I had the honor of beta-testing “Lucy Dreaming” in June, after backing it on Kickstarter, and I feel even more honored of having helped fine-tune this beautiful work of point ‘n click art and storytelling before its release.

Tom Hardwidge of Tall Story Games solo-developed this game, his wife did the voice of the main character, the titular Lucy, and he even made a fake website about the fictional town where the story rolls out! There’s a clear love of adventure gaming shining through in every second you spend in this world, and this game is good for 12 hours of puzzling fun!

I’m Lucy, troubled by recurring nightmares depriving me of some well needed night’s rest. My goal is obvious: find a way to take control of my dreams and combat those nightmares. A psychology book of my dad advises me on how to do this, so the first part of the game is getting set up for this.

Nothing is easy in this game, and every goal you need to achieve will only be met by finding the necessary items, talking to the right people, performing the right tasks. You roam around Lucy’s house, with loads of hotspots generating funny remarks depending on what you do with them.

This game is very detailed, with over 10,000 lines of dialogue (I know, I proofread them all…) Lucy has a handy diary to keep track of your achievements so far; I always love a feature like that, because real life will often get in the way of gaming for a long time, and when you return to a mid-game playthrough, it has happened more than once that I had no idea what I was supposed to do again.

Half of the game is spent in the real world, while in the other half you fight your way through the dream world. You will often need information from one world in order to move ahead in the other. There are several dreams to overcome, but the real world isn’t without its obstacles either.

Along the way, Lucy discovers a mystery she thinks is linked to the source of her nightmares, and she desperately wants to get to the bottom of it. This brings plenty of variety to the game: if you’re stuck on a puzzle in the real world, you can always go back to bed and try out your intelligence in the dream world, and vice versa.

Early in the game, you’ll get a map of the town of Figgington, and locations are added whenever Lucy finds a new clue. So there’s plenty to explore. But there’s even more, because you can also choose which particular dream you want to revisit, and sometimes you’ll actually have to dreamhop to solve puzzles, since the dreamworld has its own inventory which you take along from dream to dream; another clever feature of the game!

In this way, “Lucy Dreaming” combines travelling through fantasy (dream) worlds with solving a murder mystery, all in a nostalgic 90s setting with excellent, very detailed writing, great voicework (including Dominic Armato, whom Tom succeeded in acquiring for this job even long before anyone ever talked about him returning to a particular island), clever puzzles and nerdy coolness overall!