I never really thought about the differences in the middle of a maze and a maze. That is, until I played Simogo’s lorelei and laser eyes. A labyrinth, as I now know, is a unique path that twists and turns, constantly changing direction. He evokes the illusion of feeling lost, although his path always leads to a center. A maze, on the other hand, has several paths filled with dead ends and wrong turns, and requires trial and error to reach its end. The first can be a meditative and thoughtful journey for some, while the second is an exhausting experience that requires patience and perseverance to get through it. Despite these differences, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes bring them together through mechanics, themes and narratives. The result is a gaming experience that masterfully combines storytelling with design, making it one of Simogo’s most beautiful achievements and one of the most impressive narrative puzzle games of recent times.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a psychological horror puzzle game that sent me on a tortuous journey through a black and white hotel with neon red accents to solve a puzzle that blurred the line in the middle of reality and fiction. It is full of riddles, full of history, but the two are intertwined, and this is the key to its development. I was constantly thrown out of the way of truth, transferred to what I perceived as a labyrinth, although in reality I was supply with knowledge that led me through a labyrinth to the heartbreaking conclusion of the game.
With no configuration or direction, the game just starts. You take control of a polite woman with sunglasses dressed in the style of the 1960s and standing alone at night in the forest, right in front of the historic hotel last year. Like his main character, they are thrown into this world without knowing who or where they are or why they are there. The goal of the game is to find the truth, as stated literally in the game manual, which is located in the world itself, instead of being accessible by default. This blunt direction set the tone for the for-game and foreshadowed that I had to work to find out everything and everyone on the journey ahead of me. It attracted me directly and nourished my natural curiosity and love for mysteries. The discovery of its hidden truths is tracked via a truth recovery percentage in the game menu. However, it is not long before you find a letter with a vague and secret message from Renzo Nero, explaining that you were invited to this hotel on this day in 1963.
You will have to investigate and unlock your own devices and unravel all aspects of the game, with your progress starting at 0% and being tracked throughout the game. You will not receive any information, but will be discovered. For example, the manual is locked and requires a key to get it. However, the game can be finished without ever finding its manual. It is a small example of the non-linearity of the game and the confidence it has instilled in me to find things on my own. Retrieving each story element is not required to complete the game, but it deeply honours those who take the time to investigate every corner of its cryptic world.
It turns out that Renzo Nero is a rather eccentric artist with a penchant for theater and invited her to participate in an art project. As you enter the solemn hotel, you slowly discover the story of your larger-than-life host, who seems to have prepared everything for you in a hotel that is as much a maze as an intricate puzzle box. But, as with all good puzzles, nothing is as it seems, and you will be plunged into a sprawling, complex maze of secrets. You will have to explore the labyrinthine rooms, gradually tracing the history of your participation in the project of this artist. Being an incredibly cool woman, you can freely move through a series of scenes viewed through fixed camera angles, depicting a black and white world consisting of vector-style 3D graphics through a cinematic lens.
Each piece of information is not only needed to put the story together, but also acts as knowledge to solve the dozens of puzzles in the game. Whether it’s news articles, books on Roman numerals, strobogrammatic numerology or the Greek alphachallenge (to name just a few), they all serve as tools to venture further into the hotel. Unlike most puzzle games that establish their own language and puzzle style, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes instead uses real-world concepts and logic such as math and brain teasers contextualized by story information that invites you to move on. While a puzzle game like the Witness uses its puzzle mechanics to teach the player its world, Lorelei and Laser Eyes build on the player’s existing knowledge and understanding when it comes to basic problem solving. In this regard, this game could be a barrier to entry for some players, but it also relies on the knowledge available to players to expand their understanding, which greatly honours experienced puzzle lovers like me.
This is a lot to remember and certainly an education in many areas, such as the Latin terms or the meaning of Greek symbols. Fortunately, the main character has a photographic memory that records everything you record and can be viewed in the game at any time. But his photographic memory will only take you so far to find the solutions to his riddles, and your own pen and paper (or in my matter a notebook) will seem necessary to find and remember the solution to all his obstacles. In my daily life, I am already an avid laptop user. At any time I have one with me to write down notes and ideas or plan ahead-sometimes I use my notebook to solve the problems in my life. This need to use pen and paper to solve problems in the game has had a direct impact on the way I deal with my daily life. It’s incredibly satisfying and cool to have real-life habits that overlap with the game in a tangible and sincerely useful way to progress through Lorelei and laser eyes.