Game Review: Lacuna - A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure

By Al

​Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Lacuna: A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure (referred to only as Lacuna after this) is a unique take on the adventure game genre that comes to us by way of DigiTales Interactive. It's available on all major consoles and PC and features a storyline that is reminiscent of detective noir story, but set in a world that immediately conjures up comparisons to Blade Runner. As you can probably see from the screenshots, it also has a pixel-based artstyle. These various elements come together in a game that is definitely unique, but we're here to talk about whether it's actually good too. Enough talk though, there are crimes to solve, and mysteries to uncover. Let's dive into it!

The in-game planetary system.

The intro scene makes more sense later.

Lacuna opens on the planet of Drovia in a new colony that is set up by a religious faction known as the Saviants. Before you can get too settled into this world, it abruptly comes crashing down around you, literally. The game then opens up again forty years later on the planet of Ghara. You're placed into the shoes of one Neil Conrad, agent of the CDI. He is a man who is dedicated to his job, takes his vow to protect the public seriously, and also has a strained relationship with his ex and his daughter who he doesn't spend much time with. He is currently tasked with protecting an important diplomatic mission from Drovia to Ghara. This mission is important for economic reasons, but also comes amid talk of Drovia seeking independence from Ghara. This means that war just over the horizon if this mission goes sour. Unfortunately Minister Banny, the man that the CDI is tasked to protect, is assassinated not long after his arrival and a conspiracy quickly reveals itself. A terrorist organization quickly takes credit for the assassination, promises another attack in 48 hours, and Neil and the CDI must work around the clock to uncover what exactly is going on. What they discover spans decades, multiple planetary factions, and might still lead to war between Ghara and Drovia, but first we have to find that assassin. It's a tough job, and Neil is probably going to need a cigarette or two to keep his nerves in order.

Don't get yourself shot.

There is no cosmic justice.

Gameplay in Lacuna reminds me a lot of the TellTale Games take on the adventure genre. By this I mean that inventory management is minimal, almost automatic, and you're not really allowed to progress in the story until you complete the section you're currently in. Similarly to TTG games you can also make several dialogue and gameplay choices that have that "They will remember that..." sense of gravity to them. Unlike TTG games though, those type moments actually do carry some weight to them, but we'll get to that later. You control Neil Conrad with the D-pad, and you can walk, run, open an investigation menu, talk, and open your cell phone. You'll be talking the most, with dialogue sometimes happening automatically when you enter a specific area, or having to be initiated by you. Opening the investigation menu shows all the available items/areas that can be interacted with. These are color coded in a way that indicates if you've already checked them or if they have more to reveal. Sometimes it’s necessary to return to an item or point of interest after you've talked to a character. Similarly, some dialogue options are only opened up after you've amassed enough clues to give something worth discussing. You close out each investigative section by filling out Sheets. Sheets, and the clues you'll need to gather to solve them, can be found from your cell phone menu. Sheets basically have multiple choice options for all the important aspects of the case/event you are trying to solve, and you can submit these with the wrong information if you're not careful. Submitting a Sheet with the wrong answers can affect the rest of the game, but since the options are multiple choice you can probably do a bit of educated guessing if the clues have you stumped. While I get that writing in answers yourself to the Sheet would take us back to the old text parsers of games like Zork, I did find it weird that the available options in the Sheets sometimes revealed upcoming plot twists before they happened. Now, there's more we can talk about when it comes to investigation, but let's cover some other aspects of the game so you have the full picture of what Lacuna has to offer.

Don't fall for the red herrings.

Gotta love these graphics.

Most of Lacuna has a very laid-back feel to it. Neil travels exclusively by train, enters some of the most picturesque areas of the planet imaginable, and even stops for a cigarette break from time to time. You can even start/finish most days by visiting your ex, and by petting/feeding your pet iguana Horace. You can even read the latest news stories by downloading them to your phone via local kiosks, and go through emails that range from important in-game notifications to junk mail involving firmware updates to your cybernetic enhancements. The way Lacuna lays out the world is interesting too, everything is flat, sort of in a Sim Tower sort of way, where you can only go left-to-right, and up-and-down, in a flat world. This means that areas can sometimes feel rather small, and strangely connected, but it does keep things simple and fast-moving. You'd think this wouldn't leave the game open to exploration, but there are a lot of things you can miss if you're not observant. News stories can be completely ignored, optional scenes can be missed if you're not aware of them, and you can even miss out on clues during investigative sections if you fail to pick the right dialogue options, or if you simply conduct your searches in the wrong order. There's a lot of small touches that ensure that no two playthroughs are quite the same, even if you pick most of the same options throughout. While I would've loved to explore the game's world more freely, I understand that this would've broken the timeline the game sets forth. It speeds you through everything in a very movie-esque fashion, and I guess it would be weird if you just went out for a stroll when interplanetary war hangs in the balance.

There are some gameplay elements in Lacuna that kept me from totally loving it. The biggest of these is the save system. There is no way to save in Lacuna, and it only happens atomically at key points. This usually happens after a big decision, or after an in-game chapter, but it means that there is no way to save scum a better outcome to investigations. It also means that you'll have to replay the game in its entirety if you want to see how else the story could've played out. It's the latter point that bothered me the most as I didn't really want to give the game a full run just to see the other way different choices could've affected the ending. I ultimately gave the game a second playthrough anyway, but I quickly realized other quality of life features, such as a chapter select or dialogue skip options, aren't there either. There were many in-game choices that I wished I could've redone, and it's not even the "do this or that" easy ones I'm talking about. Some decisions seem railroaded, like I was forced between doing one of two things I didn't want to do, and only picked what I did since the option was on a timer. There are also times when it looks like the game is giving you more than one option, only to have you forced to accept the "real" after you cycle through the others and see that they do nothing but loop the conversation. This breaks the immersion a bit, and made it so I didn't feel as I had as much control over the events as I first thought I did. Also, I noticed that the game randomly didn't save after some big moments in the game, so I did go back to a previous save to redo at least one section. This inconsistency to the gameplay just felt odd.

ACAB includes Neil Conrad.

Some early in-game dialogue options.

I mentioned earlier that you could get yourself locked into situations and endings depending on what you choose to do in the game, so let's talk about that a bit. Most dialogue options are timed, and that means you have only a few seconds to get in your response. These dialogue choices can get you more clues, or keep you from ever being able to get certain bits of information. Other times you have actions to complete just as fast. Do you shoot an armed suspect, or try to reason with them? You only have moments to decide and these things do change what happens in the next chapter. Submitting Sheets with incorrect information is important too as it could mean that you never actually solve any of the crimes you're investigating. This already can be pretty nerve-wracking, but can give you an outright headache when you remember that you can't easily revert back to an old save if things go in a direction you didn't mean to. That said, it does feel refreshing to play a game where your choices have actual weight to them. I compared the game to the TellTale series of adventure titles, but it's almost a disservice to have done that. It's almost a meme to talk about how those games give you only the illusion of choice, but still lead you to a very much already predetermined ending. In Lacuna your choices can cost people their freedom, their livelihoods, and even their lives. The stakes are high here, and the game never lets you forget that.

You can check your last save here.

How do you even read this?

Covering graphics is going to be tough as I definitely think everything was well-done here, but there were a few disjointed parts that I feel I have to mention first. Playing on the Nintendo Switch in Handheld Mode (which is how I exclusively played Lacuna) was something of a challenge due to how small everything appeared from time to time. Some of the dramatic camera pans and zooms looked really cool as they were happening, but they sometimes took things a bit too far and made everything near microscopic. Text doesn't fare much better, and the game uses a font that is both very small, and very pixelated. This made some of the clues that had dozens of lines of text very hard to read. I literally had to take a screen shot a couple times and then zoom in through the system menu on the Switch itself; it was that bad. I also thought it a bit odd that the characters didn't really have defined faces to them. Like I know they were going for a retro gaming look, but games in the 8/16/32 Bit eras all had characters that came with full facial features. I found this particular gripe even more disappointing when I noticed that the bigger character graphics in the text boxes weren't really animated to make up for this either. This meant that a lot of the drama and emotion had to be filled in by the player. This isn't necessarily a bad thing of course, but considering how much thought and care went into the tiniest of details and animations elsewhere, it felt like they randomly got lazy in this one aspect.

Now I don't want to make it sound like the visuals were bad by any means, they're really not. You don't even have to be a fan of pixel-based graphics to find the visuals here stunning. Everything looks great, moves smoothly, never hiccups, and has several little touches that only the most observant of players will ever notice. Backgrounds have several layers to them, flying cars fill the foreground and background, and the world just feels very alive at all times. I was also impressed by the lighting in general. Much of the game takes place at night, and that means darkness, but things never felt drab in Lacuna. Street lights, neon ceiling lights, and even the flash from your lighter had a very cinematic look and feel to them. I mentioned the animations earlier, but those are probably the best I've ever seen in this graphic style. Walk and run animations look almost motion captured, and things like Neil drawing his gun have a weight to them that I didn't think was possible given the limitations pixel graphics sometimes have. All these positives, and believe me there's more that I could list, just add to the overall feeling that the few gripes I mentioned earlier are all the more unfortunate considering how great Lacuna is otherwise. The visuals could've been near perfect, but those little hiccups set it back just enough that it's like looking at a flawed masterpiece.

These monologue are great.

Who are The Liberators?

I have to admit that I loved everything that has to do with sound in Lacuna. The mainly piano driven music was great and really added to the mood of the game. I'd be lying if I said that the music was particularly memorable in terms of having a favorite song or theme, but it WAS memorable in that it felt like I was watching an old noir detective movie that featured a random jazz pianist playing in a bar our main character was drinking or smoking a cigarette at. It all just comes together perfectly, and I didn't hear a single piece of music that felt out of place. Going back to that film noir aesthetic, we only have one voice in the game, and that's from Neil himself. I'm not sure how the other languages compare, but the performance from Neil's English voice actor is spot on. He nails the hard-boiled detective vibe perfectly. He sounds grizzled, tired, and worn down by the many decisions he has to make. It's rare that I feel a voice performance truly captures a character, but I felt that here. I'm actually very impressed since I don't think this is a voice actor I've ever heard in anything else, and I feel that he should definitely get more work if he has the ability to pull off a performance of this caliber. If you were hoping for the game to be fully voiced though... well, you're out of luck. That said, I didn't really mind that all we get is Neil's narration as it helped to break up some of the game's more dramatic sections. It was as if the game was constantly reflecting on itself, and you had to sort out how you felt about the decisions you've made so far. All around great stuff really.

Horace is life.

It all ties to the Sector II Incident.

I only have a few brief things to say about controls, so I'll get them out quickly. First off, I found it really odd that sometimes Neil would run automatically, then I'd hit the run button by force of habit, and suddenly he'd only be walking again. I have no idea what caused this, but it was definitely the weirdest bug in the game that bothered me the most. Second is the fact that I actually had no intention of smoking in the game after the very first time when I didn't realize the game was keeping a tally. Every other time I smoked (and I believed I finished the game having done it 7-8 times) was because I accidentally pressed the action button while I was running thinking I hit something to interact with; something that wasn't smoking of course. Both of these issues are nitpicks, but they had me fumbling with the controls more than once. Also, since you can't simply reload a game if you did something you didn't mean to, I was stuck with several more smoking moments than I initially intended to. Lastly, and the only one that really matters, I have to talk about how wonky investigating is with a controller. I'm not sure if it's owing to having a PC interface that has to be moved to console controls, but opening up the investigation menu and selecting what you want to examine, is just all sorts of clunky. There were very few times where I actually knew what it was I was doing, and what I was clicking on. Most of the time I just made sure that I clicked on everything before moving on, and I'd sort it out in the clues menu later. None of these are big points, but I was surprised a game of this scale couldn't nail down a good control scheme.

I'm not exactly sure if I somehow got the "good" ending my first time through the game, but I managed to successfully uncover all the in-game mysteries through submitting completely correct sheets each time. I can't help but wonder if playing "badly" would've gotten me different results, and there were some aspects of even this playthrough that I wasn't totally satisfied with. I'll probably give this game another go one day to see some of the other outcomes, but the save system makes it feel like it'll be a bit more of a chore than it needs to be. That said, it goes without saying that there is a lot of replayability here. Even if you're not totally looking for a new ending, replaying some sections knowing some of the game's big reveals is worth it alone. When I briefly restarted the game after my first playthrough, I found that the entire Prologue chapter made a lot more sense within the greater context of the game. Once again I wish that I could easily alternate between different saves, but giving this one at least two playthroughs is probably something of a requirement. Each playthrough will take you about 5-6 hours, depending on how long it takes you to examine and interpret some of the crazier detailed clues. Considering the game is currently priced at $19.99, I think it's priced about right for those who might be casually interested but unsure if they should pick it up.

Being 24 was great...

You're going to need a rest after this one.

I can't get enough of Lacuna, in fact I wish that there was more to it. If you're a fan of adventure games, of hard-boiled noir mysteries, or of cyberpunk sci-fi stories in general, there is something for you to enjoy here. It takes the TellTale Games concept of your choices affecting the gameplay, but pull it off so well that it actually affects the gameplay. It's such a refreshing experience that you should stop reading now and go grab it on whatever platform you can. I for one will be keeping an eye on DigiTales Interactive in the hopes that they eventually follow up Lacuna with something just as good. If and when that happens, I'll definitely be reviewing that too.

Check Out Lacuna on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/lacuna-switch/

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Story: A-
Gameplay: B
Graphics: A-
Music/Sound: A
Value: B

Overall: A-

Pros:
+ A unique take on the adventure game genre.
+ The pixel graphics and environments are very detailed and have very smooth animations.
+ A great piano jazz soundtrack, and a monologuing narrator, adds to the film noir atmosphere.
+ Each decision made has an effect on how the game pans out.
+ Lots of replayability to both uncover other aspects of the story, and to see the different ways the game can end.

Cons:
- The strict autosave system can be a bit frustrating at times.
- While the game does wrap itself up neatly by the end, it sort of rushes towards the conclusion in the second half.
- Some of the in-game decisions are railroaded, and not as open as others.
- At just about 5-6 hours, the game is a rather short experience.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Me every payday.

#Lacuna