Developer: DigiTales Interactive
Released: 12/21/2021 Play Station 4
Lacuna is set on a distant planet and future, where interplanetary war looms near between Garha and Drovia. Playing as CDI agent Niel Conrod, you must discover clues and unravel a conspiracy brought to light by the murder of a prominent politician.
As the plot expands based on your choices, you start dictating how everything is played out. These choices will affect how the story plays out and your ending. Depending on how it is played out, you can save the day or fail. This makes every choice you make essential for the conclusion you want.
Gameplay
Lacuna is your standard chose your own adventure-style game. The controls are simple and easy to use throughout the game. Finding and retrieving information and displaying it helps get as much needed information before making choices and decisions.
The information is also essential to fill out and submit questionnaire sheets. These sheets help with how the story plays out and the ending you may get. This requires you to read the news, case logs and keep notes of specific and critical events. The information is key to setting up the narrative and environment of the game.
The best feature of the game is the storytelling and narrative. The themes and conflicts in the main story and subplot are rooted in real-world issues. The immersive nature helps with how you play each section and your interactions with the NPC and other parties. The way they incorporated religion, discrimination, prejudice, and conspiracy is a testament to the creative team.
One of the things that helps the game pack so much information and data is the use of 8-bit graphics. These graphics do not hinder or alter the game in any way. As Lacuna is based on your choices, the graphics play no significant role in accomplishing whichever way or style you choose to play the game.
Lacuna does suffer one major issue in regards to the replay value. As each round takes 4 hours to complete, there are not enough narrative variations that alter much of the game outside of the ending. A lack of consequences makes some of the decisions feel lackluster or unimportant.
Overall & Final thoughts on Lacuna
Lacuna is a fun game with a solid and immersive narrative. The game’s best feature was how well the story and narrative pull you into the conflict and world-building. Gathering and reading the history of the conflict between Ghara and Drovia helps bring importance to the choices you have made.
After playing two rounds each differently, the major events still play out but with different outcomes or actions. With each variation available, all the other options or choices gain you trophies or achievements. These don’t translate to anything special, like if you chose to smoke or not.
I enjoyed Lacuna as it mixes a choose your own adventure style game with a platform format. It was easy to pick up and captured your attention from the start. My major issue against it was the lack of consequences for actions and how long it took to play through it. With all the structure built into the narrative, it would have been great to see more subplots and history explored or be available in different playthroughs.