Over the last two weeks there was an event that came to mind. Looking back, I had moments where I was almost obsessed. Even when I’m casually running errands, Roman numerals, ancient Greek letters, the 1847 lunar cycle, astrology, and even more mysterious things have sent my cognitive abilities into overdrive and done their best to open my third eye. Not that, bad thinking.
This takeover of my thoughts was partly intentional. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a real smorgasbord when it comes to puzzle design. As is often the case in this genre, the game’s puzzles fall within a specific area. In this case, what opens the locks (physical and metaphorical) that separate you from the truth is your ability to find meanings and connections between texts, numbers and symbols. But while games like Return of Obra Dinn or The Witness maintain a narrow focus, Simogo’s latest game, which is by far the most ambitious, goes in a different, more engaging direction. Once you settle into a rhythm of cross-referencing texts, analyzing abstract artworks, and searching for patterns in damaged posters, the game switches gears and asks you to navigate mysterious labyrinths. It’s really puzzling.
However, the reason also lies in the captivating world and story of the game, which kept me solving challenging puzzles and putting up with the phases where I got stuck because I was very excited to see where the story would go would go.
Advertising:
“Lorelei and the Laser Eyes” is also a testament to the appeal of small worlds. The game is essentially a small open world centered around the mysterious Last Year Hotel, whose labyrinthine architecture and eccentric interior are reminiscent of Resident Evil’s Spencer Mansion. Because the world is limited in extent, it allows the player to get closer to its many corners, creating a strong connection with the digital world. The hotel is also a real mystery (both narratively and mechanically) that the player gradually gets into.
And who are “they” among all this? The answer to this question is also basically a puzzle, the answer to which I will not reveal here. When you arrive at the hotel last year, the mysterious film director Renzo Nero simply addresses you as “Signorina” and invites you to take part in his magnum opus. This involvement initially comes in the form of a character in a game in which she openly poses various challenges to a young girl, but questions soon arise about the nature of the game and who is in control. At the same time, the hotel’s eventful history begins to unravel, to say the least, and resolves unanswered questions in the present… and the future. At first I was a little worried that the story would turn into an intellectual exercise, reducing the characters in the game to glorified chess pieces, but as the story progressed the characters and emotions became clearer, even as the game continues to appeal to more of the brain than the heart.
If it sounds pompous, that’s because in many ways it is, and that impression is only reinforced by the strong monochromatic aesthetic, but luckily Simogo manages to underscore the whole thing with humor and self-awareness, so the game doesn’t fall into the trap Trap falls into self-parody And mechanically speaking, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes will be a recognizable character for those whose story goes back to the ’90s. If you imagine the original Resident Evil without the inventory management and all the undead, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s like to play Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. From fixed camera angles, you explore the hotel, trying to find items that will help you unlock more and more parts of the hotel so you can get to the bottom of Renzo Nero’s game, or job, or whatever you want to call it.
But this banal description doesn’t do justice to the game’s immensely addictive nature. The visual effects are a delight with their defined low-poly style, where the heavy use of red breaks up the monochrome aesthetic. And the jazz music in the background is a nice counterpoint to the horror suggested by the creaking hotel. As the lack of enemies suggests, this isn’t a true horror game (think of a film like Guillermo del Toro’s haunted The Devil’s Backbone), but it borrows freely from the genre, and the lack of Danger and terror do not make it easier, but to heighten the feeling of isolation and unrest that the game patiently builds. Another genius of Simogo is the way he combines history and photography. The Swedish developer manages to create a rich world using books, newspaper articles, game prototypes, art installations and much more, and integrates all this information into the game’s puzzles. Each piece of information is both an interesting read in its own right and a potential clue to solving the next hellish mystery, so I read them very carefully, which only increased my immersion in the game’s universe.
Advertising:
One of the main focuses of the game is the world of art. A risky decision in many ways. Because when developers set out to build fictional industries, they often end up with unreliable representations that distance themselves from the game and its world. What’s even more impressive is that Simogo manages to portray some of the characters as fully realized artists through their art, who in turn play a dual role as ingredients in the design of the puzzles. In particular, it was a pleasure to solve Lorelei Weiss’ series of art installations, with accompanying textual descriptions that reference fine texts found in various art museums, while providing clear guidance on how to engage with the work to solve the respective puzzle.
Finding meaning and systematization in abstract art in this way gave me an exhilarating sense of insight. A feeling common to most puzzles. There’s something literary and cultural about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ approach to art, strobogrammatical language, ancient Greek, and manuscripts that, I must confess, my inner snob finds incredibly appealing as a framework for puzzle design. If I were to put my enthusiasm aside for a moment and put on my reviewer’s glasses, some of the game’s puzzles would be a little too cryptic and convoluted for my taste (or perhaps more accurately, my intelligence), but overall it was a joy to doodle in my mind Notebook and let my mental performance run at full speed.
However, “Lorelei and the Laser Eyes” doesn’t stick with this satisfying basic formula. The game introduces vaguely ’90s-style game prototypes, photogenic ’80s arcade games based on previous Simogo games, and two different mazes where navigation suddenly takes center stage. In this way, Simogo, like the narrative, once again plays with the genre and the past of the gaming medium.
This interweaving of gameplay and narrative is the best and most well-executed quality of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. But overall the game deserves an applause. With its literary approach to the puzzle genre, its sometimes unclear solutions, and the overwhelming freedom that can make it difficult to know if you have the information to solve a particular puzzle, Simogo’s title might be off-putting to some. But if you’re the kind of person who enjoys understanding texts, numbers and symbols to unravel the layers of a labyrinthine story reminiscent of Hitchcock and Leeds, there’s hardly a better place to be than Hotel Last Year. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an aesthetically pleasing, cognitively challenging and narratively stimulating experience that we rarely enjoy, and I’m already craving the obsession to unravel all of its secrets.