Everything that you have heard and read about this game is absolutely true. It’s another hit from publisher Annapurna Interactive, and a refreshing direction from Simogo, the company that brought you Sayonara Wild Hearts.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a Twin Peaks-esque journey that is narratively and visually surrounded by oddity and mystery. It features some truly mind-bending puzzles that encourage and motivate, as much as they do frustrate and push back. Everything you encounter keeps you wondering why you’re playing out the story and nothing is truly as it seems by the end. It’s quite an adventure.
So, sit back and relax, get your calculator, notebook, and Google page ready because you’re in for one helluva trip.
Story sets the tone
The game begins with our main character parked at the location where she has been directed to meet a mysterious man named Nero. From that small intro, we’re given a taste of what’s to come, as you must figure out, through bits of dialogue and obvious, and sometimes not-so-obvious player direction, where you should be going. The opening scene oozes with, “This is a mystery – prepare yourself” and leads more to confusion, unsettledness, and not so subtle puzzles. After the game gives you a taste of controls (very Resident Evil), menu system, and how it’s all going to function, the real adventure begins once you find the hotel where you’re supposed to meet Nero.
Once inside the hotel, there are clues everywhere that launch the main character into several mysteries that lead to one main storyline, and that includes strange folks with potentially creepy intentions. The mystery continues and deepens once you learn there is an alternate world where laser eyes can see what has truly happened within what is perceived reality, or maybe just a fictional narrative. Nothing is as it seems but with every book and note read, and every puzzle solved with the clues you gather, the narrative becomes thicker and bigger, which eventually crescendos.
The story itself is a slow drip, as any well-developed and well-constructed multi-act narrative should be. Ask David Lynch how long you can keep a drip going before you drop the details and the big reveal. Spoiler alert, it can go a long time. And that is how Lorelei and the Laser Eyes works here, as the drip is slow, but the reward at the end, the big builds that lead up to the ultimate reveal, is worth the journey. It certainly soaks in the creepy ambiance that the game wants to give off.
In full transparency, the uphill climb to get through puzzles is steep, but the narrative reveals as you achieve each one and have that ‘ah-ha!’ moment is worth the ache. I was incredibly impressed with how the story was so well connected with the puzzles and hotel, and how you’re being led by Nero. It felt like something special once I got over that moment of frustration with the puzzles, which can be overwhelming at times. Overall, the story ended up breathtaking and was far deeper than I expected.
About those puzzles
Progression is led by you finding clues all over the hotel and identifying puzzles that you must solve to push forward. The puzzles are cleverly placed in a subtle manner, where your exploration of the hotel eventually finds you staring at one. Nothing is in order, which makes this game even more intriguing. You may run into a puzzle by exploring but not understand the solution connected to it. That puzzle and solution might be connected to a moment later down the road, but it is possible to solve it right there and then and keep that puzzle reward stored away for later use. The entire explore and find portion of this game was a bit wild west, which made me a tad bit uncomfortable as most of the time I wanted some sort of linear rail to hang. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a different breed of puzzle game, and that strangely was welcomed. Finding pieces here and there and saving them to make a bigger connection was eventually and surprisingly fun. It felt like work at times, especially when I didn’t completely understand the connection between puzzle, solution, and reward, but later down the line when I found out how that reward related to another puzzle, which unlocked a bigger piece of the narrative, the fun of the game kicked right into action.
Coming across puzzles and solutions is equally as cerebral as figuring them out. Sometimes you find a puzzle or a solution that stands far away from one another. For example, I explored everywhere I could when I first got into the hotel and came across containers with three-digit numbers. The ultimate unlock goal was the container, which would provide a clue that filled in a narrative piece, but the solution to get it unlocked was somewhere else. Sometimes that puzzle would be in the same room as the unlock or solution might lie, and sometimes it would be two rooms away near another puzzle. Typically, a puzzle will have its solution in the same area and there is no going back and forth between them, especially multiple rooms away. The last time I played a game like this was Resident Evil back in the 90s, where I would get through a monster, get an object, and must hold onto that object to solve another puzzle that is in an entirely different location. Finding that location to use that object was such a rush of accomplishment. Anyway, I didn’t know how much I missed this style of puzzle play until Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
As for the puzzles themselves, they are quite hard, but not impossible. You will have to show your work on occasion and do some math, translation, and reading. Your brain will be put to the test in this epic tale that only David Lynch would completely embrace and love. That may fuel some frustration for players who don’t like doing homework while they play their games, but I can tell you that the effort is worth it. The game does a great job of laying out what those puzzles might be and sometimes the obvious tip of the hat to how a puzzle should be solved, which helps to keep you engaged and interested. For example, there is a puzzle where you have one-half of two different movie posters. Each poster has half their name on it. There is a locked door next to it. You must go locate the information about the movie posters, which isn’t obvious, and then figure out how they work with each other to unlock the door next to them. Once you figure that out, other puzzles come into focus and how they are solved. It’s so creative and crazy good.
Of course, solving puzzles is one thing, but unraveling the narrative is quite another. At some point in the game, and I don’t want to spoil it too much here, you will unlock a room that is directly related to the ‘Laser Eyes’ portion of the title. If you think the hotel and Nero are creepy prior to this moment, wait until you get to this part and watch the game truly show its fifth gear. The game gets deeper, scarier, more metaphoric, and will have you obsessed with what it’s doing. This portion of the game is bonkers, as it puts a refreshing layer on top of the RE gameplay.
Crazy fifth gear aside, to help with the puzzle solving, the game throws in a memory component. This component captures the content of every note and clue that the main character comes across. Those are accessible at any given point during the adventure through a sub-menu. That gameplay design is crucial to tame frustration. Having access to something without having to go revisit the location is imperative to keep the narrative rolling. The puzzles will be hard enough, so no one really needs to do a lot of back and forth to go read a note or a book unless it is to solve a puzzle.
Staying put on the memorizing element, this portion of the gameplay is also a puzzle itself, as some objects that you run into must be solved correctly otherwise the main character runs the risk of memorizing the wrong solution. For example, there are a bevy of posters ripped in pieces and put out of order for the player to reorder. Every single time the player reorders the poster and believes it is finished, they can hit the ‘A’ button and tell the game that they solved it. The game will take a snapshot of the said poster and tell the player that it’s stored in their memory. If you order the pieces incorrectly, you might get the wrong solution and not know it. Making sure things are solved correctly guarantees that the right memory is recorded. It’s a chance and it certainly puts more pressure on the player to get it right. I admire the design of the game and think that the player should be responsible for concluding a puzzle sometimes, even if it’s the wrong conclusion. It’s an interesting aspect of the game and one that adds to the variety of puzzles.
Anyway, I love how Lorelei and the Laser Eyes uses its puzzles methodically to connect and reveal its story. The puzzles up the ante of what’s going on and provide context and motivation to keep playing the game. The backend design of the characters and how they collect clues and store them is equally impressive. The game wants you to keep focused on the task at hand and by instituting this backend design it does just that.
Overall, I didn’t think I would ever be so engrossed with a game led by puzzles, but here we are. The game is orchestrated in a beautiful and haunting manner that connects with you hard and encourages you to keep up the good work.
And there is more.
Meta
Simogo couldn’t help but remind people how great they are, and it is well-deserved. They will occasionally throw in some memorabilia of Sayonara Wild Hearts into this game, sometimes collectible objects, and sometimes music. They add some nice meta into reminding people that they haven’t forgotten what got them to this point. I appreciate that, as it is a good reminder of how much I need to revisit their first classic.
Trinkets and music are nice, but there are also some literal video game meta in the Lorelei and the Laser Eyes as well. You will obtain a GameBoy-like system early in the game. You can find/purchase games for it that are games within the game. These are simple, black-and-white games that can be played anytime. The mini-games are a refreshing break when you need to rest your brain. The fact that you can play games within a game, and then eventually play a game system that is a dev kit that has early Deadly Premonition-esque flavor to it, is fun.
There are also revisited stops that you can play around with as well, such as the rotatory phone in the lobby of the hotel, that relates to the story and with a phone book. Story aside, as you will find numbers that push the narrative, you can also look up random numbers just to see who answers. This part of the game had me digging up some Snatcher feelings stoked by Hideo Kojima that were planted a long time ago on the Sega CD. In that game, you could call random numbers that had nothing to do with the narrative and uncover fun secrets that ultimately meant nothing. It’s dumb fun, but fun, nonetheless.
Regardless of phone numbers and GB games, this game contains a lot of self-aware pieces and parts that give the player even more motivation to explore the hotel and its secrets. There is nothing like feeling giddy over talking to a fake person for no good reason. I know it’s sad, but it is fun.
On that sweet note, I have talked your eyes to death, so let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes from developer Simogo and publisher Annapurna Interactive is a strange and wonderous new direction for Simogo’s post-Sayonara Wild Hearts success. It’s a beautiful mixture of thick narrative and difficult puzzles that ask a lot of the player but deliver an equal amount by the end. Some players may get frustrated by the beginning of the game as it gives you little direction on what you should be doing, but once they’re on the progression rails, the game rolls and gets better.
