Lucy Dreaming

If you love old-school style adventures this is worth the purchase. The voice acting by itself is worth the price of admission. It’s a fun game with a twisty story. The only downsides: 1. The backtracking between dream world and real world is tedious and often ridiculous with you switching back and forth quickly; 2. I felt the ending could have been expanded to sell the story. Aside from that it’s fun to play—and listening to the lead and supporting actors you really appreciate the work that went into making this game.

I was so excited for this game and wanted to love it, but could not get past the strong and bizarre animal torture theme that smacks you in the face for at the very least the first part of the game. The protagonist’s brother is an animal torturing/murdering serial killer in the making, and his sad trophies proudly adorn the house. Lucy tells us that he prefers experimenting on live animals and the house is fenced in in order to keep the public out and her brother in. I guess it’s all ok, though, because mom appears to be some kind of deranged psycho killer too. I guess it’s supposed to be funny? I tried to power through this part of the game, but turns out in order to progress the game you need to recover your brother’s escaped pet and return it to him. This pet chewed through metal to escape whatever torture he’d endured, but you knowingly are supposed to return the poor animal in exchange for a nonliving toy your brother took from you. It’s made pretty clear what kind of horrible intentions your brother has for the poor animal. Yes, I realize it’s just a game, but it would have been nice to at least have the option for the protagonist to NOT be a willing accomplice in all this disgusting animal torture/murder thing that’s going on. This game didn’t really bill itself in a way to make me think this is the kind of thing that would be included. So I’m hugely disappointed. And no, I don’t think animal torture is hilarious or funny. It’s just wrong and gross and I wished the developers could have added elements of darkness in a different way.

Really fun game with humor and style like the old Lucasarts and Sierra point and click adventure games. I played the demo before the release and Hair of the Dog so I was looking forward to this. The puzzles are all logical and can be figured out. I didn't need to look up any hints or strategy guide to finish the game. All characters are fully voiced. There is a lot of funny lines and humor if you click on all the options, and there's lots of items to click on. I love the very British humor and setting. The game took me just over 14 hours to finish. There are optional patches you can collect for completing various tasks, some of them secret tasks. I was able to get half of them. I wish there was at least a clue on how to get the others. Besides that, the game is fun and worth the price!