Lucidity™

Lucidity is not a casual game. Maybe only at the beginning or for people who don't want to have everything. You have to play a lot of levels several times to get everything and unfortunately I didn't find the game that much fun. It's an autorunner where you have to help Sofi get to the end of the level. And that brings me to my biggest complaint: the game is surprisingly slow. I understand why, so that you have enough time to place the items at all, but this stretches each level immensely.

The game is totally 7/10. The concept is pretty unique and amazing but i think there should be an option where we can increase the speed of character, the game was pretty fun to me at first but then it started to get boring realising how slow the character moves. The levels are pretty much the same and so is game play so it didn't really work for me, but other than that the game is good to kill boredom or if you are looking for a unique game you must try this title out!

It's been some years until I last played this.. but this puzzle platformer has actually innovative gameplay. Yes, it's a platformer where you control the platforms only, but it can get really tricky and there are bonus levels to keep your motivation up.

This is one of the best games I have ever played. Its so simple, but it says so much. Plus the art style is just *Chefs Kiss* And the colours, just simply amazing.

Dearest Sofi

PROS: This title is an auto-runner, so the game is quite beginner friendly to beat. The levels slowly introduce new items, & the final stages focus more on utilization within the stage. The visuals are stylish in that LucasArts style, & the soundtrack ranges from calming to middling.

CONS: This game is as exciting as a typical auto-scroller could be. There's very little in the way of controls, the levels bleed into each other, & the only interesting stages are the bonus ones. On that note, the only incentive one has to play stages over again are the collectibles: fireflies. These are gathered to unlock bonus stages that provide only an interesting visual or two. Finally, the story is about a small child, Sofi, accepting the loss of her grandmother, & working to say her final goodbyes. Under normal circumstances, this could be charming. Here, the lack of substance all around causes the emotional moments to pass right along with little thought outside of Sofi's diary pages at the start of each stage, & her grandmother's postcards at the end.

ACHIEVEMENTS: This was a slog. A handful of challenges, collecting fireflies, & beating every bonus stage. The grind comes from the fireflies, with each bonus stage unlocking after 100. This means you only need 1600 fireflies, not all of them, right? Wrong! The game requires one to collect every single firefly to unlock the last bonus stage, which contains the last 128.

FINAL: This title was just not very fun for me. It may be a little biased & a bit unfair, as this title came out in 2009, but this would be boring even by those standards. It's a simple game for those looking, but this game is sorely missing that LucasArts touch.

I'll change my review if I change my mind, but this is terribly disappointing. So far as I can tell, the gameplay is *entirely* watch the girl walk across the screen and place things like wood planks and stairs so she doesn't encounter danger. That is not a challenging puzzle adventure!! That's no puzzles or adventure at all. If I can suggest retagging this game I would, it's not an adventure game it's a 2D platform non-adventure.

The "team that re-imagined The Secret of Monkey Island™" clearly learned nothing from that experience.

I have this game in my Steam library for quite some time, probably since around release date in 2009.

I could still remember it vaguely but I knew I did not play it much (Don't look at my hours played, game got stuck in the background). Obviously, there was a reason for me to abandon this game so quickly back then and since it's made by LucasArts I decided to give it another go.

The story of this game is quite sad; it's about a little girl dealing with the loss of her grandma, at least that's what I understood from it.

The gameplay of this game is also quite sad; It's a platformer on-rails in which you throw in some stairs, jump-platforms and bombs to get through the level. A bit like Lemmings if you will, only now you are just one girl, you get the picture. Often objects also get misplaced or you are waiting for the right object to appear which can get frustrating. There are also some enemies ranging from frogs and fishes to orbs... nothing spectacular.

The game can be quite easy or quite difficult (as in time consuming) depending on how you play the game. Let me elaborate; The game can be finished in like an hour if you just try to finish the levels/story. If however, you decide you want to replay the mostly boring levels to find all the stars to beat the achievements, it can take quite some time. There is no way I'm going to do this.

Graphics are quite okay in my opinion, also nothing special.

Overall; not the worst game ever. It had some pretty good ideas just failed in the execution in my opinion.

I only needed ten minutes with Lucidity to see what it was all about. Some games are like that, they put everything they have right out from the get-go and don't ever push past that foundation. Lucidity certainly starts with plenty of promise in its storybook world and charming presentation. It's just when you actually get down to playing it that it falters.

The game opens in a quaint little house on a hill, where a little girl lives with her doting grandma. Your wee lass nods off while reading tales of adventure, and dreams of traveling to fantastical faraway lands. This is where the action is, in the dreams of this young lady, and it's up to you to help her get through her adventure in one adorable piece. And maybe collect some fireflies, too!

I'm sure that all sounds peachy until you play it. See, Lucidity is one of those platformers where you don't actually control your character. Sofi (her name is Sofi, I had to look that up) trundles along to the right at a steady clip, only stopping if she literally runs into a wall. Otherwise she'll happily plunge off a cliff or smack face-first into a dream wasp. There's no jumping, no ducking, and while we're on the subject there's no way to speed up her slow stroll, either.

To help her not toddle into certain death like an idiot, you get to place objects in the world that protect her. These include planks and stairs to walk on, springs and fans to launch her, and bombs that can clear enemies away and take chunks out of solid surfaces. You don't get to place these freely, though, because each item is chosen for you, one at a time, Tetris-style. You can bank one item for later use but in general you're going to be working with whatever the game decides to give you at the moment.

I suppose this could work with some clever level design but that's the last thing you're going to get here. Levels are vast expanses of blocky platforms and pits of death and enemies that require some quick thinking when placing objects. Honestly placing objects is always going to require quick thinking, because as slow as Sofi is she doesn't tend to give you much room to work with on her teeny-tiny platforms hanging in a deadly void. There's a huge amount of vertical space to explore as well, with elevated areas that you're only going to get to with a lucky combination of springs and fans anyway.

The end result just isn't any fun, and it's dragged even further down by a conspicuous lack of polish. The art style is a flat papier mache style but coupled with the sharp, straight lines that comprise platforms, levels end up looking like cheap vector art. Some of the backgrounds are nice to look at but others feature some terrible and distracting color combinations. The worst offender is your own interface, with flat yellow silhouettes for your objects, and flat blue silhouettes for the ones you place. It seriously looks like placeholder art, lacking any sort of effects or continuity with the world.

Platformers with indirect control are always a dicey proposition because the threshold for frustration is so much lower. You feel like most of the game is out of your hands, leaving you to simply react to what someone else is doing. Something like Kirby's Canvas Curse worked wonderfully because you had a huge amount of control over your character and the world around him, just in an indirect manner. That's not at all the case here, where you can't even choose how to save Sofi from her own stupidity, you just throw whatever you have at her and hope for the best. Coupled with the unpleasant level design and inconsistent art, Lucidity is more of a nightmare than the dream walk it's supposed to be.



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She auto moves right and you place utilities to make her avoid obstacles.

The gameplay of this game is bearly existent. it is a painfully slow simple game made around what would normally be a half assed mini game.

The art and animation would be it's saving grace, but with such limited content in the game there isnt a lot to see.

Do not buy this game without checking out the a lets play on youtube, you just need to see one level played because they are pretty much all the same

I think I deserve some kind of medal or accolade (some free games, perhaps?) for playing this one more than half-way through. Honestly, I try to be open-minded, tell myself I'm maybe not PRECISELY the intended target audience, blah-blah-blah, but this game is ultimately just frustration in digital form.

The premise is to help a little girl skip her merry way through myriad imaginary landscapes, using conjured-up items (such as staircases, giant slingshots, bombs, etc) to provide her safe passage and remove obstacles and enemies from her path. Easy enough at first, but as it progresses, your chances of making it through seem more and more dependent on the sheer blind luck of what useable imaginary object spawns for you next.

I don't think I've ever groaned so many times in my life, and I don't even mean big, expressive, exasperated groans...just very small, noncommittal, "Oh God, do I have do this bit AGAIN?" kinds of groans.

Honestly, my main criticism is that I can't quite imagine exactly WHO the "target audience" for this product even is, as it's clearly aimed at kids, but surely way too challenging and puzzle-oriented for the average six year-old to successfully negotiate. A game for overgrown, forty year-old, game-addicted losers, perhaps? No, wait, that would mean that I of all people should have enjoyed it; which frankly, I didn't.

This just wasn't much "fun", I'm afraid, and I finally allowed myself to throw in the towel after dying in the exact same spot more than ten times in a row (something I will more than happily tolerate from a really good game, like Limbo or Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack, but not from the more middling likes of this).

I'm almost tempted to give this a thumbs-up irrespective, in acknowledgement of the fact that it's not so much an "incompetent" game, but merely one not suited to the likes of Yours Truly. Yet I honestly find it hard to believe that ANYONE is gonna get much pleasure from this, no matter what their age...which arguably doesn't make it a very successful "game", period.

If I ever have kids, I might force them to play this one for an hour whenever they're naughty. "BEHAVE, OR I'LL MAKE YOU PLAY LUCIDITY FOR AN HOUR!" "NO, DAD, PLEASE...NOT LUCIDITY! PLEASE DAD...I'LL MOW THE LAWN...DO THE DISHES...BATHE THE DOG...BUT NOT LUCIDITY, PLEASE!!"

That oughtta learn 'em.

Verdict: 4.5/10.

[MINOR SPOILERS for the very beginning of the game]

Lucidity would simply be about grief and loss if it were a book or a movie. The protagonist, Sofi, is a young girl who loses her grandmother and then determinedly journeys to find her while struggeling to come to terms with her death. Lucidity is a not passive linear media, however, but instead is a game, and its specific gameplay is very much about quick thinking and adaptation, as the player is asked to help Sofi navigate constantly changing environments using a continually randomized set of tools.

These themes from story and gameplay seem to be oddly paired, especially at first. As the game begins, and Sofi starts marching forward on her own, the player is taught how to use certain tools to keep her safe until she reaches the end of the environment. Sofi is not entirely helpless (she’ll climb up small rises with ease), and the game might look much like it belongs in the platformer genre when viewed from a distance, albeit one that plays itself. If left alone, however, Sofi will die, and on later levels, die often, falling victim to giant enemies and treacherous falls. It will be up to you to keep her away from those living dust bunnies and spiky pits by placing things like staircases, fans and slingshots in her path, enabling her to jump and climb past danger.

Lucasarts described Lucidity as a “challenging puzzler,” and, well, I agree. The puzzle to be solved is fairly straightforward: get Sofi to the end of the level safely, navigating through a sometimes dangerous environment and around always dangerous creatures. I think it is important to point out that this particular puzzler does not derive its challenge from obscure solutions or mind-twisting scenarios; indeed, the game thrives on offering the player a multitude of solutions at any given moment. If the ground is covered in deadly plants, you might slingshot Sofi past them, build stairs to let her climb over them, place a jump pad to let her climb to a higher level of platforms, or bomb the plants out of existence. All of these actions would probably work with some degree of success. The challenge lies in choosing the best solution with the current tools available, and then in implementing the solution before Sofi runs into danger. The time pressure makes the relatively straightforward problem solving thrilling.

Lucidity deals with is treatment of grief by cleverly separating the bereaved character from the player, casting the player as the one helping the main character through her pain. The player must continually adapt while the playing field and pieces change, as Sofi must learn to adapt to the concept of death. The symbolic journey does falter a bit toward the end as the narrative pulls apart from the gameplay, unfortunately.

There are a few technical quirks that impact the experience enough that they bear mentioning. Because gameplay essentially involves placing level pieces on a grid, a gamepad offers a smoother experience here compared to a mouse (having a mouse cursor constantly snapping to a grid is an alien and unnerving sensation).

This game....aiiiee. Okay, so it's like sideways Tetris but without the catchy Soviet Union beats. Instead, all you get is faux indie art (it's okay), story, and music with all of the worst gameplay elements of a crappy indie title (meaning all of them). This game demonstrates LucasArts can't make a good game without the words "STAR WARS" in the title. It is all luck based on whether or not you will get the thing you need to get out of the time-constricted puzzle you're in caused by the fact that stupid Sophia won't stop walking unless she runs into a wall. But there's only one part that you really want: "NUKES!!! JUST GIVE ME MORE NUKES, MAYBE THAT WAY I'LL BE ABLE TO BLOW UP SOPHIA AND HER STUPID DEAD GRANDMA!!!" 3/10

This game tells the story of a little girl named Sofi who is coming to terms with the death of her grandmother. Sofi constantly walks forward through levels of her dreams and you have to place objects in front of her to make sure she gets to the end of each dream level safely. Along the way you need to collect fireflies by shaping her path towards them. Each level will take multple tries to cover all the possible paths to collect all the fireflies, but it's very rewarding to get every last elusive firefly as they will reveal additional levels. This is such a simple game, but it's very nicely designed and quite addictive once you get the hang of it.

Adorable and heartwarming. Seriously the story for this game is beautiful, the game in fun, the art is cute. Though, if these adjectives make you squirm, don't buy it.

Précurseur de l'aclamé Limbo, Lucidity de Lucasarts est le produit d'une liberté totale de ton et de style de gameplay désormais rare chez ces studios. Tout mignon, très simple à prendre en main, c'est le genre de petit jeu pour casual gamers rempli de charme et d'inventivité qu'on démarre juste avant de se coucher. Très bon.

Don't bother. I liked the concept, but controls are frustrating. I don't mind failing at puzzle games when I am to blame, but when I constantly feel like I fail because of problems in the programming, then I'm done playing.

Lucidity could've been so much more than it is today. I expected a cute, little puzzle platformer and, in a way, it is (especially the graphics look cute), but I expected a platformer where I could move MYSELF, instead of the game moving the character for me. It's basically an on-rails platformer, and you just give directions to the character. And the goal is to collect as many fireflies as you can. Cute, but nothing else.

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The most disappointing game in my collection. At least it's not very expensive.

A strange kind of 2D platformer where you plop down stairs, springs and things in front of the character as she walks along Lemming-fashion and you try and get her to collect fireflys.

Edit: 10 years and many humble bundles later, oh for the days when this was the most disappointing title I owned! XD

Lucidity is a short game in which you control the fate of Sofi; a little girl who is searching for her grandma. Although the game may look like a platformer, it is actually more of a puzzle game as you do not actually control Sofi but place objects in her path which cause her to change her behaviour. This is a very short game - you can easily complete it within a couple of hours - but to get the most out of this game, it is worthwhile 100%ing it by collecting all the fireflies you can. It will only take a few more hours to do so, but the challenge is worth it.

A very beautifully crafted game in the style of a children's story book. Exceptional music and a really clean visual style make for a pleasant playing experience. I've only just begun, so the puzzles aren't too frantic yet but I've heard the end of the game gets quite punishing.