Lucah: Born of a Dream

Lucah : Born of a Dream is a fascinating game that melds a clearly personal and traumatic story with a striking wireframe art style to create something that is undeniably unique but its approximative and often confusing gameplay hold it back from being something I can whole-heartedly recommend. The plot is incredibly mysterious and obtuse, even for a soulslike. You awake on a beach and soon discover you are surrounded by flickering red nightmares, your own inner demons somehow brought to life. From there you’ll travel through a church, a train yard, a radio tower and more besides in an attempt to discover what’s happening and how to stop it. Story is dolled out at regular intervals by NPCs and a handful of written notes, but I’ll admit I was not entirely sure what was going on until I hit New Game Plus … which tranforms the game into a visual novel with walls of text to read that fill in some of the blanks. To be honest, most soulslikes fans probably aren’t looking for a rich and detailed story in their games; it’s all about the exploration and combat mechanics. Lucah tries to mix the stamina management and parry mechanics of a souls fame with an isometric plane, and I’m not …

went through it with one sitting. Way more fun than i expected.

this is the first game that feels like i'm the specific target audience. Incredibly helpful and therapeutic for someone with night-terrors, psychosis, schizophrenia. One of my favorite games of all time. The music score is incredible and the art is straight out of my sketchbook

Lucah gets a solid 8/10 from me. I'm reviewing this having just finished Death of a Wish, which I strongly feel improved on (almost) everything this game started. Lucah is a beautiful game and something I'd recommend every LGBTQ+ gamer to play, because for all it's flaws, it's still a unique, satisfying, and deeply heartfelt game worth experiencing. Incredible soundtrack, combat is unlike any hack & slash/soulslike I've played and it is CHUNKY. Landing a combo feels like living through anime impact frames. The visuals are stunning but there's so much going on it gets too difficult to tell what's happening during combat later on, and with a punishment system as intense as what this game puts you through, it does impact the experience negatively a bit. The game gives you a lot of modifications you can apply to essentially make sure you get through to the ending you want, and it's nice to have that option, but it does feel like it's there to offput an existing balance issue as much as it's also there for accessibility. The story of this game is abstract but phenomenal, and I won't say anything else about it.

Absolute cimena!

Tried it several times over last 5 or so years and I found map design to be insufferable. I really really wanted to like this game, but it just doesn't click for me. Eventually, maybe, I will give it another shot.