There was a time when LucasArts was known for its creative and original titles. Games like Day of the Tentacle and the Monkey Island series. Eventually things seemed to move away from that, and the bulk of LucasArts releases usually had to have "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" somewhere in the title to see the light of day. Recently, though, it looks like LucasArts is getting back to basics with the release of its new platform puzzler, Lucidity. Simple. Elegant. It's got just about all the elements of a LucasArts classic. But is it any fun?
In Lucidity, players are introduced to Sofi, a young girl with big dreams whose happiest moments in life involve the bedtime stories told to her by her loving grandmother. One night, Sofi wakes up and sees a single firefly next to her bed. Following the firefly, the world around her changes and leaves her wandering in a thick forest. Skipping through the world and hunting any fireflies along her path, it's up to the player to protect young Sofi from the hazards of her dreams, and help her to remember the lessons of life taught to her by her "Nana".
The first thing that comes to mind when playing Lucidity is that someone in the development department had a fondness for the classic game Lemmings. Much like the critters of the old school puzzler, Sofi marches perpetually forward, oblivious to the hazards her nightmares are putting in her way. And just like in Lemmings, it's up to the player to come up with creative ways to navigate Sofi over, under, around, and through all of those obstacles. To help with this, Lucidity borrows a little bit from another timeless puzzle game, Tetris. Players are dished out a random tool to place along Sofi's path, with the next available piece shown to help try and plan things out. Players can also hold onto one piece, which can be swapped at any time with a quick button press.
The flow of Lucidity is deceptively difficult. Sofi trots across the screen at a slow pace and you'd have more than enough time to set up a nice little Rube Goldberg path to get her from Point A to Point B. The problem is, the camera stays focused solely on Sofi, leaving the player only one screen's worth of width at a time. That would be fine and dandy if the whole of the game was played on a horizontal plane, but there's a lot of vertical play in Sofi's travels as well. Miss a platform or gauge the distance of a drop wrong, and you've no way to recover before gravity becomes your worst enemy. In later levels, the camera becomes a bigger obstacle than any number of the other hazards the game throws your way.
Like a lot of good puzzle games, Lucidity starts off with a simple idea, but gets more complex in execution. Sure, it's simple enough to drop a staircase down to get Sofi over a briar patch, but what happens when those stairs run out and all you've got is a fan to launch her into the air or a slingshot that sails Sofi across the screen into a swarm of wasps? Nothing is more maddening than know exactly what you need to get Sofi where you need her to go, but to be given just about anything BUT that piece. Just as bad is having everything fall into place exactly right, only to barely miss that last firefly you were going for and have to play through the entire stage from the start to try for it once again. Still, as frustrating as Lucidity can be, the game never gets boring. Every time you fail out of a level, you come back that much more determined to help Sofi get through her journey safely.
With Lucidity, LucasArts seems to be getting back to the universally appealing IPs that it used to be known for. The game is easy enough for the casual player to jump right into, difficult enough to keep the gaming vets interest, and stylish enough to have both glued to their sets. It's not a perfect game. The randomness of the pieces and the occasionally unforgiving camera are a pain to deal with at times. In the end, what you get out of the Lucidity is an frustrating yet calming experience that you find yourself hard pressed to pull away from despite its shortcomings. As often as you fail, you can't help but be invested enough in Sofi's journey to try and try again.
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