Lorelei And The Laser Eyes Review: Surrealist Puzzling Perfection

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a surreal and mysterious puzzle game that executes perfectly on its vision. A potential all-timer for fans of the genre. Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

Pros

Compelling mystery and narrative.
Engrossing ‘vibe’ and ambience.
Puzzles aren’t self-contained, they require thought and focus.
Surreal / Abstract elements are done very well.
Art style that complements the game’s vision.

Cons

Could use a better hint system, and a tad more guidance.

I’ll preface this review by saying Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by developer Simogo is not a game for soft-hearted puzzle enthusiasts. The game is difficult, requiring you to leverage your entire pool of accrued knowledge of the game’s mystery to solve abstract puzzles. There are no ‘rules’ in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ puzzling, the answers really could be anything. It’s wonderful, but will also leave you tearing your hair out.

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The presentation of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is engrossing. There is no exposition or a lengthy introduction, you’re dropped straight outside your car in the woods surrounding the enigmatic Hotel Letzte Jahr. You’ll need to figure it out from there. The game is entirely black-and-white, with a fixed camera that adjusts when needed, like if you approach something against a wall and need a closer look.

There is no voice acting – there is music, which adds a soft ambience to the hotel. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes wants to instil a feeling of loneliness and even fear at times, though you’re rarely in direct danger while walking around the hotel. That being said, you can die through circumstances, so save as often as you can. I won’t spoil anything significant in the narrative because mystery is such a major component of Lorelei, but I’ll provide a rough setting for context.

With This Mystery, Nothing Is Given

This was all gleaned from playing, nothing is provided upfront. You play as Lorelei, a famous creative known for abstract pieces. You’re invited to participate in an artistic experiment staged by Renzo Nero, a filmmaker known for his unconventional (deranged) work. The experiment involves a maze, a supercomputer, murder and all of those good, mysterious elements. I suspect this is a game where narrative elements become altered on additional playthroughs, but I honestly can’t say because I haven’t come close to finishing my first one.

Everything in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is presented without drama, adding a familiar eeriness to the proceedings. You encounter a bedridden old lady with glowing pink eyes and Lorelei doesn’t flinch. She’s at home in this strange world and you get the sense that this isn’t the first time she’s undergone these trials. Yet, when the shadowy Nero shows up, the atmosphere is tense – it’s obvious this man has hurt people, that he’s hurt you. The presentation of the mystery is captivating.

I really can’t overstate the fluidity of this game’s puzzle elements.

The interior of the hotel is constructed almost like an escape room. There are combination locks or key locks on everything with hinges. You’ll become intimately familiar with these grounds as you grapple with a puzzle around almost every corner. I really can’t overstate the fluidity of this game’s puzzle elements. For example, you find a book somewhere in the garden which hints at a solution for a different puzzle somewhere in the house. But there will be no indication that these two things are connected, you’ll have to think and make your own connections. This game isn’t for people who want to play on autopilot.

There are so many elements to consider that Simogo recommends Lorelei be played in a dimly lit room with a notebook at hand. The developers even shipped me a custom notebook from Malmo to assist me in my mystery-solving (pictures below). I employed my girlfriend as my notetaker as I tried to make sense of the mysteries being hurled at me. Mysteries, plural. There are many many things to figure out. You’re going to walk into rooms of the Hotel Letzte Jahre and have no concept of what you’re even looking at, never mind where the solution could be found.

Spoilers: Don’t look too closely at our ramblings if you’re good at absorbing random information, as you may glean some sort of puzzle spoiler.

I strolled into the hotel’s basement, found a supercomputer, looked at the strange three-tier keyboard filled with incomprehensible symbols, and quickly left, no closer to the truth than I was when I walked in. I have never figured out anything related to cracking the secret of the supercomputer. You’re going to encounter situations where you’re not gated by just one thing you can’t crack, but rather you have over 20 puzzles stacked up and you can’t make progress on any of them. Again, a lot like an escape room. Solving the mystery isn’t linear.

This can feel refreshing because you can simply walk away from one puzzle that’s stumped you and instead make progress elsewhere in the hotel. This is, until, of course, you run out of puzzles to make progress on. Indeed, sometimes the intense satisfaction of solving a difficult puzzle is immediately dashed as you encounter yet another locked door. Still, the elation is immense, and it’s something that true puzzle fans will be delighted with. I ran into a situation where, after nearing 50% completion (after about 15 hours), I found myself unable to progress because I had just run out of ideas.

You Can Lose Yourself Here

This is where, and this may prove a controversial take, I think Lorelei and the Laser Eyes could benefit from a more robust hint system. I love the fact that puzzles aren’t self-contained and that you need to invest yourself in the mystery to progress. However, when you find yourself completely stuck on several puzzles, a helping hand would be nice. There is ostensibly a hint system, you can ring Nero for advice. However, true to his erratic nature, he’ll just spout an allegory like “Even a delicious soup can stain the shirt.” Thank you, Nero, I have a 20-digit keypad outside with no numbers on it and you’re yapping about soup.

This will be less of a problem when the collective brain power of the Internet posts solutions online, the usual get-out-of-jail-free card for the aspiring puzzler. Or, perhaps I’m just not good enough at solving puzzles and other people will make the connections I couldn’t, but I can only speak from my own experiences with Lorelei. One of the frustrating aspects was just not having a reference point for some puzzles. Like the poster tubes dotted around the hotel, each with a three-digit combination lock. Since you encounter them early and often, I’d assumed I’d have found the common ‘secret’ to unlocking them. But, I just never did. Maybe I missed something obvious but after over 15 hours, I’d still not unlocked a single tube.

I love the fact that puzzles aren’t self-contained and that you need to invest yourself in the mystery to progress.

The puzzles are varied, but most often the solution is required to get through doors and inaccessible parts of the hotel. There might be combination locks where the answer is in a book, a film poster, or in the environment around you. You’ll often have to do some kind of translation to figure out the answer. For example, a movie was released in 1960 but the poster looks upside-down. The answer is 0961 – there’s a lot of manipulation of fonts and numbers in Lorelei, one of the reasons a notebook is so handy. At one point, I had my girlfriend hold her hand mirror up to the television screen to read something backwards. There are a lot of cool moments like this.

An Enthralling Mystery

You dive into video game worlds, you load up old floppy disks on computers to access Lorelei’s memories. Everything you encounter is abstract, surreal and inexplicable. Simogo has nailed the vision they were striving for with Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I wish I was able to uncover more of the truth but alas, I’ve never been a very logical or mathematically-geared person.

The puzzles are interesting, the visuals are stunning, and the ambience and ‘vibe’ are on-point, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a paradise for players who are looking for a cerebral puzzler, especially those who enjoy surrealism and mystery. I wish I could give input into further playthroughs, as I suspect Simogo has prepared additional layers of mystery for those talented enough to solve the first mystery of Lorelei. I genuinely believe Lorelei and the Laser Eyes could be an all-timer for puzzle fans, I can’t recommend this one enough.