How Animal Well and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes fostered puzzle-solving communities
If you’re a puzzle game fan, you’ve had one heck of a month. Within a span of two weeks, two of 2024’s best puzzle games — or, simply, best games — were released with Big Mode’s Animal Well and Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. The puzzles couldn’t look or play more differently: Animal Well is a platformer that prioritizes environmental puzzles, somewhat like a Metroidvania, while Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a puzzle box disguised as a walking simulator, pulling together logic, math, physics, and language puzzles. And yet, both games are labyrinthian mazes with tons of mysteries and secrets; the way Animal Well gates off puzzles until you find a very specific item mirrors the way Lorelei and the Laser Eyes withholds a key piece of information until you’ve opened the right book or unlocked the correct door. For games that look nothing alike, the act of playing them — and solving their most mysterious puzzles — feels undeniably similar.
Despite these similarities, I’ve found there’s something different about these games that’s manifesting in their two very different online communities. In Animal Well, I look to online communities like Reddit or the official Animal Well Discord for hints — that kind of mass collaboration is actually essential to solving at least one of the game’s puzzles (more on that later). But for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, I’m turning to individuals — friends and family — who are willing to talk through some of the game’s most devious puzzles.
It’s partly because Lorelei and the Laser Eyes doesn’t have an official Discord or an active Reddit page. I also think there’s something to the need for actual, real-time, one-on-one conversation and collaboration to solve Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ complicated puzzles. Simogo co-founder Simon Flesser told Polygon via email interview that online interactions, like those in an official game Discord, tend to be questions with direct answers — not back-and-forth conversations. Solving Lorelei and the
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