Game Description:LucasArts has announced a brand new platformer, and it has nothing at all to do with Star Wars! According to LucasArts, Lucidity takes players on a trip into the imagination of Sofi, a young girl who is” filled with a persistent desire to explore new worlds and overcome all obstacles in her way.” The game is described as a “challenging puzzle platform game,” where “players are tasked with keepi…ng Sofi safe as she drifts deeper into the strange new world of her dreams. Through quick reaction and placement of randomly generated puzzle pieces, players must create a path through beautifully detailed dreamscapes to keep Sofi in perpetual motion and deliver her to safety.” So the players manipulate the environment around Sophi, who moves automatically. More Description »

A competent puzzle/platformer in avant-garde clothing, Lucidity is heavy on art style, but fails to handle its material maturely. The core mechanics are equal parts tense and frustrating, and it’s good fun for awhile, though it quickly runs out of ideas. However, for the ten-dollar price point, it might be worth a look.

A competent puzzle/platformer in avant-garde clothing, Lucidity is heavy on art style, but fails to handle its material maturely.  The core mechanics are equal parts tense and frustrating, and it’s good fun for awhile, though it quickly runs out of ideas.  However, for the ten-dollar price point, it might be worth a look.

Heady Stuff?

With 2D indie games now in vogue thanks to titles such as Braid and Cave Story, LucasArts, the one-time adventure game extraordinaire, aims to create the new art house masterpiece on the block.  With its gorgeous watercolor-inspired art style, Lucidity looks and sounds the part, but doesn’t quite play it.

Lucidity follows the psychological journey of a girl named Sofi as she daydreams through her favorite adventure tales, which quickly turn into nightmares following her grandmother’s passing.  It’s a thought-provoking idea — the idea of dealing with loss through an interactive adventure — and one we don’t see enough of these days.

The Energizer Bunny Ain’t Got Nuthin’ on Sofi…

The goal of each level is to guide young Sofi across the stage, where she’ll come upon a mailbox containing a postcard with a message on it from her Nana.  Sofi walks from left to right automatically, and it’s your job to place objects in her path, helping her to bypass certain peril.  Some of these objects include: a staircase, a plank, and bombs that can be used to thwart enemies or alter the environment by blowing holes in walls.  The catch is that you cannot choose which piece to use. They’re selected for you at random, with one hold slot in case you want to save a piece for a particularly sticky situation.

It’s a unique way of handling a platformer and seems to bridge Tetris and Lemmings.   Because you frequently lay pieces down mere moments before she encounters them, guiding Sofi can be an extremely tense experience.  Thankfully, the controls are largely responsive, minimizing frustration, but with no mid-level checkpoints, you have to play the whole level over again if you fail.  Doubly annoying is that you can’t speed Sofi up for those early, easy parts.

Ultimately, what starts out an intriguing idea soon devolves into a rather rote story of a girl coming to terms with her grandmother’s death.  The story is told largely via text and while the level’s settings tie in thematically with Sofi’s depression and ultimate ascension out of a darker place, there aren’t any new metaphors or game mechanics beyond the first hour or so (out of approximately four).  You’ll “get it” pretty early on.

That’s the rub with Lucidity.  It all starts out promising enough, but is content to recycle the same ideas throughout its latter three quarters.  There is replay value, since you can unlock new levels by going back through the originals collecting fireflies scattered throughout, but given that you don’t have full control of the character, doing so would take an ungodly amount of time.

Beauty is Only Skin Deep…

Ultimately, Lucidity is a pretty good platformer/puzzler with a fantastic art style and a neat idea.  Unfortunately, it lacks complexity both in its mechanics and narrative, which renders it rather forgettable in the long run.  It’s fun to lead Sofi through her dreamscapes at first, but grows frustrating all too soon, and there’s not much motivation to repeat the process.  Lucidity is a bit like someone you go out on a few dates with before realizing that they’re sweet, but shallow.  That’s Lucidity in a nutshell, lots of promise and little delivery.

Source:g4tv.com