Who is Lyra Review: When David&Middleot; Lynch walks in the garden where the path forks

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A bizarre disappearance case, with various unfavorable clues pointing to the protagonist, uncovering deeper conspiracies through puzzle solving, choosing to keep secrets or reveal the truth... If I only look at these elements, then I may not have much interest in the game "Who is Laila", after all, we have already seen similar stories unfold in too many games.

But the most eye-catching selling point of "Who is Laila" is that players do not need to choose dialogue options in the game, but need to manually control the protagonist's facial expressions to respond to various dialogue events, thereby advancing the plot and opening up different branching routes. When I saw the protagonist's face in the promotional video of this game stretched into various eerie shapes with no laughter, all I had in mind was one thought: what kind of weird game is this? I'm done playing it.

is such an emotionally rich guy

Pushing the plot forward through frowning and eye teasing

Unlike most interactive novels, Laila does not provide players with any dialogue options to choose from. Players need to manually adjust the position of the protagonist William's facial features to help him make various expressions, in order to convey their attitude towards the NPCs and advance the plot. Only by making appropriate responses can William gain the trust of NPCs and successfully achieve his goals.

Through different expressions, William may engage in friendly communication with people, offend others and lead to painful consequences, and even perfectly deceive those around him, thus opening up a new direction for the development of the plot. Compared to choosing between fixed lines with clear tendencies, actively shaping expressions brings more unknowns and uncertainties, which often allows players to gain more surprises during the game process (specifically, in this game, more is just pure surprise).

game will provide basic emoji prompts at the beginning

This kind of system may make people think of some easy and humorous sand sculpture games. However, in reality, making appropriate expressions in this game is not an easy task. At the beginning of the game, it is explained that our protagonist William cannot control his face, so he needs to practice common facial expressions in front of a mirror every day. And if players lack practice, they may indeed be flustered and make the wrong expression.

At times like , just smile

The game features a total of 18 interactive points on eyebrows, eyelids, corners of the mouth, lips, and chin. Players can drag these interactive points to help William express six emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, and fear. However, the judgment of expression control in this game is somewhat rough, and players often find it difficult to accurately make the expression they want through fine micro manipulation.

In addition, when faced with decision-making, players only have about 5 seconds to think and adjust their expressions, and William's facial muscles occasionally shift to strange positions uncontrollably. Therefore, before mastering the tricks of quickly making various expressions, players may often distort a fierce and curious appearance in a hurry.

Um... I think I can see that this "Insmouth man" is already working hard and smiling

Making different expressions in various key situations in this game may lead to completely different storylines: a single expression at the beginning of the game can even affect the final outcome, and a mistake in the key plot may also waste all previous efforts. Therefore, during the gameplay, players need to frequently use the save function.

But what is painful is that this game provides very few archive fields, which are completely insufficient, and there is also a high probability of encountering bugs when reading files. Fortunately, each branch route in this game is not too long, and players can quickly complete all the collection with clear goals and familiarity with the puzzles.

Mental pollution in a 1-bit scenario

The overall interface of "Who is Laila" is divided into left and right screens, with the current environment and ongoing events on the left and facial closeups of each character on the right. This game adopts a 1-bit art style, with a low definition dot matrix composed of black and white pixels, allowing the game scene to highlight key information while maintaining a blurred sense of mystery.

Unlike the roughly outlined image on the left, the character portrait on the right is quite realistic and detailed, and each character is accompanied by expressions corresponding to their lines. Different characters in the game have close-up shots taken from different angles, and each person's facial expression details are also different. But the commonality is that no matter what kind of expressions the characters make, their eyes are always fixed on the players outside the screen.

I don't know if this form of expression was deliberately created by the production team, but the feeling of being watched at such moments does make me feel very uncomfortable. Compared to the exaggerated facial features that the protagonist casually shapes, some characters have stiff and sudden facial expressions that make me feel more fearful during the conversation.

Woman, you are terrifying

In most of the process of this game, players hear background music with eerie melodies, accompanied by the slow and heavy footsteps of the protagonist, which appears particularly oppressive. When the plot reaches the high-energy part or the protagonist's psychology is greatly impacted, the game will also play harsh noise. Combined with some inexplicable and bizarre cutscenes, it is very spiritually polluting.

When David Lynch walked in the garden where the path forked

From the official promotional text to the in-game dialogue, we can see from many places that "Who is Lyra" has been deeply influenced by David Lynch's film and Jorge Luis Borges's novel "The Garden of Forking Paths.". Even setting aside the straightforward and obvious tribute scenes and lines, the game's true and false dialogue, oppressive scenes and music, psychedelic timeline, and seemingly fragmented yet closely connected plot development fully reflect the inspiration for this work.

When playing for the first time, players often choose to follow the mission guidance actions written by the protagonist in the diary, and then get caught up in a suspenseful event in a completely confused situation, inexplicably leading to the ending. But in reality, we can also choose to freely explore suspicious elements without following the game's guidelines from the beginning.

Because the puzzle solving elements in this game contain a large number of meta elements, I don't know how to describe the surprises and fun this process brings me without spoilers. But I can say that the design of some puzzles in the game is quite ingenious, and I believe even players who are familiar with meta games can find satisfaction during the gameplay.

Even if entering the ending, the key information obtained by the player in the previous week will still be retained. If you only follow the in-game mission guidelines, there are some places where players will not go until they pass the level, and these places either hide the suppressed memories of the protagonist, or can reveal deeper shocking secrets, all of which are key supplements to the overall plot.

Task ? It's okay not to do it

Even excluding hidden endings, this game still has up to 15 branching endings, requiring players to repeatedly read files or start new games to try various routes. As expressed in "The Garden of Forked Paths," the various branching paths in this game are not the "possibilities in a parallel world" of traditional multi ending games, but rather complement and coexist with each other. Whenever a new ending is unlocked, players may overturn their previous assumptions about the plot. Only by piecing together seemingly scattered and contradictory plots can the overall story be roughly organized.

Collecting all the endings to fully understand the plot design may make some players uncomfortable, but in fact, the process of gradually exploring and solving puzzles is the greatest joy of this game. In this process of breaking through the fog and approaching the truth layer by layer, players always feel like they only need one step to uncover all the secrets. When this story, entangled with various elements such as disappearance, cults, and mysterious consciousness, is fully revealed to players, in addition to the joy of obtaining the truth, players will feel more shock and fear.

Each tarot card on the tree corresponds to a certain ending

epilogue

It seems that the 1-bit pixel art style and style of the game are particularly suitable for psychedelic and bizarre games, and in recent years, there have been quite a few games that have tried to "break the fourth wall". Therefore, we can see impressive works such as "The Return of Oberladin", "The Terrifying World", and "The Dark Side". But even with these similar style game gems at the forefront, "Who is Lyra" still becomes a unique independent masterpiece with its unique system and narrative style.

At present, there are still some minor errors in the Chinese text of this game, and some common bugs in the game have not been fixed. But if you are interested in psychological horror themes, enjoy puzzle games with meta elements, or want to try out the somewhat underworld "face pinching" system in this game, then why not pursue the truth about "Laila" in this game.

welfare

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