Lucid

Lucid
Developer:   YeaBoing
Category:   Match 3
Released:  Jul 2011
Usual Price:   £4.99
Hours Played: 1
Controller Compatible: No
Rating: 0 Stars

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Let's get straight to the point: Lucid is probably one of the worst match 'em games available on Steam at the present time. It offers very little by way of challenge, there is no real measure of progress, the score is totally meaningless and the play area is inexplicably shrunk to a small size. It is a terrible game.

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Menus, Progress & Stats

After the ridiculous inclusion of a quote that plays on a Beatles' lyric from the Sergeant Peppers' song, we get a grand looking screen of the earth with imposing clouds and a heavenly light beaming from above. On the title screen, "Options" gives two laughable tweaks, while there is an equally laughable option to "Sign in" (as if anyone would bother). There is also an "Exit", "Full Screen" and "Delete/Save" path. Plain, simple and rubbish. There is a cumulative score shown in the top left and stats at the end of each level but as the game just whisks you onto the next level it renders it all pointless. 

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Gameplay

Gameplay is mind-numbingly boring. On a 8x10 grid, you left-click and hold on a tile and drag the mouse over the same coloured tiles making a path. You then release the button and all those tiles disappear giving you points. The grid is replenished and you continue the same process in the same mind-numbing manner until your meter in the top left of the play area completes its revolution. The meter is only filled if your matches correspond with the same tile shown in the "Task" panel on the left of the grid. There is also a multiplier to boost your score but with no meaningful context, the score just doesn't seem that important even when loads of stats and additional extras to the score get thrown at you at the end.

With no power-ups or anything else to jazz up the gameplay - that's all there is to it. The only real challenge is in the fact that all tiles of the same colour in the clump must be included in the drawn path - otherwise they will not be cleared. Ambient sounds and encouragement from an announcer come at you as you play, and there are mildly interesting swirly patterns that create a dreamlike atmosphere from time to time, but it's just not enough to make the game any more interesting. Lucid plays like an endless or zen mode for those types of players who are intellectually challenged or don't really want to be stretched. Perhaps even for 3 or 4 year-olds who need to learn how to move a mouse around properly.

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Conclusion

With so many worthier games in the tile match up genre, I really cannot recommend Lucid at all. It may be a mildly interesting twist on the genre but to me it all seems as if the developers were just a bit lazy. There is no level-select or map screen to speak of for a start with the makers content to have the players blindly playing through levels with no other context. This means the score and progress system has no real framework. 

The gameplay itself, however, is dull. The line you draw is wriggly and wavy when I would liked it to have been straight and clear. The game also doesn't punish you if you take too much time over your moves and it seemed just fine to keep matching two piddly tiles every time to rack up a score. There is, indeed, only one mode. Why no time-attack mode? Finally, why isn't the play area bigger? Why has it been shrunk down to a small size with more than half being taken up by sky and clouds!?

Nope, it seems that Lucid has been created to show everything that should not be done in a tile match 'em up game - there are just too many things wrong with it - and that's that.