Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Review

thesixthaxis.com:

The long-running debate over video games as art is fortunately mostly a thing of the past, though it’s often up to indie games to help prop up any arguments that still rage. Obviously what makes a game – or any piece of media – art is a complex and largely subjective issue. You might point to the aesthetic approach, the narrative, or the interplay between presentation and mechanics. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes ticks all of these boxes and is perhaps the closest you’ll get to arthouse cinema in modern gaming.

The aesthetic of Lorelei is immediately striking, with its largely monochromatic palette clearly echoing the golden age of black and white movies. The minimalistic artstyle manages to be both retro and timeless, generally doing so without generally relying on aping the pixelated or polygonal graphics of bygone eras.

Much of Lorelei takes place in relative quiet, with your explorations being accompanied mostly by the loud echo of your footsteps. Whilst much of the soundtrack is little more than an ambient drone, there are some memorable tunes to be heard with Radio Waves and the title track being particular standouts.

Exploring the world of Lorelei feels like a fusion of survival horror and Myst-like puzzles, but with a more mathematical turn. You explore a mysterious mansion with a multitude of locked doors and incongruous mechanisms, but there is no weaponry or combat to be found here. Initially your exploration is very limited and linear, but as you progress you’ll find a series of shortcut doors that require specific mathematical or logical puzzles to be solved. The maths here is more along the lines of pattern recognition rather than complex sums or algebra that would have you breaking out graph paper and a graphical calculator, so you don’t need to worry if you haven’t simplified an equation for a few years. Every face button has the same function, which is perhaps my only real complaint – the lack of a quick back button to exit the inventory menu soon becomes