The Lady

If you're a hardcore gamer who loves intentionally difficult things, then this is for you.
Gameplay is not my cup of tea, personally, but I do love the art style. It's my kind of "weird as hell".
And it's free. Can't complain about that. Overall, worth giving a shot.

The kind of surreal that has little meaning.

Story:

The Lady is a surrealist emotional journey that takes The Lady through a series of fever dream hallucinations, while being at odds with inner struggles of anxiety and depression. She encounters multiple versions of herself throughout the game, unsure of which versions to trust. From the initial confusion, to all out anxiety that one would experience with panic disorder, it's all there for you to explore first hand through the eyes of The Lady.

This is the description of the story of The Lady on the store page, however the game has little in the way of an actual story. Just like the description says it's a surreal journey through a bunch of encounters and what they make you feel will likely depend on the player. I honestly could not comprehend what was going on at all throughout my entire playtime so take that as you will.

Graphics:

Art style is very likely made repulsive on purpose and it does it's job perfectly fine. It evokes an uneasy feeling whenever you see the lady move and things wiggle around on the screen, it just looks wrong. I definitely think the art style is the highlight of the game and that's about all the good praise I can give it on the surface.

Audio:

The soundtrack of the game also does well with setting up an unsettling atmosphere, with some creepy droning noises that make you feel like something is going to go wrong at any moment. However I do find the soundtrack nothing special, it's decent, but it's not crazy memorable as I've heard the same type of droning soundtrack multiple times beforehand.

Gameplay:

To explain The Lady is quite difficult, but it's basically a sort of shoot em up ? I guess on paper. You control the lady on a 2D plain and you can attack things coming after you. There's also boss fights which act like actual schumps which are just super bizarre.

The gameplay is just not good whatsoever and the game is hurt by a ton of really weird decisions. First of all the controls are absolutely awful. The Lady herself feels super janky to move around and often feels like she will take a multiple steps more than you ask her and her attacks feel slightly delayed as well which makes the combat a massive chore.

The game is also pretty difficult for no reason. It's cryptic nature and how much damage some enemies deal just make the game a chore to finish and at one point I resorted to using a guide to finish it, cause I was stuck and did not have any idea on what to do to progress.

Verdict:

The Lady is just not a very good game in general. It's art style is the highlight, but to appreciate it you have to put up with some truly mediocre gameplay and some terrible game design. It's really short, barely pushing 30 minutes and since it's free you can definitely find worse ways to spend your time, but you can probably do much better.

Final Rating:
4/10

Pros:
+ Great art style
+ Unsettling atmosphere

Cons:
- Too cryptic
- Awful controls
- Story is incomprehensible

If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

Beautiful, twisted and surreal visuals but the REALLY unclear and unfair gameplay. Too bad because the art is amazing.

There isnt much to talk about here...

A "side-scroller shoot'em up" with horror elements that doesnt succeed and/or engage with any of its components. The shooting doesnt feel thight at all due to the lack of proper animations (which kind of applies to the whole game); most of the levels are achieved through a loop of slowly going to the right, then slowly going to the left and repeating until something happens; the sound design feels like stock "creepy" music and sfx, the game is almost entirely comprised of two art assets: the titular lady and later on a vulture; there isnt any setting or theme developed or established since most of the visual information corresponds to bland backgrounds and the Lady itself in various shapes and sizes; and the "shoot'em up" bosses are reduced to a bare bones "space invaders like" scenario without any feel or emotion.

All of this keeps The Lady from being an interesting horror game (even though the Lady itself could be an interesting and unsettling concept to develop due to its design) and regarding the game as a shoot'em up or run and gun game is even more sad, since the game doesnt even try to acomplish the bare minimum "design requirements" needed to make an interesting game of that sort. In the end, The Lady turns out to be an experimental and "avant-garde" type of game, but without any type of engagment or heart to back it up, not even using the advantages that a minimalist aproach could bring.

I only recommend this game for a very...VERY niche playerbase. It is a terrible game, but I enjoyed playing it.

The scissor puzzle was poorly done and the space invaders stuff doesn't belong in the game. Other than that its polished, transitions well, has a good atmosphere, etc.

But its just not a good game....for anyone other than people who like to pick things apart and discover how things are suppose to work without instructions.

It was hard but not impossible, the art was swell, but it really didn't have a point to me. I initially bought the game because of the praise it had with showing what it's like to deal with mental illness, but as a mentally ill person myself I can say this game honestly just seemed to want to use mental illness as a guise to look weird and spooky. It's a very short game, maybe 20 minutes total if you play it straight through with no deaths. I wouldn't say it's worth it.

For how cheap the game is I don't understand why people are giving it so much hate...people will spend upwards of 20-25 dollars for a walking simulator horror game, why is this instance any different? I'd argue that the game is worth getting just to see the art in motion and the developer did get his point across I beat this game in a room with some friends and everyone was genuinley in a state of unease.

Got this game for 50 cents. Still regret wasting that on this.
Let me start this review by disproving all of the "features" listed on the steam page

Features (directly from steam page)

"The most unique Female Protagonist to ever appear in a video game"
This is wrong for so many reasons. I will list two of them. All the Lady is is a sprite that looks like a zombie and doesn't exist from the waist down. We get absolutely no character development from her at all. There is no reason to root for her because we know nothing about her, AT ALL.

"Five unique levels each with their own play style"
Yeah thats a lie. all you do is walk back and forth occasionally stop for falling glass and maybe shoot a thing. At some point a door appears and you go to the next stage. Rinse and repeat with only slight variations to each level.

"Retro difficulty"
No. Just No. If by "Retro difficulty" you mean the game has no checkpoints, and closes the games window if you die three times then yes it is "retro difficult. (It's not).

"No tutorials, no hand holding"
This should not be a selling point. I know that some games get out of hand with tutorials but a little bit of help would have been much appreciated. EXAMPLE: the first time I played this game I walked back and forth and a "door" appeared. Well because it looks like a bar of static and nothing at all like a door I had no idea that it was a door. So I kept walking until it rained glass on every inch of the screen to insure I died. Now, would it have been "handholding" if you put a fucking label on the first static bar that said "door"?

"Puzzle exploration"
This is such a lie that whoever wrote it should kill themselves. As previously mentioned all you do is walk back and forth and wait for a door to appear. There are no puzzles and no exploration.

"A story that will make you ask questions about "The Lady" and about yourself"
To be fair this is true. I did ask questions about the Lady and myself. I asked: What the fuck is happening in this game? And: Why the hell am I still playing this garbage. There is no story. You are dropped into the game and crazy shit happens. I think that it is supposed to represent mental illness or something but I wouldn't have know that if I didn't read the Steam page. I learn more about the story from the Steam page than the actual game. If you ask me, that is a problem.

Another thing to mention is the game talks about its Noisecore soundtrack as a plus. I would not qualify this "soundtrack" as neither music nor good. It's essentially static that just goes on and on and gets irratating really fast. I would have prefered some real music that fit the atmosphere of the game not this shit. I could record the noise between radio stations and call it music, but that doesn't make it music.

Do not buy this game even if it is on sale, Not worth a dime.

2/10 Shit.

And the winner of the weirdest game I've played this year is... the Lady !

This game made me feel very, very uncomfortable, moving around as an armless woman and breaking glass with my bare head. The art (drawing and sound) is particular for sure, in a creepy way, but it's not enough to make it a decent game. Mostly you just have to go to the right or the left, attacking from time to time the "things" that get in your way. And if unluckily you manage to get yourself killed, you'll have to start the whole level over.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=801172859

The Lady is definitely a unique experience, just not in a positive way.

In The Lady you play the protagonist dubbed just that in a surreal journey. The further you play, the harder and weirder each scenario plays out, with a clear and subtle simialrity between each. The enemies consist of either objects or versions of The Lady bent on attacking you. As most games tagged 'psychological horror' may not qualify as one, whether it goes too over the top or only uses jumpscares, this game uses subtle ways by how each scenario is designed and even how to exit the game to push through. Using how the player can react to how the game is designed and thoughts they might have to create the horror.

Once you find out the game is about the struggles of anxiety and depression, everything comes together and is the reason The Lady strikes home for some (including me) than others. Each scenerio seems endless, unbeatable, and pointless to try at first, but once you tell yourself you can get through it, you soon figure out patterns to beat each enemy. The enemies that are versions of youself can be how you are the greatest enemy that can never be defeated; while the death screen that force exits your game can be how scenerios (even those you been through before) can still overwhelm those with anxiety and depression. Life can be hard for those with anxiety and depression and The Lady exemplifies this uniquely.

I do recommend experiencing the game if you don't mind the difficulty or if it is more art than entertainment; especially if you are able to get a discount or if it is on sale.

The Lady: A Strange Kind Of Love

The Lady is an interesting interactive art project and a game that explores several mental and emotional issues, told through the eyes of the main protagonist, simply called the Lady. It is confusing, obtuse, aggravating, repulsive and bizarre experience that solely uses metaphor to ask questions to the person who is playing this game. These questions are entirely subjective and free to interpretation, but might include thoughts of depression, anxiety, sexual repression and identity, BIID and body dysmorphia and more. The Lady is not a game for everyone as it asks some fairly uncomfortable questions.

Just as it contains muddled and confusing story, The Lady also has action segments and gameplay that also feels as equally as muddled and confusing. It is imprecise and detracts somewhat from the entire experience since it's not that well implemented. Even though there is no music in the game, it more than recompenses with atmospheric sound effects filled with terror and shock, just as visuals do.

Would I recommend this game? Barely... Its price is low enough, but the biggest issue is that in effort to dissect very unpleasant and relevant themes, it dares not plunge deeper into their core. Ideas in the game are explored superficially, thus The Lady provides a short, restrained and sedated experience. Simply put, The Lady tries to tackle some very serious issues, but it does so in an inelegant and dull way. Their creators are however onto something interesting, they just need to approach more bravely and boldly when designing their next game.

2.2/10 – Expectations were high; Satisfaction was LOW!

This game really let me down! After viewing the store, watching the videos and reading the synopsis; I was nearly 100% that I would love this game. I was 110% wrong though. The art style is awesome and really is the only redeeming factor in the game. Honestly, if you look at the screenshots here; you will likely see everything and more than you would see playing the game.

The real reason for the negative review is the gameplay. I honestly have low expectations in general, but walking back and forth avoiding glass just wasn't enough to peak my interest. There are a handful of buttons which allow you to attack and move different directions but ultimately adds zero intrigue. After walking across the map for 30 minutes I can honestly and accurately classify this game as a loser.

Worth $0.25 to FREE. Cool art style, but the positives end there.

Accidently Reviewed

looks sick and disturbing so i thought i would like it:) bu no. just a couple of fine artwork but no gameplay at all.

This "game" gives all-new meaning to the words "looks great, but lacking in gameplay". And believe me, I'm perfectly open-minded, believe that games can definitely be "art", and am furthermore the kind of person who actually likes the odd "walking simulator"! But The Lady isn't even that, it's...erm...fuck me, I don't know what it is. An excuse for someone to show off their admittedly intriguing visual style? An exercise in MASOCHISM, perhaps?!

Let's see what the Store page has to say about the game. "A 2D Surreal Puzzle Horror." Hmmm, okay. Surreal...certainly. Horror...okay, maybe at a pinch (it's definitely "disturbing", I'll give it that). 2D...well, yes, by all means. PUZZLE?! Well, sure...if a super-primitive, mega-minimalistic, barely-responsive variant of GALAGA is your idea of a "puzzle" game, then I guess it might be that too!!

The greatest "puzzle" herein is what the dev or devs of this game were high on when they made this rather - ahem - "trippy" product, and one can only hope that no pregnant actresses were slaughtered and no slogans were written in blood on any walls; though I fear the creative process this time 'round may have been a messy one. My best guess is that Terry Gilliam had a teenage daughter who was regrettably molested by Communion aliens...and against her father's fondest wishes she became a video game designer as a way to avoid falling asleep, lest the black-eyed demons should come for her again.

Absolute fucking madness. With no saves or checkpoints. ABSOLUTE. FUCKING. MADNESS.

Verdict: 4/10.

I originally supported this game on Greenlight, becoming interested in the artstyle and vagueness of the game.

And it seems like it succeeded in catching my attention, atleast enough for me to buy.

Is it worth it?

No.

Anyway, it tries to be all mysterious and interesting, but it's a case of "doing it for the art" to the point that the game just isn't enjoyable as a /game/.

The art looks good, and The Lady's design is re-used quite nicely. The game's vagueness makes it a bit of a crapshoot to figure things out, and while it advertises that it doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't do it like Dark Souls or other survival horror games that it compares itself to. It does it pretty bad.

I'll admit, it's nice to figure things out through trial and error, but... when you have to go through 4 rooms which unlock the boss, then fight the boss for an unknown amount of time, possibly fail, and re-do the rooms prior to the boss, again, it takes the big issue about survival horror games: Restarting all over again, which removes anything remotely interesting about the game as a whole, and makes it a frustrating experience overall. Oh and compared to other survival horror games, you won't know whether or not you'll be at full health or not, besides the vague "bleeding out from your arm stumps", which... doesn't really show anything.

Cons:
- No way to gauge your health; You won't know whether or not the next hit will kill you. The "bleed" mechanic is pretty poorly implemented.
- Difficulty is "brutal". About as hard as moving left and right.
- It's hard to know what is your hitbox and what isn't. At first your head is the only thing, next it's your whole body.
- The re-used assets become a big joke, especially during the final part of the game, where it becomes a Shoot 'Em Up.
- No checkpoints, which is apparently part of the whole "brutal old school feel". As mentioned above, it just makes the game tedious and removes any immersion gained up until you've restarted more than twice.
- It has Steam trading cards, cause why not? (Seriously, does every single game need these things?)
- Game wants you to learn about yourself, apparently?
- apparently the game is about depression. Which is probably the most hipster thing you can drop into an indie game. In no way, did I feel like it was about that at all... And I've had depression. I guess I'm not "indie" enough to feel that way. Oh and the ending ends with the Lady getting her arm ripped off by a bird, which I guess is why she was depressed and the reason why the whole game happened at all?


Pros:
- Unique artstyle.
- Has a nice surreal vague feel to it.
- The game wants you to learn everything through experimentation.
- It gives an amazing feel of dread... up until you have to go through it all over again.

So... overall, it's a pretty disappointing game. I didn't expect much, besides a unique surreal game, and it held that promise high up and then dropped it after it stepped on its own hipster scarf. It could be a good game, but I doubt the creator will make any updates or patches to make this game more favorable to play. So far, all updates for this game have been about his new upcoming game.
The game could've been such a great surreal nightmare, but it's plagued by nightmarish game mechanics and things that even traditional throwback games abandoned for the better.

Note: I ended up watching the last few levels of the game, as I got too fed up with dealing with the game.

To start with, the positive - the presentation is nice; the visuals droning tone of the 'music' get you in the right mood very effectively. The gameplay on the other hand is more akin to trying to open a series of locked doors until you find the one that opens, leading to a second series of doors. And then a third. There's also shooting from time to time. It's not a matter of difficulty so much as it is patience.

To illustrate this, here's a summary of what I played of the first couple of levels. Starting in a long corridor I headed all the way left, then all the way right, met with identical animations at each end. Assuming those were just the boundaries, it took a good while before I found that you just have to head all the way left again to trigger a different animation and cause the doors to appear. Next I found myself trapped between two barricades that hurt to touch, so I waited, smashing falling glass until eventually my own rebounding projectiles killed me. It turns out you have to just shuffle through all (four, as it turns out) of these barricades, taking damage from each one, before you can proceed to the boss room by going (you guessed it) all the way left, then right, then left again. Did the boss really need me to play with a handicap to my HP in order to pose a challenge? No, as it turns out, since the unresponsiveness of the controls and ill-defined hitboxes did me in several times, along with the lack of brief invincibility after getting hit which meant the boss could bat me away directly into falling glass for a second hit of damage.

Eventually I beat it, leading to a maze level where each wrong door looped you back round to the start. This is where my "picking doors until you find the right one" metaphor becomes literal, but the problem is there's no indication as to which to pick of your (up to 5 or so) options, and it's entirely possible you just have to go through every last door before the final one becomes the 'right' one. Again, there's no way to tell other than "keep wandering until something changes". This eventually leads to the next boss, who is a Space Invader complete with 8-bit sounds and Galaga-style projectiles. I'm not sure what this was meant to "symbolize" (if anything) but it scrunches the mood the game was trying to convey up into a ball and tosses it neatly into one of those bins with a basketball hoop over it.

It was somewhere in the following level that, for the second time, one of my many deaths (there's no 'lives' counter) caused the game to quit out on me. I'm honestly not sure if it even WAS a game-over I triggered or the game glitching out, as the effect was the same - the graphics flicker, the sprites bug out of place then the game freezes and crashes to desktop. And no, of course it doesn't save your progress. Back to the very beginning you go. Faced with redoing all those levels at the same glacially slow pace again, I gave up. That's not, as the storepage description puts it, 'Nintendo Hard', that's a game deliberately trying to waste your time.

Honestly I'm giving this a "cautious non-recommendation" in the end. This honestly shows some promise, and you can get both the game and soundtrack for about £3 like I did, which isn't a steep entry price but this may have been more at home on Newgrounds or Kongregate as a free 'proof of concept'. If it had rethought a few of the gameplay design decisions, and had more ways to proceed than 'wander back and forth' and some means to skip levels you've already beaten this could have been a real gem, or at least less player-hostile.

Overinterpretation is a thing. This game boasts eerie artwork with a mysterious atmosphere. That is until you play it. And die. And then play the same awfully slow part again.
This game's as eldritch to play as it looks. The controls are often unresponsive and there seems to be no indication to how many hits you can take before you have to restart; at times the lady can tank several pieces of glass and other times she dies in one hit. Some levels are solved by walking slowly, and then going slowly in the other direction.
The pacing is horrible, often the player is forced to dwell in one level for far too long while having figured out the solution long ago.
I really liked the premise of this as well as it's art and atmosphere. Sadly this is broken by the terrible game this is in. One can maybe ignore the gameplay, or lack thereof, by interpreting the game as a whole, but I caution everyone who does so not to overinterprete too much.

Phenomenal art and a killer soundtrack cannot hide the fact that this has really bad gameplay.

The Lady's gameplay is sliding slowly to the right, then to the left, then to the right. If you repeat this enough the world around the character eventually changes and introduces more hazards or a boss, for a clunky boss fight.

My cut-off for games is around the half hour mark: if you can't engage me in 30 minutes, you likely never will. But I was tired of this game within 10. Still, I kept going in an attempt to see if it earns its Mostly Positive rating. But the game never seemed to actually want to begin being good.
Its harsh difficulty rating doesn't help either. Let me clarify: the game is simple as you basically only slowly move from left to right, but because the controls are so slow everything seems to be on a delay, causing you to get hit by whatever obstacle you were trying to avoid. And after just a few hits it's game over, man.
Maybe the later levels are great, but since I can't even get past the first two without either dying (and the game closing on me) or me WANTING to shut the game off, I can't comment on them.

The Lady, an experimental game / interactive art / 4D simulator, and by that I mean depression, desolation, depersonalisation, and despair.

The game explores anxiety, misery, fear, and schizophrenia, but through a very personal point of view of its author(s), making a very clever use of symbolism; it has an uncanny feeling of healing through art, as if a psychiatrist suggested a patient to express themselves by creating this game. While it doesn't treat these subjects from a general point of view, this approach gives a sense of authencity.

Gameplay wise, The Lady is comprised of several minimalistically-designed levels, divided in stages. Each level has a different gameplay approach, with a distinct variation for each stage, some being more traditional, while some being more explorative; the exploration parts focus more on the feeling the player has in regards to what is happening to the lady, and not necessarily to the levels themselves.

I would suggest to take the game slowly, since rushing into the stages can get you killed and you have to restart from the beginning of the level (but I decided to treat this as a "story-telling" device); furthermore, the game is short enough to finish in roughly 1h - 1h30.

Visually, the game is simplistic and repetitive, but it manages to get the message across perfectly, and the art style is exquisite. At times it reminded me of Alice: Madness Returns, as if it were a collection of mini-game out of that universe. I appreciated the atmosphere and while I'm not a fan of dark ambient or noise, I belive the sound design fits the game perfectly; some of the sound effects could have used some more work, but now I'm just nitpicking.

Overall I enjoyed the game and its superb artstyle, and consider it to be a fresh breeze of originality.

Pros:

* art style
* atmosphere
* music and sound design
* gameplay
* originality

Cons:

* some sound effects

Score: 7.75 / 10

I expected more. The game was short. Wish there were some voiceacting aswell, or choises, or anything.
The game is also to easy.
It feels like wierd for the sake of being wierd. Also the boss fights suck and were to easy.
Sorry if my english is bad, it's my second languish.