Lucidity

Lucidity is a game about death. Sofi, a wide-eyed scamp with a delightfully naive take on the world, is forced into a hazy world of grief and solitude when her bespectacled old Nanny kicks the bucket.

Her anguish is personified in a series of scary worlds, filled with nasty enemies and constructed from her memories and ambitions – childhood places and dreams of deep sea diving or jungle exploration. Sofi carelessly skips through her imagined scenery, arms exaggeratedly flapping at her sides, blind to the dangers of these worlds.

So it’s up to you to be Sofi’s guardian; to save her from danger and aid her adventure, by dropping various objects in her path. With your handful of tools, you can lay down safe paths in front of Sofi’s feet; a plank of wood can bypass a small gap while a catapult can fling her across gorges -a tiny staircase can help her reach high areas, but a fan will shoot her up into the air.

Because the objects are given to you randomly, success is entirely about thinking on your feet and using what’s available to you. You can hold one object back for emergencies, but Lucidity is far more focussed on the judicious and rapid use of the tools at hand, rather than concrete planning, devious strategies and finding the perfect path.

But having no control over your character, and no control over your toolbox, is a maddening sensation. We’ve experienced the gimmick of indirect control with Lemmings, but at least the suicidal mammals had order and command; in comparison, Lucidity is pure chaos.

Sofi quickly speeds up from an amble to a jog, and levels rapidly become harder to navigate and filled with more dangerous enemies. It leads to Sofi being trapped in a corner as you toss useless items into midair, desperately hoping the roulette wheel comes up with a bomb to blast your way out. It leads to frustrating falls, it leads to Sofi walking straight into monsters as you try to present a useful object; it leads to death. And with no checkpoints, death means starting levels over – which leads to “Quit to Dashboard” if you’re on the trial or “Throw Xbox out the Window” if you paid 800 Microsoft points.

Ultimately, the game feels like an unfinished prototype; it’s on its way to a great idea, but it’s a few iterations away from being complete. Not to mention getting Sofi caught on tiny bits of scenery and no way to remove items you’ve mistakenly placed – it’s just not been thought out. And it’s a shame! Lucidity is presented beautifully. It’s rendered in a creepy pop-up collage of cardboard and paper, it’s all set to an ethereal score and it has a brave and affecting story.