Lucah: Born of a Dream (Review)

Lucah: Born of a Dream is a top-down hack'n'slash action RPG that takes inspiration from many games and sets itself apart from the crowd with it's distinctive scribbly chalk-like art style. Developed by melessthanthree and published by Syndicate Atomic LLC. I myself didn't fully understand the story, so I'll quote the developers before sharing my interpretation. "Lucah is one of the Marked, children with innate magical powers that are hunted and feared for the destructive potential they hold. After a terrifying dream, they wake into a distorted and hellish ritual space.

Dark, oppressive, and dangerous, the world manifests Nightmares to keep Lucah confined in their endless torment. Trapped and afraid, Lucah must survive the onslaught in order to seek Purification and escape the Corruption that threatens to consume them."

My interpretation of the story looks more like this. Members of a religious group are trying to resurrect the messiah to make the world new by purging it of all sin and humanity, Lucah (the player character) is stuck in a never-ending cycle of the resurrection of the messiah and is looking for a way to break out of it. Lucah is a lot like Undertale in the sense that you'll need to play though it multiple times in order to get the full effect, things change a huge amount and very unexpected things happen. I won't spoil too much, but lets just say there are a few times where the genre will temporarily change to benefit the narrative and gameplay flow. Since you need to play through the game a few times to fully complete it, the game runs at an average of about 8-15 hours, depending on which playthrough you decide to stop on.

The visual style is wholly unique to itself, it looks like a bunch of scratches and scribbles made with chalk and while some may call it ugly or too basic, others would say that it perfectly embodies the grungy tone of the games world and narrative. At first I didn't like it very well, I thought it looked messy and at times it was hard to make out what some things were supposed to be. (especially during the little cutscenes.) There is one area in particular where this problem shows most, and that's the little arcade room found later in the game, you have the option to play one of the arcade games, that so happens to be retro themed meaning the abstract art is now abstract and a little too messy to fit the 8-bit aesthetic of the arcade machine. The longer I played the more I appreciated the art style and how well It conveyed with the story and it's many subject matters. The music is done very well, with many ominous and grim tracks complimenting the eerie ambiance and setting a good level of tension and immersion.

By far the best aspect of Lucah: Born of a Dream is it's combat, it plays a lot like a mix of Dark Souls, Neir: Automata, and a little bit of Hyper Light Drifter. You've got light attacks, heavy attacks, dodges/dashes, parries, and little hovering drones that act as your ranged weapons. Parries are done in a different way, instead of blocking or attacking at the right time, you have to dash into the enemies attacks. This is one of those little formulaic changes that I really liked, it's not too big of a change but it is different enough to feel unique. Aside from your stamina meter, used for attacks and dodging. You also have an ability gauge that is basically used as your drone's stamina bar, but is also needed to preform a few skills. Instead of automatically refilling like your stamina meter, you must charge it up by landing successful melee attacks. This creates a perfect stamina balance (something that's lacking in nearly every other souls-like) since you can keep your distance and still do damage while you're regaining your stamina, in my opinion this was a very clever design choice.

There are no weapon types, instead throughout the game you will find various light, heavy, and drone attack types, these are interchangeable and make for a great way to customize your playstyle. Combat can be slow and weighty, or fast and agile depending on what combination of attacks you use. It could also be a mix of the two since you are given the option to switch back and forth between two custom attack sets with the push of a button, allowing you to string numerous attack types into devastating combos. There's a lot more I could talk about when it comes to skills and abilities, but this review would go on for way too long, so I'll just keep to the important things. (lets just say this game has some pretty deep mechanics) Healing items come in the form of Rewinds, these are used to rewind back to the beginning of a fight if it's not going so well. This is also a very interesting mechanic, it feels like using Tracers rewind ability in Overwatch.

Speaking of time, there's a percentage timer on the top right of the screen slowly ticking away, dying gives it a little boost so try your best not to mess up too often. If it hits 100% the game ends early and you get the bad ending, so speed and focus are key to making it through to the end. Having a timer constantly counting down is very stressful and anxiety inducing, it inserts a great sense of tension and urgency (think the oxygen timer from retro sonic). If you're playing on hard, you have very little room for mistakes, messing up just a few times could spell out your doom. Don't worry if you're not into challenging games, you can change the difficulty at any time, by using the in-game cheats. I don't have anything negative to say about the game, if I had to find a minor gripe to complain about It'd probably be the arcade minigame I mentioned earlier in the review. And that's skippable, so there's no real reason to complain about it.

Lucah: Born of a Dream is a very different kind of game, it's not often that you see a game this special, it blends so many different genres so well that I had a hard time choosing which one I thought defined it best. I've really never played anything like it, there are so many things done right and in unexpected ways that I'm surprised it hasn't gained a much larger audience. The art Is unparalleled, the music is eerie and intense, the combat is buttery smooth and very satisfying once mastered, the plot/narrative is intriguing, mysterious, and cataclysmic, every aspect of this game is atmospheric and exceptionally great. If you're a fan of imaginative and unconventional games, or even just a fan of exceptionally good combat, you should without a doubt play Lucah: Born of a Dream. Available now for $19.99 on Steam and Itch.io.