Lorelei and the Laser Eyes – PS5 Review

From Malmö based dev Simogo and published by Annapurna Interactive comes the intriguingly titled Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Set in the recent past in and around the Hotel Letzes Jahr, that being Hotel Last Year, the black and white graphical style with occasional flashes of colour gives it an otherworldly feel, a bit like Sin City in both printed and film form.

You arrive at the hotel in your car, not entirely unlike the rightly maligned Trabant. The car so beloved by East German citizens that when the Berlin Wall fell thirty-five years ago, it was abandoned wholesale by owners who didn’t bother to take it with them when they fled west. Heck, we don’t love our car, but we don’t hold it in such low regard that we would ditch it at the first opportunity.

You play as an unnamed mute woman, depicted entirely in third-person view, at the outset being pretty much in the dark both literally and figuratively. She might be the titular Lorelei, but she’s just as likely not to be. The puzzles start out gently, with an introduction to the inventory system and how you interact with your environment. But before you know it, Simogo up the ante. Heck, one initial bit of crucial exposition was entirely missed by us due to not paying full attention at first.

Every time you encounter a document, sign, painting or object, it is added to your photographic memory. Very handily categorised by type, it makes when you inevitably have to return to look up a clue a lot easier.

You’ll initially only be able to access the outer grounds of the hotel and once you gain access to the entrance area, you’ll be able to make your way through the stairwell of the hotel. You’re teased with lots of places you can’t access just yet. This is a common thing early in the game, though our previously mentioned inattentiveness also proves a factor on multiple occasions.

Once you’ve managed to get into an area, most commonly in the early stages by looking at items in the same room, you’ll be able to collect items or encounter some gentle plot exposition. You’ll also encounter closed doors with combination locks on the opposite side from which you’re stood. This we understand as the devs hardly want you gallivanting around the place prematurely. But after a while, you’ll find yourself on the side of the locks and be able to open them.

These are all matched up with a book you’ll have encountered on your travels, generally a logic puzzle. Sometimes they’re obvious, sometimes they’re wilfully obtuse, other times they’re a fun bit of misdirection. We found playing Lorelei to be fun both on our and with somebody present, especially when we butted up against a puzzle that taxed our grey matter more than we’d care to admit.

The same themes will show up throughout the game, dates and character names especially. Our favourites include the padlocks you encounter that have Roman numerals on the dials, being your cue to work through the significant dates you’ll run into during your playthrough. The five-tumbler padlock for example, being impossible to enter a year like that of Queen Victoria’s ascension, that being MDCCCXXXVII. So you narrow it down to the dates you’ve encountered and while it seems obvious in hindsight, it’s often a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

As well as items to advance the plot, Simogo do a good job of peppering almost every area you encounter with Jimmy Spicer’s and hence Method Man’s preferred denomination. Yes, the dollar dollar bill y’all. Quite why it’s the dollar bill and not a five Deutschmark note is a matter of conjecture, but it’s nice that they lead to more fun.

You can buy gatcha items, pay a coffee club subscription (yes, really) and among other things, games for your not quite Gameboy thing. These latter items are fully fleshed out actual games you can plough hours into, notably ilomilo by Simogo predecessor Southend Interactive and the fantastic splt that we found ourselves playing for far longer than we’d have expected. These can be bought by calling the phone number found in one basement room.

In the same room, you’ll also discover a games console, a pseudo-Saturn with similar polygonal graphics. You get to play one of three prototype games, all controlled with classic PS1-era Resident Evil tank controls, your aim being to trigger a fault state and hence advance the meta-narrative that threads throughout everything in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It’s all very well done and also another source for dollar bills. Nice.

In common with Resident Evil games of yore, there’s no autosave here. Instead saving your progress manually is the order of the day, though ink ribbons aren’t required to do so. You get a lovely disc drive noise as you save to a floppy disc. It’s all very nice and nostalgic, though utterly meaningless to anyone under the age of twenty-five.

Given this is a puzzle game, the temptation for many will be to resort to a hint guide. We’d really recommend you don’t do so as you’ll ruin the delight of discovering solutions for yourself. Simogo attempted to mitigate this somewhat by randomising the shortcuts, but the puzzles themselves are still fundamentally the same, barring a few variables changing. Don’t cheat yourself though as the puzzles are all very doable in isolation.

In conclusion, we could write another couple of thousand words about the delightful Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. In fact, the only thing stopping it being our personal game of the year is the fact that Balatro exists. Lorelei is really very good and you need to play it. It won’t be on many people’s radar as its not flashy and brash, but like Localthunk’s masterpiece, it very much deserves to be.