Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is the project we have been working on since we released Sayonara Wild Hearts in 2019. Take a look at this video we made:

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You can head over to our minisite or stay right here on the blog and we’ll try to tell you what Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is, and how it came to be.
 
After finishing a big project, it’s easy to feel paralyzed. What now?
We went down the path we had walked, but in the opposite direction. The next one should be black and white. It should be slow.

In a document where we had gathered ideas for fictive band names for our last game, Daniel had written “Lorelei and the Laser Humans”. Something struck a chord, but it didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Then, “Lorelei and the Laser… Eyes”. It was easy to imagine. A woman, who could see it all through laser eyes. What did it mean?

Something was brewing. The team was reassembled.

Like Sayonara Wild Hearts, the answer became a long adventure in 3D space, an investigation of 3D cameras in third person games. Static cameras. Moving cameras. First person cameras. Switching between cameras. Showing several cameras simultaneously. Long journeys into rendering, letting us switch art direction and visual ideas on the fly, as we created, as we played. Was this Laser Eyes?

Thoughts, inspirations and concepts answered the question.
Ideas about non-linear, open progression. Numbers, codes, hidden meanings. Devilish puzzles with randomized elements. Time, space, characters as a floating concept. Text, lots of text. Locked doors everywhere. Line rendering and vector art.
Games… Good old ones and escape rooms. Games with places you wanted to stay in and explore. Resident Evil, Silent Hill. Animal Crossing and Nintendogs? Sure, why not?
Cinema… L’Année dernière à Marienbad. 8 1/2. The Shining. Films which lingered, movies as mazes.
Literature… Clever whodunnits, and meta-fiction, realities which seem to exist beyond their pages. The Magus. And Then There Were None. The Book of Illusions.
Our own work… Year Walk. Device 6. The Sailor’s Dream. What if these games were 3D games in third person?
Theater… Magic… Games…
But, also a looming feeling that entertainment is dying, perhaps is already dead. Pre-chewed to mean absolutely nothing. Culture as hamburgers to pass time and bring in the dollars.
And, as always, the ambition that the interactions and controls should not be the barrier. Everyone should be welcome. An intricate meal should not be hindered by a complicated fork.

And so a story about a woman investigating someone’s death in an old manor started emerging. Several stories started emerging and merged. There was an ancient conspiracy. A lost treasure. A mysterious project. An eccentric puppet master. An illusionist. A ghost. No exact good, no direct evil, just a lurking feeling that things are not what they seem.

Now all of this is slowly coming together, and becoming Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
Made with the support of, and published by, the good people of Annapurna Interactive.

Coming, we think, to Steam and Nintendo Switch in 2023.