Since we will most likely not finish Lucidity, the new puzzle platformer on XBLA published by Lucasarts, we will have to post impressions instead. For months we had been keeping tabs on this game since it was developed by the studio who brought you the excellent Monkey Island Special Edition, this is the developer’s first original title. But after the long wait we were struck with utter disappointment. An idea that looks good on paper may not work at all in execution, and Lucidity is one of those ideas. As a matter of fact we are baffled as to why Lucasarts published Lucidity as is because if you got past the slick artsy storybook graphics, the underlying structure of the game, is not so much a game at all, but tedium stacked on top of ennui. It could have been much much better, if only they hired us as game design consultants.
To explain Lucidity in a sentence this would be Super Mario meets Lemmings, reminiscent of Braid. In other words this is what Braid would be like if you completely took the fun out of the formula. In this game you don’t control the protagonist Sofi as she runs across the screen to the goal on the rightmost area of each level. She can pummel to her death at any time because the only thing she knows is running straight (yes just like a lemming). Now this isn’t the main problem with the game, this is probably the pitch that sold the idea. The main problem is the limited powers the game equip you with. You can place puzzle pieces which are platforms (we’ll call them blocks from here) that will help Sofi get to her goal. The pieces are the central problem of this game. If this game was Lemmings, it would give you a camera to scroll through the whole map and see what you are up against, and it will probably give you limited pieces of blocks you can strategically placed those platform to help Sofi get to her goal, well that is if we designed this game. But no, Lucidity tries to be more Mario Brothers than Lemmings (without giving you control of Mario) and it gives you mostly random (note the word mostly because it only appears to be random) blocks you can work with, like Tetris, and only giving you very limited controls of which blocks you can use (note the word limited, because you can waste the blocks without much penalty, or save one so you can swap out the next one you don’t want). At the end of the day, Lucidity provides so much mindless frustration that you most likely will lack the patience to finish even the demo, enchanting visuals and alluring soundtrack can only take you so far, which you can probably accomplish by getting a real children graphic storybook while listening to your iPod.
Instead of torturing yourself with Lucidity, we would suggest you play Blow, a well crafted XNA indie game in which you guide your bubbles safely to the exit with ingenious fan / air current mechanics.
