Lilly Looking Through (PC) (2013)

20220131 Part 1:
I was tired so I stopped playing, but I really liked the visuals. I had the sound down low, but from what I could hear, I also liked the soundtrack.


Steam Game Time: 20 minutes

20220131 Part 2: The puzzles are fun. I like how the levels are self-contained - at least for now. In this sense, the game is more like Samorost and less like Machinarium.

Gameplay Log:
Completed the third level

Steam Game Time: 25 minutes (session) / 45 minutes (total)
20220131 Part 3:
Gameplay Log:
Completed seventh level


Steam Game Time: Unknown
20220131 Part 4:
Gameplay Log:
Level 8
Stuck with the cavern to the right of the underwater cavern
Looked through multiple guides. Two were wrong (or maybe based on different assumptions)
Basically the other cavern starts purple and needs to be made yellow. Changes are affected once the entrance is opened.
A way to make it yellow would be to remove blue from purple; so red. Upgrade it to orange, and remove red; so yellow.
Level 10
Was shocked to see her grandfather ("Lilly, you made it." "Grandpa?")
This level was hard


Steam Game Time: 2.8 hours (total)*
I left the game on, but this total doesn't seem outrageous.
20220201:
Gameplay Log:
There may be some idle time.
After a while, I realized that the magic color is proably red, but I was still usure how to make it.
It took some trial and error, but I got it and I could tell via an audio cue (which I barely had audible).
I don't get this ending...

Steam Game Time: 0.7 hours (session) / 3.5 hours (total)
Overall:
The game had good start to a story, like Lume. The initial puzzles were interesting, but some of the color puzzles lacked motivation. Why were certain colors important and/or what clues did the game do to adequately convey this information? I would argue it often didn't. With that being said, I lowered the volume and if there were key audio cues, the game should have also told the player. To be fair, good solution hinting is a problem that occurs in many point-and-click games.


Perhaps worse than some failure to properly lead the player to a solution is the game's length. It's short and the story questionably ends on a cliffhanger. I say questionably, because if it were truly a cliffhanger, then my expectation is that the developers would have written "to be continued..." As such, despite the hard work that went into the game's animation, the final experience was unsatisfying. On a related note, I would also expect a warning on the game's store page that the game does not have a sequel.

On a different note, it would have been nice to quick skip through animations already experienced by the user. That is, require the player to watch transitions between scenes in full the first time around, but be skippable the next time.

At the end of the day, I probably acquired the game in a Humble Bundle game bundle, so the game is likely worth the fraction of whatever cost I paid for the bundle. While I would not recommend the game at it's regular Steam price of $9.99, I wouldn't mind recommending the game for $1.00 - the game's most recent price at the time of this post.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/250030/Lilly_Looking_Through/

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