MLGG: Pop Culture News, Reviews & Interviews

I first covered Lucy Dreaming when its Kickstarter campaign went live back in April 2021.

Thanks in part to the availability of a demo which previewed the mechanics and premise of the game without actually spoiling the events or puzzles of the full experience, it successfully reached its funding target (and beyond!), with the full game having launched in late 2022.

Lucy Dreaming is a point and click adventure that hearkens back to the classic 90s titles from Lucasfilm and Sierra, amongst others.

In Lucy Dreaming, the titular character is a young girl, plagued by nightmares. You’ll assist Lucy with solving her sleep problems – and uncover a dark family secret along the way.

The humour in the aforementioned, SCUMM-engine powered Lucasfilm games was always genuinely funny, but was also incredibly American. Lucy Dreaming goes to great lengths to make its cleverly referential – and self-deprecating – humour incredibly British, which is really helped along by the wonderful voice acting and witty script.

In terms of puzzles, there’s little here that defies logic in the way that those 90s classics would often resort to; generally, it’s straightforward to work out what you’ll need to do in order to progress.

I tend to be incredibly bad at most puzzles in just about any genre of game, let alone point and click titles specifically, but even I didn’t get stumped too often in Lucy Dreaming. A neat feature the game has which really helps is being able to reveal the hotspots in any given scene, just by hitting the space bar.

With only a few ways to interact with objects and characters – Look At, Pick Up, Talk To and Use – it’s a game that doesn’t overwhelm the player with commands or options, keeping things as simple as possible while still offering a challenge when it comes to figuring out what to do next.

The pixel art is genuinely gorgeous, as is the animation – and there’s an awful lot of excellent pop culture references and jokes dotted throughout the game too.

Lucy Dreaming is an excellent game that’ll appeal most to players who long for the glory days of point and click adventure games; however, the adventure-curious – who may not have a great deal of experience with those 90s titles – are still sure to find a lot to like in this charming, funny, witty and very British adventure.

Lucy Dreaming is out now on Steam.

I was provided with a key for Lucy Dreaming by the publisher for review purposes.

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