Over the years, the different ways to see adventures and how puzzles can be applied to them have evolved quite a bit, though at times we’ve seen cases where they’ve honestly moved back in time as well. In the earliest days, text-based adventures like Zork were a pretty unique challenge, requiring not just patience but often some vocabulary skills when trying to determine what combination of words would be acceptable to accomplish your goals. Of course, next the LucasArts and Sierra Online adventures had the benefit of graphical interfaces, so the way puzzles worked in those continued to slowly shift towards being more approachable over the years. Then came the CD-ROM days and the arrival of titles like Myst which not just featured multimedia elements, but also tended to call back to earlier days by hiding critical information in the pages of many books that you’d need to look through. In the decades since that time, more often than not, adventures have tended to stick to the lighter style of puzzles. But now we have Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, which unapologetically dives back into the space of dense puzzles everywhere, with the solutions sometimes requiring a fair amount of legwork and logic to work through.

Right away I’d say the most critical thing to know about this title is that it’s set to be on its hard core road without remorse, and if you aren’t a fan it isn’t going to sweat it. While the trend is to see many titles in this genre working to add layered hint systems to help people who are feeling stuck, the developers here seem determined to do the opposite. You can expect to be confronted with both locked doors everywhere, and an abundance of clues to be discovered all around you. The problem won’t just be solving them, it will often be simply keeping track of the solutions and then figuring out where to apply them as well. There’s no doubt that this can be extremely frustrating, but it also holds true then that when you do work out a solution, the feeling when the lock finally opens up can be quite a rush.

In general I’d say that the best comparison would be that this feels like a very puzzle intensive escape room… except you likely won’t have a team to help you work things out, you’re just going to need to have the gumption to do it yourself. Early on the game warns you that you’ll want to have a pad and pencil available to you to jot down notes and to work things out, and I’d say that’s absolutely a great idea. Even as someone who never liked to take notes in class, generally keeping track in my head, and even assisted by your character in the game retaining pretty much anything and everything she sees, you’ll still likely want to have something to write with handy. It’s just a lot.

So what you end up with is a puzzle adventure experience that’s both unconventional and decidedly old-school in its approach. Its goal appears to be challenging both your wits and your resolve, and to get through so many hurdles crammed into a relatively small area you’ll need to be pretty determined. Yes, the game has a cool sense of visual style, and yes there’s a story that will unfold, but what will almost 100% drive whether the game is great or horrible in your eyes will be all about the puzzles and whether you’re up for the substantial challenge, or whether it will just be too much for you to be patient with.