Now I’ve expressed my liking of puzzle games in the past. I may review a lot of action adventure games or fun chaotic messes, but deep down puzzle games are some of the best experiences I’ve had with video games. Challenging the player not through combat, platforming, or whatever but instead through their ability to analyze a situation and find a solution. They are proof that games don’t always need to be combat heavy or thrill rides to be engaging. That difficulty isn’t just how you push your players, but get them to understand what they are doing. Good puzzle games do not come out often, but with the rise of the indie scene in recent memory we’re starting to see a lot of cool new ideas. Technology is more advanced than ever so why not create games that test weird gimmicks? Return of The Obra Dinn and Shadows of Doubt are the true detective games many like myself have dreamt for ages. Chants of Sennaar and Heaven’s Vault ask you to decipher foreign languages using educated guesses. Outer Wilds takes the time loop formula Majora’s Mask started and creates a solar system where you have to soak in every aspect of the world so you can be in the right place at the right time.
Puzzle games are awesome, and earlier this year we received a new high point in the genre. This year has been a really fun year for indie games. 2024 reminds me of 2021 in that AAA games are at a low, but it gave way for indie games to shine. Refining concepts established before or like I said, offer fun creative ideas that haven’t been explored much before. I played three AAA games from this year and not much else. I haven’t played Stellar Blade, Helldivers, Dragon’s Dogma 2, etc. My game of the year list as of right now is mainly consisting of indie games. Trying to find my overall game of the year has been difficult compared to previous years. For my top five titles there’s not one game I would put over the other. They’re all amazing in their own ways and can strongly recommend them even to people who aren’t fans of their respective genres. 1000xResist, Astro Bot, Crypt Custodian, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and now entering my game of the year list is the latest release by Simogo. That being Lorelei and The Laser Eyes, a surprisingly large puzzle game that will test your brain power as you navigate a mansion similar to that you would wander around in the original Resident Evil. That’s what it reminded me of at least. I was not planning to play this game originally. Many reviews I’ve seen have explained this game is hard, long, and not afraid to confuse its player. These people were correct, but I watched a video recently by content creator yakkocmn that convinced me to play it. And I’m glad I did.
Lorelei and The Laser Eyes is a masterpiece. It has quickly risen to being one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played and even one of the best indies in general. It’s a game I grew to love as I got further into its mysterious puzzles and manor. It kept me hooked for the last few days where I would spend nights sitting in bed and wondering how to solve the problem I was currently stuck on. To then wake up the next morning, solve the problem, and feel excruciating joy. It’s shocking to see Simogo, the same developers behind Sayonara Wild Hearts, create a game of this high calibur. They did get help by Annapurna, but still. There is no way the people who made the one hour long game you can finish in a single sitting can create a title that took me fifteen to sixteen hours to beat. It’s mind boggling and it seems like a lot of fans of this game are sharing the exact same opinion. Simogo truly cooked here and I’m excited to see what they’ll possibly come out with next. I will say compared to my other game of the year candidates besides 1000xResist this might not be a game for everyone. Again, this is a hard game and I think it’s easy to understand if you get stumped so much that you give up and quit. I am not here to force you to play it. I am here to simply express my love for Lorelei and The Laser Eyes and why it kept me and dozens of other players captivated until the end credits. It’s hard to talk about this game without spoiling a few of the moments that make it work, so if you plan to play this game then stop reading and go do so. Let’s talk about Lorelei and The Laser Eyes and why it’s a masterpiece.
Story
A young woman finds herself parked outside a manor in the middle of the woods. She can’t remember how she got there and when she tries to start her vehicle and leave it stutters. The roads are empty, there is no payphone, and civilization is miles away. The only thing she can do is head inside the manor. The front gate is locked, but a dog comes by to deliver a letter containing clues on how to sneak in. She figures out how to do so and enters to be greeted by what is presumably the owner of the manor. He’s been expecting you and states there’s great mysteries to be uncovered within this place. You can tell because you had to go through three different number based puzzles just to get in. So off you go to explore the manor and uncover its mysteries. Along the way you’ll learn about the former inhabitants of the manor. This place was once a hotel and for a while it housed some of the greatest artists, filmmakers, and performers you can come across. There’s exhibits that celebrate the art and work these people have created. You get to piece together who they are, and eventually you’ll run into some of them. They speak in tomes and one of which specifically has a glowing stare. She cannot tell you are there and stares endlessly into a neon abyss.
Strange events begin occurring within the manor and overtime you begin to learn something is drastically wrong. No one makes sense here. Reality does and doesn’t exist at the same time. The writing you find becomes stranger, and it’s weird no one not even a single servant is here to tend to the manor. You’ll eventually make your way to the basement of the manor and there you will find a supercomputer. It’s locked behind three code walls, and the owner claims by unlocking the supercomputer you may uncover the truth behind everything. Why things are the way they are now, but to do so you’ll have to uncover other pieces of the truth. All of which will link to this final confrontation and end your journey. It’s up to you, signorina. Good luck I dare say.
Gameplay
The games remind me very much of the older Resident Evil games in that the manor is this huge sprawling labyrinth you have to explore. Each room you enter has a set camera angle giving a good view of all the things you can interact with. As I explained you start the game with little to no info of where you are and what is going on. However, it’s by interacting with everything you find that you get some hints on what to do. Documents and passages give you history and there are a few moments where certain lines or words will be underlined. These are hints for puzzles you will encounter. That may be a door that is locked or a contraption you can interact with, but cannot solve at the moment. A lot of the early game puzzles will test your knowledge of math and numbers. In fact, if you go to the library immediately you’ll find books telling you how to understand roman numerals, arabic numerals, and basic addition/subtraction. You even have a little Gameboy with a built in calculator to help with a lot of the math. Some puzzles give you a passage to decode and others will want you to look around the environment carefully. It’s not till later on that the puzzles become more complex. Locks and doors that cannot be unlocked until you gain further information.
Without spoiling too much you’re gonna enter these places beyond reality. Some of the notes you have been finding till then talk about mazes, and what you can enter by finding weird mirrors are three different mazes. Each contains their own unique challenges. Whether that be trippy visual effects or having to answer questions using the documents you currently have in possession. You will have to revisit the mazes often to progress as they contain the info needed to solve the more complex puzzles later on. Also make sure to save often as the game doesn’t autosave and there is an entity later on that can lead to game over screens if the player makes the wrong choice. There are all these complex puzzles you can solve, but your main goal is going to be to fix and decode the supercomputer in the basement of the manor. There’s encryptions on it you can’t understand until the late game, and it’s by unlocking it that you initiate the final puzzle of the game. This is your ticket to uncovering the whole truth, but to do that you must piece it bit by bit. One by one until you have the whole image in view. Only then you’ll remember why you’re here.
Thoughts
Lorelei and The Laser Eyes manage to do a lot with just a little. It achieves many things without being too complex, too unforgiving, and in spades. This is a very simple game to play. It has the one set camera angle of old school survival horror titles, but doesn’t use the clunky tank controls of older days and a majority of buttons on the controller are the interact button. You can interact with objects or open up a menu to view previous documents and pages you read before. Majority of the time you’ll wander around, interact with objects, and try to figure out where to go & what you gotta do. It’s what you end up doing that makes Laser Eyes so special. Before we jump into that I want to quickly address minor compliments for the game. I adore how simplistic the menu UI is and how every document and page you interact with is organized into categories. It allows pulling up previous documents for future reference easier, and the game further respects players by sometimes underlining the key info they should be paying attention to. They don’t give out the answer, but they give you a nudge so that you aren’t completely lost on what to do. I like how on the computer for which you save your game on you can pull a screen showing completion and what you possibly missed. The maps you pick up are easy to read to label sectors by number or what they contain. It makes retreading old areas much easier. The only complaint I do have is if you cleared out a room for all it has to offer the game should probably mark it.
I like how there’s documents to help you understand roman numerals, arabic numerals, scientific language, etc because let’s be real the average person doesn’t know most of it. I appreciate that the Gameboy you have has a built in calculator for those not wanting to pull one up on the side, or having to haul around a bunch of electronics to play a video game on a singular screen. I do feel like you have to have a notepad later on for puzzles involving grids and symbols. The manor is a complex place, but doesn’t feel too large nor hard to navigate once you run around it for a good amount of time. So those are my minor compliments, but what about the meat of it all? Is Lorelei and The Laser Eyes a good puzzle game? Well f*cking yeah of course it is. We wouldn’t be having this review if it weren’t for that alone. The puzzles ramp up in difficulty pretty well. The early game puzzles get you used to simple addition and subtraction. Something most people should know from schooling. Then it ramps it up by introducing puzzles involving arrangement of tiles and pictures. Puzzles involving time, dates, and translating numbers to other languages. Then you have the symbols, interpretation, and stuff that really grinds your gears. There were a couple puzzles I looked up the solution for, and I’m gonna get a lot of flack for saying that.
However, this brings me onto a point I really love about Lorelei and The Laser Eyes. A majority of puzzles, their information, and solutions in Laser Eyes are randomized. No two players will ever have the same answers to puzzles. Meaning you can’t just look up everything, run to the big old supercomputer, and end the game instantly. This is a puzzle game that wants you to explore all it has to offer and confront the final truth when you have a grasp of what the whole picture is. I can see some people getting stumped on this design choice, but I defend it. I’m not gonna be replaying this game anytime in the future, but I can see Lorelei and The Laser Eyes having quite a bit of replay value due to its use of minor randomization with puzzle info and solutions. While not always being clear the game can give signs of when you should come back later, or pull out info you have seen before to handle the current problem at hand. For example, early on you will pick up a picture of a maze. This maze is useless at first, but later on when you unlock the other three mazes in the game it becomes clear you have to use this drawing for reference. There are doors in the manor labeled with years, and you can’t open these doors without having the correct key with the year. However, the keys to most of these doors outside of three cannot be found in the manor. You can explore all you want, but they are nowhere in sight signaling maybe they’re something to come back to eventually. I like how the game expects you to keep it in your head. It’s confusing, but more rewarding when you remember and make it all click together.
There’s just so many unique puzzles in this game. Connecting between each other and looping back to places you’ve been before. There are puzzles within miniature games that contain solutions to other puzzles, and it’s at this point I knew Laser Eyes was a work of genius. They considered every single thing they could possibly do and did it. Again, the game is hard and I do not expect a majority of people to finish it. However, I did and it was one of the most satisfying things I did throughout all of 2024. One of the most fulfilling games to overcome this entire year. Final thing I want to talk about is the narrative. It’s not the clearest narrative in the world and I had to look up a summary on Reddit, but I appreciate what Laser Eyes is about. It’s a game about art and the making of it. The love and passion put in to create work that stands out. What art is to the creator and how their work will define them. To deliver consistency and beauty over and over in the hope it’ll maintain public love for you. Churning away hoping your passion doesn’t burn out till it does. Looking back at the work you’ve made and wondering what it meant in the end. How this art will continue to exist going forward and if you’ve truly done enough to show every person around you of all you’ve made. There’s also a cult element to the plot, but the overall narrative underneath is pretty grounded. To make art, live a life of making art, and to die pleased with the art made. Lorelei and The Laser Eyes is a complex puzzle game on purpose, because it wants you to understand the work put in to create what is on display. Art, and it’s beautiful. In the end I am going to give Lorelei and The Laser Eyes a 10/10 for being incredible.
Comments