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- Nakana.io
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- Nakana.io
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- Nakana.io
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- Nakana.io
Lydia
Released On: Jan 17, 2020
68
6.5
All Platforms
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
68
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
55% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
9% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 11 Critic Reviews
68
36% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
55% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
9% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Lydia is an important game, not just because it broaches an important subject matter, but for how it uses its art direction, music, and storytelling to highlight the issues it's bringing to our attention.
Lydia is a small game, but it sends a bigger message that sometimes we need to step in and help the ones who can’t speak for themselves. I highly recommend checking out this enthralling, interactive story about a little girl overcoming her giant “monster”.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 24 User Ratings
6.5
42% Positive
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
33% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
25% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 24 User Ratings
6.5
42% Positive
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
33% Mixed
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
25% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
Lydia is a roughly 1 hour long game. Language is simple and very clear. The hand drawn style somehow clashes with its incredibly deep and dark story. If on discount, definitely worth your purchase. The ending, but the whole story overall to be honest, gives food for your thoughts. Highly recommended.
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Nintendo Switch
Deeply touching game. Hit's really close to home. Tears were running down my cheek when the end credits rolled.
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Nintendo Switch
With only 4 short chapters to play through, Lydia will only take you about 1 or 2 hours to complete, so those after more of a meaty experience might want to look elsewhere. We would, however, encourage you to experience it at least once, if only for its eye-opening message. It successfully tells a haunting story about abuse and heartbreak without necessarily shoving it down your throat, and that’s really hard to do. It’s one of the most emotionally impactful games to grace the Switch since its launch nearly three years ago.
There are a lot of caveats when it comes to recommending Lydia, as it's a game that will speak to people in different ways. Lydia offers a beautiful and chilling experience, but its dark tone and even darker story and subject matter won't be for everyone.
In general, Lydia is an interesting game with a well put together setting and an art style you probably won’t soon forget, but overall it’s just sort of a slightly underwhelming experience. Over the course of its 45 to 60-minute runtime, you will experience what is obviously a deeply personal story for the creators, leading to a choice that I honestly found very well done in the end. It’s a story of abuse and neglect and how somebody so small is forced to deal with it, and while the gameplay is nothing to write home about, it’s definitely a narrative that will probably stick with me even if just for a little while.
Short, sweet, and to the point, Lydia makes for a memorable and engaging hour of gameplay. Its story of abuse will prove uncomfortable, but a restrained hand ensures audiences never have to confront anything too visceral through gameplay. There isn't much in the way of replayability, but a well told story, plus an excellent visual style make Lydia a worthwhile play-through for anyone looking for something emotionally dense.
Lydia brings us a theme that is definitely worth exploring in a medium like gaming but it could have been approached in a much better way. The writing needs a lot of work and despite its very on touch visual environment, the gameplay experience is very subpar and there's little interactivity to be found here.
Lydia’s wondrously gloomy visual style and its powerful narrative are little help when it comes to its bare-bones gameplay. Player interaction with the game world is so minimal that you often feel like a mere spectator in the protagonist’s story. Worse yet, you feel that every action you do undertake is meaningless given that the whole thing is scripted. The game doesn’t even respect the choices you make when interacting verbally with other characters, surprising you with many unintended lines. In the end, you are made to feel completely helpless as a player here, even lacking volition. And while this could be said to serve a dramatic purpose, by emulating the perspective of a child entrapped in a toxic family life, it could also be said to fuel a defeatist, deterministic worldview… I wouldn’t recommend the game if its visuals weren’t so astonishing and its moments of sadness so gut-wrenching. But they are.
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Nintendo Switch
It's not a bad game, but there are so many things I personally want to fix. The movement of the character is so slow and sluggish it borders on excruciating. The "speech" sound effects actually made me take my headphones out on several occasions as they were so unpleasant to listen to. On the other hand the scenery is gorgeously drawn.
But this is a game that's all about the sory. One or two of the characters are very believable, sure, but as someone who lived a childhood that was very similar to Lydia's it honestly felt shallow and lacking. What other people see as deep and clever writing I saw as, honestly, lacking in the real complexity of a childhood **** by the issues explored in this game. My childhood and my complicated relationship with my mother is a story I've wanted to tell for many years, but it's too raw to really try to explain to an audience with no understanding of the issues and what it's really like to live that life, the traumas it causes, the ongoing suffering that covers generations to come, and that is ultimately rooted in the generation that came BEFORE my mother. It's all very complicated and it's not easy to point a finger of blame, which is the trap this game falls into. Lydia, as a game, tried to simply sum up a very complex and difficult set of circumstances with a simple explanation that doesn't exist in the real world.
I don't regret playing the game, but it wasn't what I had hoped it would be: messy, complicated, and something that I could show to other people and say, "yeah, that was what I lived through as a kid. If you wanna understand me play this game." It just lacks the depth. One day, perhaps someone will create a game that can really explore the issue with enough depth to really help others understand the reality of many children all around the world growing up in these kinds of households. But sadly this game doesn't quite get there.
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Nintendo Switch
Drinking ruins lives.
Now that you've read those three words, you have no reason to play this game. It's a hamfisted portrayal of alcoholism from the perspective **** whose parents and friends are burdened with it. It's not even really a "walking simulator." You have no agency whatsoever, aside from two very simple puzzles which will take you seconds to solve. The characters are one-dimensional, and the message is overbearing.
There is some attempt at symbolism, though some high-quality fantasy art. (Why are these psychological games always in black-and-white?) However, the writers gave up on this approach halfway through the second chapter, to revisit it very briefly at the end. Otherwise it's literal and uninteresting.
In a genre saturated with similar, better games, like Gris and Fran Bow, I have a hard time recommending Lydia.
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Nintendo Switch
The game itself is very short and written in extremely simple language. The characters are black and white, literally and figuratively.
There is no gameplay. There are no riddles, there is only a simple "click to let the story continue." This is not a quest.
As a result, there is no plot, no gameplay.
Only the "important" topic remains. Which is served with very basic phrases. The execution is terrible.
But they promised to share the money they made from DLC with charities, so I don’t regret buying this game. But game itself really bad.
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Nintendo Switch
In my opinion it's truly a bad game. It has a quite nice graphics, but gameplay, and by gameplay I mean movements between reading sections, is bad. Story is somewhat deep, but the presentation was a mess... I don't know why would someone spent his/her money on this game. I'm glad I got it for free. I would love to call this game short and sweet, but it was a good experience only while I was at the chapter one. Other chapters had a messy storytelling, all of it, except graphics were sloppy...
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Nintendo Switch
Summary Lydia is a story-driven indie adventure game about substance abuse from a perspective of a small child. The story focuses on how a child processes adult’s problems through her imagination.
Rated T
for Teen
Platforms:
- PC
- Nintendo Switch
- PlayStation 4
Initial Release Date: Jan 17, 2020
Developer:
- Platonic Partnership
Publisher: Nakana.io
Genres:
