As the sea cap’n pirate Gabrielle once said, “Dreams can come true, Look at me babe, I’m with you” – validation that those vivid dreamscapes may come to fruition. The same applies to Tonguç Bodur – they had a dream, and that dream was realised in the walking simulator Lucid Cycle, available now at all good bookstores for the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo. The current generation.
In this first-person extravaganza brought to us by Eastasiasoft, you wander through a sequence of dreams, showered with textbook mainstays of dragons, the fear of falling and oversized eyeballs. What they mean is purely down to interpretation. Sure, every sane person would kill for the same A.I. lampshade that deciphers each experience with Siri-like malice, but exposing the meaning of dreams into a ‘one symbol fits all’ doesn’t sit too well with me. But if you want a stroll through some delightful imagery, next level elevator music and an easy Platinum, be my guest.
Lucid Cycle was more of a bad dream than what I had hoped. Beautiful 3D vistas and ideas? Check. Enjoyable gameplay and enlightenment as to why I keep dreaming of sea captains. Not so much. As a lucid dreamer (we have a secret handshake), I get the concept of lucid dreams. In the context of our protagonist, we’re chasing our muse. We’re one step closer to completing our painting through our dreams, but we need that extra donkey kick to the nuts to produce our best work.
Lucid Cycle is like a slightly more ethereal Silent Hill 4 – The Room in that you’re confined to your apartment, only leaving through mind and spirit. Wake up, talk to your lamp, decipher a dream. Once you’ve been subject to abuse, the shade thoughtfully unlocks the door to your studio; you splodge on a bit of paint, then you head back to shack up with the Sandman. The concept is good, but it missed the opportunity of being full-on weird, an avant-garde piece that makes the works of Dali and Lynch look like a bowl of cornflakes. The visuals are crisp, and unlike a real dream – lucid or not, it’s too linear. Time for Billy Argument to shout out, “Walking simulator, you pleb!”. Yes, Billy, you’re right, Lucid Cycle is a walking simulator, but that doesn’t mean it has to be entirely on rails.
80% (made up statistic) of the game is walking from A to B with very minimal thought required, and instead, it’s probably more along the lines of inspiring you than engaging you with your digits. In the scenarios that don’t make sense – and bizarrely, most of this does make sense – it only takes a couple of attempts to work out what’s required of you. The worst experience was an early train jumping exercise. The best part of the game was crossing some water by shooting some balls of light. This was the most engaging part of Lucid Cycle; otherwise, it was bite-size existential talk, and locating shrimp-red exploding brains. Yep.
All of the mechanics are forgivable. I’m one of the few people who didn’t seem to mind The Suicide of Rachel Foster (out now on Switch, Nintendo hounds). However, it’s the way it was presented that rubbed me up the wrong way. There should have been more absurd things to do like placing hats on mannequins (ish) – one of the fun bits or areas in the game that blur out the moment you get closer, as they do in real dreams. Some assets shrink, and you’ll spin and fall here and there, so it’s not without some trickery. The visuals are pretty exquisite. There are plenty of dream-like vistas (duh), and excellent lighting techniques. Despite the monotony, the apartment was superbly modelled and gave me some ideas on how to tart up the ol’ gaff.
But I came away from Lucid Cycle feeling underwhelmed. I couldn’t help but want to wake up and move on to something new. It’s a shame, as the concept couldn’t be any closer to my interests. I’m not wrong: this is my opinion, but considering the glowing testimonies on Steam, weigh up some other comments. There’s a demo on Steam to test drive, and whether you snap it up for the PC or console, it’s scandalously cheap, and your purchase may encourage Tonguç to do more. Sadly it’s just not one I can recommend based on my experience.
