Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Review: A perplexingly perfect puzzler

The scene is set. A hotel filled with puzzles. A mysterious man with a penchant for stepping in red paint. A woman who never takes off her sunglasses, but the occasional flicker of red flashes through them. This is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. An utterly beguiling mystery, one of the best puzzle games I've played in years, and one that fits right at home on the PC and Nintendo Switch.

In the very first seconds of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you’re encouraged to keep a notebook and pen handy, and it is probably the most useful piece of advice you’ll have when playing this game. A humble piece of paper goes a long way when it comes to solving the puzzles on offer here, and while they are difficult, every one of them feels satisfying to solve.

A Lynchian Dream

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ story is told in a non-linear fashion, but to keep it short, you take on the role of an unnamed woman who has been summoned to a hotel by an enigmatic man who requires her to help him complete a project. But, this isn't any ordinary hotel. It's an expansive place so full of puzzles that it would give Resident Evil's Spencer Mansion a run for its money.

While the story is something to be chipped away at, it remains whimsically ambivalent. An almost illusory dreamscape. Every puzzle you solve unlocks a new door or a clue about why you're there trying to help this mysterious gentleman in his pursuit of a cosmic cause.

Wandering the hotel is part of the puzzle. Every fixed camera angle feels deliberate and meticulously thought out to provide you with some visual clues on occasion and an air of uncertainty. With its black-and-white visuals mimicking security camera footage, and bursts of red making certain elements pop, the game creates an allure that only adds to its eerie atmosphere.

Occasionally, you'll be dragged into a scene by a mysterious maze-headed man floating toward you and it feels like something straight out of the mind of David Lynch. As you're transported to the red room with its jazz and tuned-down guitars, you're expected to memorise scenes and will be forced by gunpoint to remember certain aspects of it. It serves as a heart-pounding knowledge checker in what is generally a very serene game and only adds to its surreal nature.

Puzzle Perfection

There's no doubt that the puzzles that make up the backbone of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes are difficult. While some you can solve relatively easily during the early hours, others require a knowledge of a range of concepts, from writing in Roman numerals to astrology and lunar phases. While this may seem daunting, there are plenty of books, posters, and other clues scattered around the hotel. It's your job to piece them together into a coherent answer.

While the difficulty of some puzzles can be a little frustrating at times, it always feels satisfying to make it through a particularly finicky section and solve the puzzle, thereby helping your progression. Often, solving a puzzle will be like unclogging a river, opening up plenty of more areas and opportunities to exercise the little grey cells.

The Pen Is Mightier

As you progress through the game, you'll soon find that the aforementioned pen and paper you should have with you will become a precious commodity. While Lorelei and the Laser Eyes features a photographic memory that allows you to remember puzzle clues, and mental notes for your list of objectives, you'll find it can get quite stuffed with books and documents that it can be difficult to remember it all and keep track of which puzzles the clues correlate to. The occasional note here and there is more useful than you think.

By the time I was finished with the game, I had sheets of paper covered in scrawls that would appear utterly unintelligible to someone who wasn't playing along with me. But to me, flicking back through these notes made me realise how far I had come. Sure, I could check the progress bar in the pause menu, or just run through all the shortcuts I had opened up around the hotel, but the physical reams of paper I used are a testament to the ingenuity Lorelei and the Laser Eyes provides in its puzzles.

The Verdict

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an incredibly stylish puzzler that, during my time with it, continued to beguile right to the end. By allowing you relatively free reign of the hotel to complete its assortment of riddles and puzzles in any order, I never felt like I had reached a stumbling block, often being allowed to come back to every puzzle later and complete other in-game tasks that I had put on the back burner.

Piecing together its surreal story with a pen and paper by my side was an absolute joy, with every puzzle challenging me and putting my brain to work. While your photographic memory may be a little jumbled at times, finally solving that one puzzle that has been giving you grief is always satisfying, and keeps this perplexing puzzler incredibly interesting.

Annapurna seldom misses with its published titles, and this game continues in that trend, fitting in nicely with a backlog of curiosities from What Remains of Edith Finch to Stray and Sayonara Wild Hearts. Simogo has taken great care and passion to craft an enthralling puzzle game that will keep you on your toes. Pens at the ready, now.

4.5/5

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch. Review code provided by the publisher.