Many tears have been shed and drinks poured over the “death” of the classic point-and-click adventure game. While some perennial favorites like Return to Monkey Island valiantly keep the torch burning, the days of running around in 2D environments, stuffing your pockets with seemingly unrelated items and forcing them onto equally random objects in inexplicable combinations are all but over. With that in mind, it seems especially fitting that Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the latest from Goodbye Wild Hearts developer Simogo, is a puzzle game that looks back at the intertwining of time (in more ways than one). The distinctive style of this incredibly clever adventure may seem unfamiliar at first glance, but at its heart, it’s the closest thing I’ve ever played to a modern incarnation of the point-and-click adventure. Its story is captivatingly fresh, the atmosphere is utterly creepy, and you can’t help but want to uncover every nook and cranny of its intricately woven mystery.

You take on the role of Lorelei, whose story begins in a dark forest outside a dingy mansion and offers little direction except for a strange invitation to an exhibition that goes beyond art itself: an exhibition she might be able to attend. Will you join in? Lorelei and the Laser Eyes prides itself on its obfuscation, rarely giving clear answers to the questions it poses or telling us what is actually going on. And that’s notable because this story starts off as “strangely unexplained” and gets wilder from there. But this enigmatic attitude never once frustrated me during the 13 hours it took me to play. Instead, it always tempted me to figure out the answers myself, in a way that felt natural rather than laborious or obligatory.

This usually takes us from a fixed camera angle to Lorelei wandering the mansion’s black-and-white halls, encountering a series of locked doors that she slowly but surely figures out how to open. To avoid spoilers as much as possible, you may need to decipher the meaning behind a nearby poster to decipher the correct combination for a padlock, or you may have to return much later if you find the key somewhere else. The entire mansion is one big puzzle box (literally, with a bunch of puzzle boxes stored inside it), and it’s never hard to figure out how to navigate the hallways more easily, which door to open next, and where each piece clicks into place. -The thrill of the ending.

The property is also a brilliantly put together device, as it seamlessly blends vast freedom with more curated encounters. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is the kind of game you’ll enjoy chatting with friends while comparing notes and solving particularly tricky challenges. But it’s also a game you’ll find difficult to talk about, as its relatively open layout allows you to tackle parts of the puzzles. Very different orders. They strike an ideal balance between simply figuring things out and leading you to key moments in the story or conversations with the sparse cast of characters, and they’re all equally witty and written and intriguingly obtuse.

The types of puzzles to solve are also surprisingly diverse. Some take the form of literal puzzle books, requiring you to solve simple but fun number problems to find solutions to obstacles in your way. Others are spatial puzzles that require you to walk around rooms and see things from very specific perspectives to find the answer. Then there are those where you have to decipher (relatively simple) secret messages written in letters and documents, those where you have to fill your inventory with items and objects that will inevitably be used somewhere, and those where you have to dial a number on the phone at the mansion’s front desk for outside help. And – many of them – you have to immerse yourself in the story of Lorelei herself and the events that surround her, in a way that nicely ties all the action into a fascinating narrative. Some sections take you into the creepy Resident Evil-esque halls of the video game in the same world. It has PlayStation-era graphics and hilariously awkward tank controls.

But this joke about the poor controls from earlier would have been funnier if Simogo hadn’t been so adamant about Lorelei and the Laser Eyes being a one-button game. This limitation can be interesting, but most are against it. Apart from using the thumbstick or WASD to move (and open settings), all the keys do the same thing. View menus when you’re not near something, interact with something when you’re near it, select items in your inventory, cycle through numbers on a combination lock and try to open it when you think you have the right answer. The menus don’t even have a dedicated “back” button. This comparison sounds harsher than I intend, but the last game I tested to try something like this was Balan Wonderworld, and I hate that as much as I hate it here.

This completely pointless self-limitation makes it unnecessarily difficult to move around or solve puzzles. The only way to stop looking at the lock is to intentionally enter the wrong code. If you want to look at an item, book, or note in your inventory in an attempt to find the right combination, you have to physically move away from the lock before you can access the menu (and if you’re in a tight space with other interactive objects, you can move within their range to select them). If you forget where you’re going and need to quickly check the map, you have to navigate up to three levels down the menu list before you can select the map for just that particular floor… and then you have to go to the next one. To exit again, press the “Exit” button on these scrolling lists.

Simogo co-founder Simon Flessler said in an interview that this control scheme is, among other things, to make “Lorelei and her laser eyes” as widely accessible as possible. I applaud this goal, but I don’t think it’s undermined in any way by including the ability to quickly exit the interface or access the map using dedicated buttons. The absence of these basic features in no way ruins the experience of this very intelligently designed game. If these features are the price I have to pay, so be it, but it’s an annoying flaw in the moody world I enjoy. Totally bound.

The world has enough charm to at least smooth out most of the rough parts. This is not a horror game, but it does occasionally don horror game costumes to keep you on the edge of your seat and tease you with puzzle-binding scares. There are only a few true “moments of terror” and the few total failures are very clearly announced, so you won’t feel like you’ve gotten something you didn’t sign up for if you’re primarily interested in carefully considered problem-solving. But Lorelei and the Laser Eyes does a great job of keeping the audience unsettled throughout the film. With its beautiful black-and-white style and neon effects, the film manages to create haunting abstract images that are at times as terrifying as the monsters themselves.

Verdict

Lorelei and Laser Eyes’ exploration of the abandoned estate feels familiar and novel at the same time. Stuffing your pockets with playing cards, letters, and other items in hopes of deciphering a lock or helping you solve a puzzle is right up there with the best classic point-and-click adventure games, but the beautiful lo-fi presentation, creepy storyline, and creative puzzles wrapped around it all feel impressively fresh. An unwavering commitment to one-button gameplay introduces some unnecessary annoyances, but it’s still a fascinating journey. As with all the best puzzle games, I found myself frantically scribbling symbols, numbers, and names on scraps of paper to avoid leaving any creepy stones behind.