; width: 100%; height: 500px; background-color: #000; }

Lackadaisium Review

Rating:

A personal, surreal and ambient puzzle game, that makes up for it's oddity with it's dream-like imagery and clever design.

Additional Info

DeveloperSebastian Janisz
GenrePuzzle,Surreal
PlatformsWindows
EngineMultimedia Fusion
Filesize8 MB
Webpagehttp://ultimatewalrus.com/index.php?gamedl=13&curtab=13

Full Review

Sometimes the best works if art don't make any sense, like surrealist paintings or any Beatles song written by John Lennon. OK, look, the point I'm trying to make is that Lackadaisium is absolutely perplexing, but also pretty excellent. It relies more on an unnerving ambience than any prominent game mechanics, and sometimes that's okay.

The game is split into different screens, moving to another one when you cross the edge in a similar fashion to Knytt or Hero Core. This is how the game is structured only on a very basic level and, barring some rather tedious block puzzles in the middle, there are no real game mechanics. No greater structure ever emerges: you just move about the surrealist landscapes and go wherever you can.

You only really have one ability, which is to smack you head against things, sending a spray of blood flying off in every direction. This does literally everything: it breaks walls, disables machinary, moves objects, and also makes invisible blocks appear more clearly.

The game encourages you to hurt yourself, because that's the only way to progress, and in certain sections it makes everything clearer, and the way forward easier to understand. It's not until the end, when you wake up in a bed in a clinical, industrial environment, that you realise the pain, whilst providing clarity and empowerment, really does HURT.

It's odd to write a review for such a personal game, and especially hard to interpret it in any meaningful way. Aside from some tedious block puzzles in the middle, Lackadaisium isn't too troublesome, and it's a wonderfully strange 10 minutes well-spent.

Posted by Joseph Gribbin on June 14, 2010 Comments (0)