Indi-players of psychedelic orientation have recently been rapidly gaining momentum. Amazing The Path, unusual and yet it moves, cerebellar Axel & Pixel … It is understandable that a variety of small studios are trying to repeat the success of already popular colleagues, in turn, turning to the topic of a slightly shifted phase.

Developers from Pixelpickle Games In general, without ado, they chose the subject of their work with a vision of a girl who had gone from the coils, locked in a house for insane. By the way, we have already seen something like this: the German adventure project Edna and Harvey: The Breakout also narrated about the escape of the child from the psychiatric hospital.

Union of a nightmare and delirium

And I would like to say that reality in Lylian Episode One: Paranoid Friendship intertwined with nightmares of paranoid consciousness – yes it is not true. There is no reality there. Just the degree of crazyness of what is happening varies from the state of “light schizophrenia” to “roof, a delicious marmalade roof with tentacles, aaa!”.

The main character, a girl, ruthlessly abandoned by her parents to places not so normal, really went with my brains. She loves donuts, fights with nurses and tries to find out that in fact the authorities hide under the guise of an innocent madhouse.

And everything begins, as usual, from the escape from the ward. The mysterious shadow frees Lilian – opens the door and unleashes a straitjacket. This shirt, by the way, plays an important role in the script: our little girlfriend uses long sleeves as a formidable weapon. And ruthlessly destroys the nurses, rats, monkey -like children – in a word, all who prevents her from moving on.

Gradually, the child understands that such an ordinary yellow house is actually something big. Several times in the way Lilian come across a strange man of great height with a pipe – lord of hordes of rodents. The deeper the heroine gets deeper, the strange the utility rooms of the psychiatric hospital look strange. In the end, the girl will have to defeat the real boss, after which we will be confronted with the fact: the first episode ended. Wait, they say, continuations.

By the way, the game is incredibly

, indecently short, even for the head of the series.

A true friend can be battered, stained and dumb, but … “I won’t leave him anyway, because there are no others”.

Donuts as a source of world good

In fact Lylian – something between Arcade, horror and … action. No, seriously, a small warrior even uses combat combinations in fights. She has as many as three types of blows: simple printing with sleeves, printing with sleeves with bouncing and the same thing, but on the run. Moreover, the best result is achieved when alternating all three superpowers, which in practice is poured into a convulsive jamming of opponents. In general, everything is as always.

In the intervals between the battles, Lilian explores the territory of the madhouse, which in fact is not quite a madhouse. Friends help the girl-the same shadow-liberator and a disgraceful, but faithful bear cub named Bob, once assembled from scraps and strokes of other toys. If the shadow always appears suddenly and, like God from the car, takes away the child from the most unexpected situations, then the functions of the bear are much easier: it crawls into ventilation holes and opens the locked doors.

Rabbit Nora in the performance of the authors of the game looks something like this. Well, you know, there was no repair for a long time, financing was cut.

Reality turns

However, the main power of Lilian is not in the sleeves and not in the paws of Bob, but in the imagination. The character has two basic indicators: health and happiness. With health, everything is clear: they beat – hesitated, settled in the corner – so well -being returned to the norm. Happiness is a thinner thing. The girl becomes happier in two cases: when he eats donuts and defeats enemies. If we manage to achieve complete spiritual and physical well -being, we get access to special abilities to change the world. With a light movement of the hand, the pants turn … into a full psychedelic.

In the first episode, Lilian knows how to redo boring reality either in the sun -flooded clearing over which a magic red ball flies, or in a certain analogue of the underwater world, where you can “swim” in the air. Why all this is needed? To overcome obstacles, of course. On the ball, for example, it is very convenient to fly over the abysses. In cases where the air unit is “in the mood” to transfer us.

The inheritance from the platformer, the game got only one scene with jumping through the abyss that suddenly opened along the path. The task is complicated by a monster crawling on the heels, from which it is desirable to escape. True, the monster moves slowly, the pits under the feet appear in the same places, so that this episode is held literally from one or two restarts.

In general, we admit: gameplay in Lylian Constantly presents surprises. Even monotonous combat elements do not get too tired: the number of fights does not exceed the norm compatible with the fascination.

From donuts, sometimes there is such a parish as under mushrooms and never dreamed. Acts only on crazy little girls, though.

Nurse as an apogee of world evil

Sometimes these indie studios are so great masking a non-cable graphics under the “author’s style” that you can’t hold it. Of course, it would be great if the gameplay in Lylian was decorated as realistic, bright and touching as an entrance video. Against the backdrop of a luxurious prologue, a modest and simple two -dimensional video in the main part of the Arcade looks poor.

At the same time, we cannot say that the game does not have enough atmosphere. The art is unusual, the paintings of the “changed consciousness” are very spectacularly contrasting with the common line of dirty gray hospital interiors. It is curious that all the enemies of Lilian are emphasized high, with elongated, narrow figures. So the nurses and the rats look like. Perhaps the authors wanted to hint at us at the idea of ​​growing up in the plot?

No, hardly. There is no idea in the plot, except for pure speculation on the topic of “psychos” and “glitches”. Yes, we understand that the openly declared madness of the main character gives the widest scope for manipulations with the game world. But if in the same The Path, the delusional-wire part was subordinated to a common thought and was perceived very harmoniously, then Lylian – This is madness for the sake of madness. And nothing more.

Lylian Episode One: Paranoid Friendship – ambiguous project. In the form in which we received the game today, this is an interesting creation, which is nevertheless designed for a very narrow audience. Specifically – for lovers of psychedelics. Perhaps subsequent episodes will bring us the answer to the main question: for what, in fact, all this was?

Pros: organic atmosphere;pleasant gameplay;An original graphic solution.
Cons: secondary plot;Some indiscriminateness.