Lacuna

Lacuna is an adventure game that emphasizes choices and storyline. Players take on the role of a CDI agent investigating a murder case. They must gather witness testimonies and evidence in various settings to piece together clues and ultimately uncover the ugly truth. Lacuna prioritizes choices; during the investigation, players will encounter a series of events and must make choices: reveal the truth and face fierce retribution, or conceal the truth to protect themselves and their families. The choice is entirely up to the player.

Story of Lacuna:

You are Neil Conrad, CDI agent. Awoken by the news of a murder, you rush into a case that will soon turn your life and the whole solar system upside down. Ask questions, collect evidence, and put the pieces together until the ugly truth reveals itself... or not.

The story branches and ends based on your actions. There's no going back. Sure, you can rush your way to the end – if you don't mind paying the price. Play your cards right, and you might make it out alive.

Some questions don't have a right answer. Will you sell out a friend to protect your family? Will you endanger a loved one in exchange for public safety? Will you keep the peace or reveal the horrible, world-shattering truth?

Features of Lacuna:

Choice-Driven Narrative: Every choice can make the story turn quickly. Therefore, the variety of storylines is often explored in a sequential manner as each player has to go through all the outcomes.

Deep Moral Dilemmas: Once you have enjoyed the current story, some challenges will quickly appear before you. Sometimes, you have to stand between two paths that force you to make a difficult choice.

Engaging Sci-Fi World: A 2D world still has its own characteristics and beauty, so you will be completely interested in them. At the same time, each aspect has a secret, and each person will be able to explore it the way they want.

Investigate a Murder: A murder often leaves necessary evidence in front of the player. Therefore, they must collect everything before finding a way to solve the current problems.

No Second Chances: Your choices will often need to be made carefully. Sometimes, the game will be unforgiving in that it will not allow you to have a second choice, so each step needs to be carefully calculated.

Uncover Hidden Truths: After all the evidence is gathered, the necessary conclusions will appear before each person. This increases the completion rate of the mission and avoids wrong conclusions when important evidence is missing.

Strategies of Lacuna:

Complete Case Sheets Fully As Often As Possible: Every case you take on in Lacuna will come with a case sheet that you need to fill out. These case sheets offer you a set of key questions and missing information that you need to fill in using clues and your knowledge of the world around you.Not only do these case sheets provide you with a clear next step throughout the game but they also help you consolidate the information you gather along the way. So fill them out fully and as accurately as possible and you will be well on your way to solving crimes correctly and putting the right people behind bars.

It's Not A Fast-Paced Game: As you would probably expect from a detective noir-style game, Lacuna moves at a slow pace that is only occasionally interrupted by short bursts of action. This slow and steady approach to gameplay allows you to immerse yourself in the world Lacuna offers you in a way that a faster-paced game would never allow.The slower pacing also means you have time to dig into each case you are offered and do some in-depth detective work before you start coming to conclusions, making your role as detective Neil Conrad all the more compelling.

Don't Ignore Optional Interactions: Throughout Lacuna there are a huge number of characters you can interact with, many of whom will offer valuable insights into the world you are a part of. So just like in every great detective game, it's wise not to rush past and ignore the optional interactions you encounter.And if the opportunity for extra information isn't a good enough reason for you to interact with side characters then consider the fact that some interactions like those of protagonist Neil with his ex-wife and his daughter can actually have an impact on the ending of the game. That's right, not only do your actions have consequences but so does your inaction when it comes to important optional interactions.

Some Achievements Require Multiple Playthroughs: Lacuna offers its players an opportunity to earn a variety of achievements as they play through the game. But several of these achievements require you to commit to a certain type of interaction throughout an entire playthrough.For example, one achievement wants you to pet Horace, your pet lizard, every time you interact with him, while another wants you to feed him every time. This means you'll be playing the whole game through again to commit to whichever option you didn't choose the first time around. Not such a bad thing but inconvenient for any prospective achievement hunters.

Player Comments of Lacuna:

Funny game. Interesting lore and narration.The game doesn't give you the option to skip cutscenes or manually save your game so you can't go back and change decisions. This is nice for a first run, but it would be great that these options get enabled after that, so you can complete achievements without watching the same things over and over.The game gives you options inside the mainline story, the problem is that it feels that at some points my choices where merely for a few future dialogues and that's all, no real impact on the given ending.It is going to be interesting future games of the studio if they improve the formula.So if you buy this game you'll get a few hours out of it, probably you won't regret it.

Play an agent from the security service and solve a political murder and the whole conspiracy behind it in this short, but rather good adventure. The game is not a classic point 'n' click adventure, it is more like a story with you in the main role. You make decisions, and the plot unfolds based on those decisions, even if you are a complete dumbass. The game is quite linear, it guides you to locations, you have to search them for clues, talk to other characters (with a time limit and choices of what you say), and then you have to file your reports. The game continues, no matter if you found all clues, your reports are correct or what you said to someone before, but it might branch in a direction that leads away from uncovering the truth.The writing is not bad, mostly conversations, but also messages, news, monologues, and descriptions. You won't enjoy the game if you don't enjoy to read about a murder mystery with a political background. The narrative is not too difficult to follow, all conversations and clues you find are logged to read them again if necessary. The whole gameplay is rather fluid, I didn't encounter a single point where I had no idea how to continue. So if you are looking for a super-hard game, look somewhere else. It is no visual novel, on the other hand. You have to search the locations, and you have to make decisions, and you probably have to think about some of them. It took me around seven hours to finish, and I was well entertained and hooked right from the start.

Short (less than 5 hours), very linear and very easy investigation/adventure game. It holds your hand throughout, so you won't get stuck, miss clues or wander aimlessly between locations. The story and presentation is okay, the music is very good and moody. If you have some free time one evening, instead of watching two contemporary boring movies you can give it a shot.

Conclusion:

Speaking of the scenery, the developers have done a fantastic job creating a vivid futuristic world. Each location boasts its own unique visual appeal, complete with realistic lighting and plenty of intricate details. People go about their business, cars zoom by, and neon signs flicker with vibrant holographic displays - all contributing to an immersive gameplay experience.