Lydia

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Nakana Bundle #3 (Eqqo + Lydia + Stilstand), along with Eqqo and Stilstand. This game is also included in Nakana Bundle #4, along with Journey of the Broken Circle, Mythic Ocean, Soul Searching, and Stilstand. Additionally, this game is also in Nakana Bundle #6 (10 games), along with A Night at the Races, Cosmic Top Secret, Eqqo, Infini, Journey of the Broken Circle, Mythic Ocean, Please, Touch The Artwork, Soul Searching, and Stilstand.)

Lydia is a Graphic Adventure game first released on PC in 2017 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game has players taking the role of a small child exploring monsters both imagined and real in a nightmarish haze that explores some truly dark topics. And on that note, I really have to highlight – do not play this game if you are easily triggered or sensitive to disturbing material. Lydia is not an especially violent game, but its topic matter is potentially more disturbing due to the very real issues it tackles that may hit closer to home, such as alcoholism, narcissism, and child neglect.

In terms of presentation, Lydia is an ugly game, but there is beauty in the ugliness. Characters are depicted with crude 2D artwork that seems as if a child has scrawled it onto the screen, with poor animation. Characters’ voices are just a few brief and unintelligible vocalizations (Lydia herself sounds like a man imitating a small child saying “bee ba bo po”, her father is all grunts, and her mother is little more than wheezy noises). While these elements may seem amateurish or even repulsive, and despite that nearly the entire game is devoid of color, the artwork for the backgrounds here is really imaginative and evocative, like an impressionistic take on what a child sees when they look at a house that’s not really a home, and a fantasy forest that’s no escape from the worries that led to the need for escapism.

The gameplay here is simple, tedious, and dull. Lydia has a slow walking speed that makes moving across the game’s terrain agonizingly slow. What little gameplay there is here comes in the form of walking around a room and looking for what few things there are to interact with. And conversations occasionally give players multiple choices, though it often seems like what you say in most of these conversations doesn’t matter. Which may be a testament to how futile it is to be a child in these situations, but it doesn’t exactly make for fun gameplay. And in the end, this game can be completed in under an hour, easy.

I’ll get straight to the heart of things here – Lydia is not a fun game. Lydia’s story is not exactly entertaining, and if you look at this game as entertainment, it’s hard to see it as anything but a failure. However, as a piece of art, Lydia is a powerful statement on how a child can be affected by the way they are treated, a statement that rings true because its creator has indicated that this game is semi-autobiographical in nature.

Does that make Lydia a terrible game? A great game? After all, we’re talking about a game that is intentionally trying to convey feelings of hopelessness, despair, depression, and futility, and in this it more or less succeeds. In the end, if you’re open to trying a brief and very dark title that makes for a thoughtful experience, and aren’t quite as concerned with playing a fun game, Lydia should be worth your time and money. But if you’re looking for something that’s a great game by more typical standards, Lydia probably isn’t for you.

tl;dr – Lydia is a Graphic Adventure that follows a child into a world of nightmares both real and imagined. As a game, this is a brief, tedious, soul-sapping experience. But as a piece of art, this is a beautiful look into a horrible situation that’s all too real for far too many children. I doubt anyone will truly enjoy this game, but some may be able to appreciate it.

Grade: C+

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