spouse while one is playing and the other is taking notes is a really cool and bonding experience, I can vouch for that. Discussing puzzle solutions and plot theories together is a lot of fun too, highly recommended! The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is. (David Lynch) Now, speaking of the story, is it a good one? That depends on how you enjoy stories being told. In my introductory statement, I referenced David Lynch and how this game really feels like a work of art strongly inspired by him. This also applies to Lynchian storytelling, which often relies on images, sounds, lights, a certain mood being transported via the cinematography. It’s less about words and a coherent plot you can easily follow. There is mystery here, there is room for interpretation and thus, the viewer, or in this case the player, becomes part of the storytelling as well. Lorelei is not as esoteric or murky as most of Lynch’s work. There is a somewhat easy-to-follow plot here that appears pretty plausible in the end but for the majority of the game, you will have questions and things will appear strange, dreamy, sometimes contradictory. Even when the big mystery is solved, you can still take things a certain way or refuse to. It’s cool how certain supernatural elements or allusions to the occult remain up to interpretation in the end. I think we get the best of both worlds here - a scenario that invites open interpretation and inference of meaning while also telling a story that is resolved in a straight way making it very clear what happened at the core of it all. What I love most about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is that it’s a game that feels like a celebration of art in all its various forms. Within the game, you interact with movies, theater plays, dance, literature, music and yes, videogames too. Even the artistic side of the natural sciences is addressed here. At the same time, the game also covers the ugly side of art too, the eccentricity and egomania that sometimes come along with it. A hybris that can lead to madness. And it that sense, and I know I’m being a bit cryptic here but maybe you understand when you finish the game, it can also be seen as a sort-of liberation of art from its often-male, often-exploitative masters. The bizarre and maybe even antithetical relationship between art and money is talked about a lot in this game too, the Mammon an ever-present threat but also benefactor or at least enabler at the same time. As someone with a deep appreciation for art in all its forms, this game feels like it was designed by people who get it, who feel the same way, the anti-Trumps, the anti-capitalist, anti-genAI, progressive leftists or whatever you wanna call us. I felt understood here. Two things made the experience less than perfect so I want to cover them briefly. The first thing is that there are a number of “interrogation scenes” that play out like a round of memory where you have to internalize a 3D scene with different actors, props, their physical relation to each other and so on. Those get really stale after the third time or so. For some reason, I had 4 or 5 of these scenes in close succession and it really got on my nerves a bit. The second complaint I would like to bring up is the way this game handles game-over states. There are hard ends of the game and when you reach them, you have to load a save you manually created before. You can only save at distinct computer terminals and so, occasionally, I lost some progress. My worst case was losing like half an hour of progress and I did not feel like it was deserved or that the game properly informed me of the potentially lethal consequences that my actions would have. Anyway, these are just nitpicks and you can ignore them. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a phenomenal puzzle game with a clear creative vision both in audiovisual presentation and writing. It’s a deeply artful game with a lot of love for its medium but also other art forms that inspired it. It’s eerie, weird and mysterious, sometimes even spooky. It’s also personal and tragic. Ultimately, a game about creation and the beauty of it - creation of art, magic, myth and truth.
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