The seventh episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2018.

“Story. Mystery. Puzzles. A supernatural puzzle adventure.” Whoa, there goes the GUILTY PLEASURE ALARM.

Lake Ridden is an first-person explore-y type game with puzzles from the studio Midnight Hub. In the demo, there were runes and stone tables everywhere; the developer who was standing guard at the time cited Myst as one touchstone for the game. In Lake Ridden, your name is Marie and you’re looking for your sister who ran off into the woods after an argument – but the demo strongly hinted you were probably to going to release a great evil.

What I saw cautioned me not to ask too much of the story; it looks like a by-the-numbers notes and journals piece with some broad strokes in places. I found the inscriptions on the nose; I can’t recall the precise wording but very much like “unlock the door and evil will be released”. If you’re interested, Midnight Hub have a dev blog about their writing process.

But this kind of thing is my bag, baby. Moth to a flame.

Midnight Hub, however, richly deserve a round of applause for the top-end headphones they brought to the expo. I was stunned after slipping them on: they completely cancelled out the raucous noise of the Rezzed environment and I could enjoy Lake Ridden as intended. I took the headphones off a couple of times while playing, just to check the contrast. Mood pieces often have a hard time in an expo because you can never hear the subtle ambient background noise; the delicate titles of the Leftfield Collection usually suffer from this in a big way. But, boy, did I really hear Lake Ridden.

Lake Ridden is due to be released on Steam and GOG soon.

Interested in other games I’ve dabbled with? Check out the series index!

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4 thoughts on “Dabbling with… Lake Ridden

  1. Interesting. This is a bag to which I also claim partial ownership.

    Hey Joel, have you played Rime? Simple environmental puzzles, platforming, cutesy mysterious vibe, mild peril, extensive feels. Once I got over the fact that the title had nothing to do with either consonance or frost, or indeed anything at all, I really enjoyed it.

  2. This one looks very promising!

    Btw. – Offtzopic as always, – have you got a chance to check out “0°N 0°W” (aka zeronorthzerowest) by Colorfiction? This is an unbelievable experience of various worlds. Very abstract, but sometimes very concrete. And addicting.

  3. Another drive-by from Merzmensch, the eternal explorer 😉 I’ll have to take a look at your recommendation at some point. Unfortunately up to my eyeballs in puzzles and Rezzed previews right now!

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