“Crafting a Captivating Puzzle: The Art of Thoughtful Design”

You enter cautiously into a dimly lit, seemingly vacant hotel. Desperately seeking someone to talk to, you nervously move further down a quiet corridor towards a single room. This leads you into a similarly dimly illuminated library. You start to question why you are in this hotel and what purpose the library serves, yet your attention is unexpectedly drawn to a specific book among the numerous crowded shelves.

Your curiosity encourages you to take a few more steps inside. You reach up, almost stretching on your toes to grab the enticing book and then reluctantly tug at its spine. It turns out to be quite heavy. It crashes open, and you manage to cradle it with your other arm. The book, now wide open, reveals the following:

You are engaging with Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the latest creation from Swedish studio Simogo.

Released five long years after their acclaimed title Sayonara Wild Hearts, you might be surprised to learn it’s from the same developers; it presents a subdued and intense experience much closer to film noir than a pop album, yet retains the same fascination with the human psyche that Simogo has been celebrated for over nearly 25 years.

To uncover more about the intriguing mysteries within the game and what inspired its creation, Nintendo Life interviewed Simon Flesser, one half of Simogo’s founding members and a lead contributor on this Game Of The Year contender.

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

Simon Flesser: I’m Simon Flesser. I contributed significantly to various aspects of the project. I was responsible for the overall vision, but also handled tasks such as designing and building the environment and its puzzles, writing narratives, creating textures, effects, positioning cameras, and more.

I do not think it is incorrect (but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!) to call Sayonara Wild Hearts Simogo’s greatest commercial triumph so far. Yet, Lorelei is practically Sayonara’s complete opposite in terms of genre, tone, colors — nearly everything. It’s much closer in essence to your earlier titles, like Device 6.

Did the team face any external pressures or internal anxieties to create a successful motion-arcade-musical combined with a black-and-white puzzle mystery game?

While I don’t have the exact numbers, [Sayonara Wild Hearts] was indeed the largest project up until then. Given the small size of our team and the brief development timeline for titles such as Device 6, I think it’s essential to consider commercial success less. However, there’s always some form of tension involved in initiating a new project. For us, I believe the pressure is amplified when we aim to create something unexpected, a bit odd, and engaging enough to attract attention.

I reviewed your development profile on Lorelei, which made me think of Last Year At Marienbad (1961), a film you mentioned as one of the primary influences for the game. It caught my attention how many key elements Lorelei integrates from Marienbad, such as the hotel setting, unreliable narration, ambiguous characters, visual perspective tricks, and more.

I’m curious…how much was Lorelei’s relentless focus on perspective heavily inspired by Marienbad’s writing and cinematography?

The emphasis on perspective was largely a continuation of ideas from Sayonara Wild Hearts, actually. [Both games] share a core concept of attempting to ‘unravel’ the 3D camera. In some aspects, handing over the control of the camera to players signifies a departure from the notion of solving the camera. Instead of perceiving the 3D camera as a challenge, we contemplated how we could integrate the camera as a natural element of the design, enhancing either emotional impact or gameplay mechanics. It was from this foundational idea that the broader concept of perspective emerged.

Fascinating. The game certainly examines perspective in various unconventional manners, but I hadn’t realized that maneuvering through a 3D environment has been a relatively new endeavor for Simogo since Sayonara.

I would like to ask you about the puzzles…to be honest, Lorelei was quite challenging for me. And that’s a huge part of what made it one of the most enjoyable games I’ve ever completed. What was the thought process behind developing each of these visual puzzles?

[Puzzle creation] tends to be very iterative, and it varies widely, depending on the puzzle. Since we wanted many puzzles to be randomized, we had to conceptualize them in very specific ways, which naturally resulted in quite a few focusing on numerical elements. We often discussed concepts like symmetry, consistency, and patterns.

I thought a lot about how a puzzle should be structured like a good joke, featuring a solid buildup that leads to a surprising punchline.

The type of puzzles in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes largely revolves around dialogue. It’s about conveying and obscuring just the right amount of information that allows the solver to begin generating ideas about what the puzzle is about. So typically, I would present a concept for a puzzle to the team with a sketch, merely asking them to solve it, and then refine it until it felt like the concept emerged organically. I considered how a puzzle should be crafted like a well-structured joke, with the right buildup culminating in a surprising punchline.

Without giving too much away, there are some notable specific years in the game. I couldn’t help but wonder if you selected the narrative around which specific years would yield the most puzzles? Because the mileage the game gets from just a few of the number combinations utterly amazed me. [laughter]

We chose those years for their symbolic significance and primarily for crafting the puzzles. If I give away the exact reasoning, it could spoil some puzzles. But to provide an example, no year…

Any puzzle that is complex often features repeating digits, which worked splendidly for the design in which we aimed to create puzzles and their randomization.

I feel inclined to discuss the narrative challenges in Lorelei. Gameplay-wise, it undeniably presents a myriad of puzzles, but these puzzles quickly intertwine with the characters. Without delving too deeply into the story, I appreciated how the game plays with the concept that an observer truly alters the interpretation of something. I would love to hear more about what piqued your and the team’s interest in these themes.

These reflections were shaped by our perceptions of entertainment and culture today being so eager to satisfy the audience, rather than striving to create something that feels authentic…

However, when I articulate my thoughts on these themes too extensively, I risk imposing my own interpretations onto the players, something I certainly wish to avoid. I prefer the game to serve as a vehicle for ideas and to pose questions so players can form their own opinions and insights.

On that note, how much do you wish to engage with online discussions surrounding the narrative? Is it ever challenging to distance yourself from it? A casual browse through Reddit and Steam forums, and I find a plethora of insights regarding people’s interpretations of the story.

We observe them every now and then. There are numerous intriguing interpretations and analyses. It’s enjoyable to read!

I discovered that a puzzle game of this scale feels remarkably communal. One of my favorite aspects of Lorelei that I didn’t anticipate was the pleasure derived from sharing physical notes with others who’ve played it. And it was always handwritten on paper! I cannot share images of my notebook due to spoilers, but I love how people instinctively turn to pencil and paper…

We are huge fans of pen and paper as well, especially for brainstorming. My best ideas often emerge while I’m writing and doodling notes, frequently on a single sheet.

For anyone who hasn’t tried it, a common visual trick the game employs is layering the gameplay over surreal images. It’s subtle, yet it effectively made me feel quite uneasy. I learned that your team actually captured those images yourselves…?

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

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

[Laughter] Additionally,