Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Review

Game Description

“A woman, summoned by an eccentric man to participate in a project in an old hotel somewhere in central Europe, becomes embroiled in a game of illusions, increasingly dangerous and surreal.
Now you are invited to fall into the same rabbit hole, in a non-linear mystery with an immense amount of handcrafted puzzles, constantly presenting you with new riddles to solve, each leading you closer to deciphering the enigma of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.”

Personal Experience

Annapurna Interactive, until recently, had been on an excellent roll, publishing some of my favorite games, including a lot of really good puzzle games. So when they announced a new game, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, from Simogo, the developer of the excellent mobile puzzler Device 6, it was less a matter of if I was going to play it and more a matter of when.

I picked up a Steam Deck during the spring Steam sale this year, so that seemed like an opportune time to also grab Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and give it a go. I played it over a couple of weeks at the end of March and early April, taking about 21 hours to crack its many mysteries.

Narrative

At first, the narrative for Lorelei appears sparse. You start the game in media res, having just arrived outside of the Hotel Letztes Jahr unsure of what your objective is or where you should even be going. But as you progress through the Hotel and it’s many mysteries, that initial disorientation appears to be a very intentional piece of the story. That initial sparseness gives way to a surprisingly deep narrative with many layers and meanings to decipher. In a sense the narrative itself is a puzzle to be solved.

The visual style enhances that perception of sparseness with a mostly black and white presentation only punctuated by splashes of red. The vibe is ominous and oppressive, with occasional horror elements. I really appreciated was how it leaned into the medium of video games to tell its tale; expertly deploying the artistic styles of multiple video game generations and genres to enhance the storytelling.

Since the narrative itself is a bit of a mystery, I don’t want to give too much away about it. What I will say is that much of it revolves around several key characters and their histories and it’s at its best when it is examining questions around artists and performers and the importance of creating art. Other storylines that dealt in more sinister apocalyptic themes didn’t grab me as much, but were effective at mood setting, if nothing else.

Puzzle Play

Much of the game’s puzzle play feels like a first generation escape room, with some additional fantastical elements that can only exist in a video game. You’re going to be solving a lot of combination locks, looking for keys, and trying to convert symbols to letters or numbers. These puzzles work well, however, it eventually moves on into interesting and novel directions.

The puzzles range from very easy in certain areas to borderline esoteric in others. It’s a game that requires your attention (along with a pen and paper) and demands that you draw connections between various narrative elements in order to solve some of the puzzles. Mostly it works well, but the game doesn’t do a good job of letting you know when you don’t have enough information to solve a puzzle. There were a few times where I had to go online for a hint or solution only to realize that I wasn’t being dense, I just didn’t have enough information.

Occasionally the games interface would get in the way of solving a puzzle. There are certain objects you can interact with in the game that have multiple pages of text, however the only indicator that there are more pages are tiny, easily missable arrows on the side of the screen. There were a few times that I missed some critical information because of that. I also found out while writing this review that one puzzle that involved reassembling a piece of paper torn into strips actually lets you reassemble it in the game, something that wasn’t obvious at all and could have saved me the fair amount of time I spent manually reassembling it in my game journal.

On the bright side, the games limited color palette meant that none of the puzzles in the game required being able to distinguish between colors.

Recommendation

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes was an original, striking, and mostly enjoyable game to play through. The occasional heavy theme and horror imagery gives me pause from recommending to everyone, but if you enjoy those elements in a puzzle game, then I’d definitely recommend you give it a try.