Review | Lacuna

LifeisXbox’s Lacuna Review | Lacuna is an interesting adventure game that focuses on story-telling and decision-making. Since I’m a sucker for mystery, story-focused, and adventure games, when I first saw Lacuna, it grabbed my attention. Plus, the noticeable art style of Lacuna as well. The game focuses on a specific case for its entirety, but it’s pretty well done and remains interesting throughout the whole game. Lacuna is developed by DigiTales Interactive and published by Assemble Entertainment

Most Memorable Moment

I enjoyed playing the whole game, but since this is a story-focused game, the most memorable moment would be a spoiler. I will be as vague as I can about it because this is important to Lacuna’s story. You’re already having a difficult day, and you learn about something happening to someone important to you. As soon as that happened, I blamed myself, because it seemed like it was connected to a decision I made earlier. So, basically, the most memorable moments of the game are related to decision-making.

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Easy to Play but Intricate | Lacuna is a simple game to play where you investigate clues, talk with people, and make choices. There is a catch though as all the data you collect are kept in your cell and you have to make your deductions based on reading that data and the data available will be different based on your decisions. You can’t get 100% on a single playthrough because of the results of your decisions having their own achievements tied to them so keep that in mind if you’re going for 1000G.

• A Perfect Match | Lacuna’s themes formed a perfect match; sci-fi and Noir worked like a charm together, but I wouldn’t have thought any developer could’ve made them work together, so props to the developers for this! This can be seen in the ambiance, characters, soundtrack, and in the story itself so absolutely nothing seems invasive.

• Pixel Artistic | You can probably tell by the images in this review that Lacuna’s graphics are pixel art based. The pixel art itself looks pretty good, but there are some details related to lighting, such as reflections that give it a nicer look than a regular pixel art only game.

• (Literally) Music To Your Ears | Since all dialogues are written-only, with the exception of the main character’s voice when he’s talking to himself, there’s plenty of space in Lacuna for the soundtrack to shine. It doesn’t disappoint in the slightest as it gives the perfect Noir/Mystery atmosphere that was required from it, also fitting the situations you find yourself in and completely disappearing whenever necessary.

• Optional Mercy | Even though there aren’t manual saves available, and every decision is final, you can disable the timing to make those decisions (which is by default turned on). As making decisions usually takes me some time to make, I turned it off as soon as I was warned about it in the tutorial. I think it’s nice to have the option to play both ways should you prefer one to the other.

Mixed Feelings

• Nothing | I couldn’t think about anything that deserves to be in this category.

What we Disliked

• Minor Performance Issues| I experienced FPS drops a few times throughout the game however they didn’t happen too many times. Since they did happen though, I thought it was worth noting this here. Other than this, I didn’t experience any bugs or severe performance issues though.

How long to beat the story | Around 5 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | Around 10 Hours