2024’s Most Intriguing Challenge: “Crafting a Puzzle as Engaging as a Shaggy Dog Story”

During the holiday season, we are reissuing some of the finest pieces from Nintendo Life’s writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2024 series. This article was originally published in November. Enjoy!

You enter a dimly lit, seemingly deserted hotel. Longing for some company, you tentatively move toward a single room further from the entrance, traversing a dull corridor. You soon find yourself drawn into a similarly dim library. You begin to ponder why you’re in this hotel and why it even possesses a library, yet your gaze is unexpectedly captured by a specific book nestled among the crowded shelves.

Allowing your curiosity to lead you, you step closer. You reach up to grasp that intriguing book and cautiously tug on its spine. You realize it’s quite hefty. It drops open, and you catch it with your other arm. The book, now opened, reveals:

You are likely playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the latest release from the Swedish studio Simogo.

Arriving five long years after their successful title Sayonara Wild Hearts, you could easily be forgiven if you had no idea it came from the same team; it’s a subdued and eerie departure from their previous work, leaning much closer to a film noir style than a pop album, yet it exudes the same fascination with the human psyche that Simogo has been known for throughout their nearly 25-year journey.

Wishing to delve deeper into the numerous enigmas throughout the game and the inspirations behind it, Nintendo Life engaged in a conversation with Simon Flesser, one of Simogo’s co-founders and a lead developer on this Game of the Year contender.

Alan Lopez for Nintendo Life: What was your role on Lorelei and the Laser Eyes?

Simon Flesser: I’m Simon Flesser. I contributed to many diverse aspects of the project. I was responsible for the overall vision, but I also focused on tasks like designing and constructing the world and its puzzles, writing narratives, creating textures and effects, positioning cameras, and more.

I don’t believe it’s incorrect (but feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken!) to say Sayonara Wild Hearts is Simogo’s most significant commercial success to date. However, Lorelei stands in striking contrast to Sayonara: genre, aesthetic, color palette — nearly everything. It’s much closer in tone to your earlier works, like Device 6.

Did the team face any external pressures or internal anxieties in following up a successful motion-arcade-musical with a black-and-white puzzle thriller?

While I don’t have the exact figures here, [Sayonara Wild Hearts] was indeed the greatest project up to that point. However, considering how small the team is and the rapid pace of development for projects like Device 6, one must take commercial success into account with some nuance. Nonetheless, there’s always some level of pressure involved in launching a new project. For us, I feel the pressure is more about discovering something innovative, unique, and bold enough to create.

I read your development profile on Lorelei, which led me to discover Last Year at Marienbad (1961), a film you mentioned as one of the major influences for the game. It struck me how many key elements Lorelei incorporates from Marienbad, such as the hotel setting, unreliable narration, ambiguous characters, visual perspective systems, and more.

I’m curious…how much was Lorelei’s persistent focus on perspective specifically influenced by Marienbad’s narrative and cinematography?

The perspective aspect was largely a continuation of the ideas from Sayonara Wild Hearts, actually. Both games share, at their core, the concept of trying to ‘manipulate’ the 3D camera. In many ways, handing over control of the camera to players is like relinquishing the idea of camera resolution. So rather than viewing the 3D camera as a challenge, we considered how we could instead integrate the camera into the design and blend it to evoke either emotional impact or gameplay elements. It was from that foundational idea that our broader approach to perspective was developed.

Interesting. The game certainly explores perspective in various compelling ways, though I hadn’t even considered that navigating 3D space has been a relatively recent endeavor for Simogo since Sayonara.

I’d like to ask you about the puzzles…I’m going to be honest with you, Lorelei wasn’t straightforward for me. Yet, that’s a major part of what made it one of the most satisfying games I’ve ever completed. What was the approach for designing these kinds of visual puzzles?

[Puzzle creation] is highly iterative and varies based on the puzzle. Since we wanted a significant portion of the puzzles to be randomizable, we had to conceptualize them in very specific ways, leading many to be fundamentally based around numbers. We often discussed concepts like symmetry, consistency, and sequence.

I thought a lot about how a puzzle should be structured like a good shaggy dog story, with a proper buildup culminating in a humorous punchline.

The variety of puzzles in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes centers heavily on communication. It’s about conveying and obscuring the true amount of information that allows the solver to start forming ideas about what the puzzle’s concept is. Occasionally, I’d test a puzzle idea with the team using a sketch, merely asking them to solve it, and then refine it until it felt aligned with the intended solution. I considered how a puzzle should be constructed like a good shaggy dog story, with a legitimate buildup that culminates in an amusing conclusion.

Without giving too much away, there are specific recurring years in the game. I couldn’t help but wonder if you crafted the narrative around which particular years

Which combinations would you create the most puzzles from? The amount of gameplay derived from various number sequences truly astonished me. [laughter]

We selected these particular years for their symbolic significance and for optimal puzzle creation. If I were to explain the exact reason, some puzzles might inadvertently be spoiled. However, for instance, no year mentioned in any puzzle contains repeating numbers, which was ideal for the approach we wanted to develop puzzles and their randomization.

I really want to talk about Lorelei’s narrative elements. In terms of gameplay, it’s certainly a collection of puzzles, but the puzzles quickly connect to the characters. Without delving too deeply into the story, I appreciated how the game plays with the idea that an observer truly alters the context of a situation. I would genuinely love to hear more about what inspired you and your team to explore these concepts.

These ideas were shaped by our thoughts on entertainment and culture today being so eager to satisfy the audience, rather than attempting to create something that feels genuine…

However, if I elaborate on my thoughts about these topics too much, I might impose my interpretations onto players, which I do not wish to do. I really want the game to serve as a medium for ideas and to raise questions so players can form their own interpretations and perspectives.

With that in mind, how much do you enjoy engaging with the online discussions throughout the story? Is there ever a need to pull away from it? A casual glance at Reddit and Steam forums reveals a lot of back-and-forth regarding people’s interpretations of the plot.

We notice it from time to time. There are many fascinating interpretations and analyses. It’s enjoyable to read!

I found it interesting that a puzzle game of this scale is surprisingly communal. One of my favorite aspects of Lorelei was the excitement over sharing handwritten notes with those who have played it. And it was always handwritten! I can’t share images of my notebook to avoid spoilers, but I love how people instinctively turn to pen and paper…

We are big fans of pen and paper ourselves, especially for brainstorming. My best ideas often come when I’m jotting down notes or sketching, typically while on a train.

For anyone who hasn’t experienced it, a familiar visual technique the game employs is layering the gameplay over unusual images. It’s subtle, yet it effectively made me feel quite uncomfortable. I heard that your team actually took these photos yourselves…?

That’s correct. We traveled to Kronovalls Slott in southeastern Sweden. The manager provided us with the keys, allowing us to explore all day and take photographs.

The castle also features a chapel in one of its wings, but just as we were leaving, we encountered the owner in the hallway outside who asked us not to take any photos of the chapel. Perhaps this inadvertently and subconsciously inspired the ‘secret chapel’ element in the game.

[Laughter] Additionally, t