Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
LucasArts’ Lucidity is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer that tells the story of an incredibly imaginative young girl named Sofi. While visiting with her grandmother, Sofi reads storybooks that take her imagination to far off worlds, where she sees herself as a deep-sea diver or a jungle explorer.
Fueled by these imaginings of grandeur, Sofi falls asleep and enters into a beautiful dream-world, where she is guided by the wise words of her grandmother, whose life lessons help Sofi learn determination and to always face her fears.
Lucidity is unique in that you are not playing as Sofi; rather, you’re a nameless, faceless overseer – a protector of sorts who must guide a constantly-moving Sofi from left to right across the level. The game’s main objective is to create a path for Sofi using objects like long horizontal boards, stairs, makeshift trampolines, and so on, each of which Sofi reacts to in real time, and can be placed in an infinite number of configurations.
Each level comes equipped with a certain number of stationary fireflies, which provide a goal for the title other than simply allowing Sofi to safely navigate the landscape. It is literally impossible to gather all of most levels’ fireflies in one attempt, and most take even more than two, simply due to their placement in the level. That is, regardless of two fireflies’ horizontal positions within a level, Sofi can’t collect them both if they are too far apart vertically.
If Sofi runs into an enemy, thorn or other obstacle (aside from pits which instantly reset the stage), she becomes dazed, but is still capable of carrying on indefinitely so long as she doesn’t touch another hazard, forcing you to begin the level anew, or conversely, touches a firefly which returns her to full health.
As you progress through Lucidity’s 25+ levels, a larger variety of objects become available, including fans which softly push Sofi in a straight line upwards, allowing her to pass through some environments to reach higher paths, and slingshots which do as you would expect, and launch Sofi horizontally across gaps. Bombs are also added to your toolset, and allow you to either destroy enemies or manipulate the landscape, creating new paths for Sofi if you find yourself in a jam.
Unfortunately, items are added to the landscape in a fashion similar to Tetris (for a lack of a more widely known example), one piece at a time, with a small “Next” window being placed in the top right corner of the screen, allowing you to plan just a bit before making every move. You are also allowed to store a single piece in the top left corner, which can be swapped for the active piece with the press of a button. This is helpful in later levels, when the growing assortment of items at your disposal causes a lack of stairs or boards (the two most useful items in the game) in that you can, with enough forethought, always have one at the ready.
Regardless of this addition, Lucidity is still a difficult title. Enemies are commonly placed dangerously close to fireflies, often requiring a specific combination of items to reach the firefly without also harming Sofi. This becomes a difficult prospect when your tools are dished out at random; even more so when considering that you can only create a path so far in advance, as placed items disappear over time.
From a technical standpoint, Lucidity is a beautiful title. The game’s art style is like that of a children’s storybook, comprised of a soft color palette and lacking in hard lines. The soundtrack is also very nicely done, and contains a bit of an ethnic flair that helps tie into the whole idea of Sofi being a traveler in her mind.
As a whole package, Lucidity’s biggest flaw is its difficulty. For those who wish to do nothing more than simply finish the game, forgoing the idea of collecting all of the fireflies, the prospect of completing the game isn’t that daunting, as there are an untold amount of possible paths to complete each level.
However, with the game lacking almost entirely in combat (aside from the aforementioned bombs that you may not even think to use for such a purpose), dialogue, and so on, most of the gameplay is in collecting the fireflies, which leaves the game’s difficulty as a valid concern. That being the case, whether or not you should spend the $10 on Lucidity ultimately depends on how much patience you have in experiences that rely on luck-of-the-draw or trial-and-error.
Special thanks to Adam Kahn and LucasArts for providing a copy of this title.