Lucy Dreaming

Recently George Broussard of Duke Nukem fame complained about the state of the point & click adventure game. The ailing genre relied too much on stale old formulas, too small development teams, fourth wall breaks and references to the old LucasArts classics. Make no mistake, "Lucy Dreaming" is exactly the kind of adventure game he meant. And it's still just what I needed right now. You immediately feel at home with the verbs and the inventory, and there's some clever puzzle mechanics introduced later with Lucy's dream worlds. The ultimate reference is of course Mr. Threepwood himself, Dominic Armato, guest starring (the sole American in a cast of decidedly British voice actors). The sexual innuendo is there, very often, but children will not understand and hence ignore these allusions. It's not an easy adventure game, and they have no dedicated hint system, but there's a quite ingenious method to show only relevant hotspots instead of the whole bunch should you ever get stuck. In a nutshell, Lucy Dreaming might be considered standard fare, but it's pretty perfectly executed standard fare. Once or twice a year, that's what I want. If you liked Thimbleweed Park, maybe you do too.

Lucy Dreaming screams modern old-school point'n'click game. it has amazing voice-acting, beautiful pixel-art and fun references to old games and the "joy"" of playing the PnC-games. The game has tons of hotspots to interact with and the response you get from it are just great. It feels that the dev-team have spent a lot of time on response and feedback from the different objects, making it more fun to scan a room as there is so much to explore. The puzzles are great fun and the "dream"-parts you really need to think "outside the box" in order to progress, even challenging for experienced point'n'click gamers. THOUGH sitting here after I have completed it, I feel that the latter part of the game feels rushed. It ends quite abruptly, leaving me in a meh state and with a "but there are questions I feel not answered"-state. But I can hope this is not the end of Lucy's adventures.

I had "Thimbleweed Park" and "Dreams in the Witch House" down as the nerdiest games I've ever played until I played "Lucy Dreaming". Lucy, the protagonist, is about 12 years of age and a quite nerdy little girl. She speaks in a lovely British accent (not sure from what part of Britain exactly), has a dry sense of humour and owns a lot of toys reminiscent of "Ghostbusters", "Monkey Island" and the like. Lucy manoeuvres her way through her small home-town and her dreams trying to solve an old murder-case and to get rid of her nightmares. The way the story unfolds is orchestrated perfectly. The developers have put an enormous amount of thought and attention to detail into the quaint little world of "Lucy Dreaming". The vibe of a British village comes across very vividly and reminds of the "Midsomer Murders". The characters which Lucy meets are very funny and very believable at the same time. Their well-written conversations with Lucy create an intensity of immersion that hardly any other game can boast. The end of the game is a little bit sudden and underwhelming and also a little bit sad - but it is not terrible, no complete let-down. I only falls short of the utter perfection that game has delivered along the way. Anyone who likes British humour, British detective stores, 1990s style point-and-click adventures, or geeky references should absolutely play this game. You can event try to solve a Rubik's Cube INSIDE the game.

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I've played a lot of point-and-click adventure games over the past decade, and Lucy Dreaming is one of the best.