Lorelei and the Laser Eyes

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes drops players into a baroque manor thick with noir atmosphere, tasking them with untangling a mystery through pen-and-paper puzzle-solving rather than combat. This review's sample confirms Simogo's presentation and puzzle craft earn deep, specific devotion, alongside a remarkably consistent complaint about how the game is actually controlled.

A striking mystery that rewards patience

Reviewers reach for prestige comparisons with real consistency. "It's like if David Lynch made a puzzle game that is structured like Resident Evil, but without the zombies," one reviewer writes, while another goes further: "It's like a Giallo film about making Giallo movies. Or maybe it's David Lynch's take on Hitchcock's biopic?" A reviewer who fully completed the game describes the note-taking itself as central to the appeal: "Played it non stop and finished with a total of 70 handwritten notes, that's how engaging it is." Another reviewer frames the pacing as a specific strength: "the game is very... fleeflow for like the first 2/3rds of the game, so if you can't figure something out, you can just do one of the others and come back later."

A remarkably consistent complaint about controls

Set against that praise, the single most repeated criticism in this review's entire sample, echoed by reviewers who otherwise love the game, concerns a deliberately restrictive control scheme. "There's no mouse support, and no back button. Everything is one button," one reviewer writes, describing the frustration of trying to open an inventory near an interactable object. A reviewer in this review's positive sample raises the identical complaint independently: "if you want to back out of a menu, you have to navigate over to the 'x' and hit a button. This really [bothers] me. Please let me use the B button to back out!" That level of consistency, appearing in reviews that land on opposite sides of the recommendation divide, suggests a deliberate design choice that a meaningful share of players simply never warm to.

Are the puzzles as deep as advertised?

A second consistent complaint, again present even among positive reviewers, argues the puzzles are considerably simpler than the game's marketing suggests. One reviewer who 100%-completed the game states plainly: "The game is very intriguing and teases you in the beginning saying things like 'you have to know some information about the outside world, such as roman numerals, greek alphabet, etc.' This is a lie." Another reviewer describes the dominant puzzle type directly: "most every puzzle comes down to finding a date or bit of info somewhere else in the game and entering it on the right combination lock." This review treats that as a fair, specific critique from engaged, invested players rather than a failure to appreciate the genre.

A serious, specific accessibility gap

Beyond design preferences, this review's sample raises two distinct accessibility concerns worth flagging directly rather than folding into general complaints. First, at least two independent reviewers — one in the negative sample, one in the positive — report that the game's colorblind mode does not meaningfully help players with red-green color blindness, with one writing plainly: "Red is meant to stand out in this game, but it doesn't for people with red-green color blindness. Could there please be a color-blind option?" Second, one reviewer reports a considerably more serious issue: "This game has a lot of strobing/flashing red light that you aren't likely to encounter until about 4 or more hours into the game. There is no warning at the start of the game... nor is there any in-game warning prior to when those lights start triggering." That's a specific, checkable photosensitivity concern that this review believes deserves direct, prominent mention for any player considering a purchase.

A story that splits opinion on its own terms

Beyond mechanics, reviewers disagree meaningfully about whether the narrative itself delivers on its atmosphere. One reviewer who otherwise enjoyed the puzzles argues the substance doesn't match the style: "The story is also thin, operating more on vibes than substance." Another reviewer reaches the opposite conclusion, describing "a very well-paced mystery" built as "a meticulously-crafted puzzle box." A third reviewer frames the tension between style and depth as the entire point: "This game is utterly obsessed with itself and I am here for it." This review treats that split as a genuine, unresolved matter of taste rather than a case where one side is simply missing something the other caught — the game's narrative ambiguity appears to be a deliberate choice that lands differently depending on what a given player wants from a mystery.

What the achievement data shows

This review's own check of Steam's achievement data shows the presumed full-completion achievement sitting at just 1.9%, a low figure consistent with reviewer reports that a meaningful share of players stop partway through as the accumulating backtracking and increasingly obtuse puzzles wear down their patience.

A quiet patch record

Steam's own partner-events feed for this title contains only two posts: the original release announcement and a later bundle inclusion. This review found no patch communications confirming or denying whether the control-scheme frustrations or the specific accessibility gaps raised throughout this review's sample have been addressed since launch, and states that gap plainly rather than assuming either outcome.

Final verdict

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes succeeds at building a genuinely striking, atmospheric mystery that puzzle-game fans specifically praise with real consistency, and this review's sample confirms deep devotion to its noir presentation and note-taking-driven design. But a remarkably consistent complaint about its deliberately restrictive controls, echoed even by admirers, and a specific, serious accessibility gap around colorblind support and unwarned strobing lights, are real, documented barriers this review believes deserve equal weight against its considerable style.