The whole story of "Lorelei and The Laser Eyes" takes places in a remote Mansion where you have reveal secrets of the past through peculiar events and some pretty surreal situations. Its grayscale palette, with some red touches, give it an artistic style and achieves a captivating noir, horror atmosphere right from the beginning. Lore is deep and non linear storytelling fantastically unveils the plot step by step. Characters are interesting and everything, from diaries till dialogues, is well written and sometimes poetic. Most importantly this game is full of awesome puzzles. The whole Mansion is a big, well built, puzzle that manages to masterfully guide the player and never feel overwhelmed. Yet, most of the puzzles have the same old translating logic that you try to convent symbols into number and letters, unlock doors etc. I would like something more imaginative at some point. The biggest problem though is control mechanics with all this slow walking, stiff 3d navigation and the absolutely annoying decision to use only one action button for everything. Controls become tiring after a while. Nevertheless, it is really huge for an indie puzzle game with fantastic atmosphere and amazing story. You'll not regret playing it.


Manometer: 8/10


The good
- Graphics are simplistic and a little bit bulky, but that doesn't matter at all, because art direction is awesome. Its grayscale palette with some red touches here and there, some jumping textures and effects like noise and flickering give it a really unique result visually. Noir and horror are combined perfectly to create captivating atmosphere that gets the player immersed right from the beginning.
- Well designed world. Mansion is amazing with multiple levels, hidden paths, unlockable shortcuts and mysteries everywhere. Each room feels unique and you cannot wait to open a new door to see what lies behind it.
- If we accept that it has a specific genre of puzzles (with numbers, patterns and symbols) and doesn't deviates much from it, then its overall structure is a masterpiece. The whole Mansion is a big puzzle that you try to gradually unlock and it's remarkable how all this interconnected thing is set up. Although you usually find things somewhere and you use them in a completely different place of the house, it does fantastic job of guiding you by giving necessary clues so you never get confused. Available things and rooms get unlocked step by step so the player never gets overwhelmed with too much information at once. A lot of puzzles have their solutions in the same room in order to maintain some balance. Menus with inventory, memories and archives are well designed and everything is nicely named and categorized. Although I would like some more diversion there are some pretty creative puzzles in there with great logic and balanced difficulty. Only the last sequence of puzzles seemed to me a little bit stretched.
- Great lore and story. Mansion has rich background, filled with stories and secrets. It doesn't reveal to you linearly or via big major and pompous cut scenes. Storytelling is amazing letting you discover things with your own rhythm through logs, diaries, notes and books. A story that initially seems fragmented and difficult to understand becomes interesting as you connect its pieces offering a great horror journey with surreal elements and unexpected twists.
- Everything is exceptionally written so you never get bored of reading big amounts of text. Some logs and dialogues are really poetic giving the player deeper thought.
- Great characters. They have no facial expressions or voice over and seem a bit dull initially. They look like unexpressive manikins, yet through lore, some small, interesting cut scenes and a few interactions they gain substance and become strong, mysterious personalities. As the game progresses you want to learn more and more about their story.
- Audio design feels a bit empty and there is music only at specific places. Yet, music is awesome, fits perfectly to each moment and enhances even more the overall atmosphere.
- Nice direction with good pacing, cool camera angles and poetic small cut scenes with vintage vibes.
- Hidden dollars everywhere in the mansion give the player an extra motivation to explore more without forcing unnecessary grinding.
- For an indie, puzzle game it packs a huge amount of puzzles that offer a lot of hours of entertainment.

The bad
- Controls are annoying. For some inexplicable reason the developers decided that It's a good idea to use a single button for everything. So if an interactive objects is not highlighted you open the inventory, that wouldn't happen if there was a dedicated inventory button. If you're inside the inventory you have to navigate in and out of menus and even to the escape button to close it that wouldn't have happened if there was a dedicated back button. You have to navigate to every map inside your inventory instead of having a dedicated map button, forcing you to take screenshots in order to avoid all this. Opening a puzzle, like a mechanism or a padlock, you have to trigger its mechanism and experience the failure animation again and again in order to close it. All these were really tiring and at times were killing the vibes and the mood I was into.
- Walking is too slow, protagonist's movements are stiff and navigation inside the 3d world isn't the most pleasant experience. You'll need to go up and down the mansion so many times that it gets tiring after a while. Also, I really don't understand the inclusion of coffee drinking mechanism in order to run. I mean, come on, it adds nothing to the experience, It isn't even a survival game.
- Its whole structure is well thought and most puzzles are brilliant, yet there is a specific logic behind them through the entire game. Most of them are only about patterns, numbers, calculating and converting digits into symbols. It's the same old translating process again and again. I wanted at some point something different and more imaginative and I missed puzzles with dialogues or clever combinations of things inside the inventory.
- Although it does great job giving you the necessary clues most of the time, the last set of puzzles (trying to login to the computer) is stretched and makes some logical jumps failing to guide you smoothly. As a result it overshadows the ending a little bit.
- Audio design is a little bit empty. A few more environmental sounds could have given a lot to its atmosphere.