Lilly Looking Through Review - A Magical Adventure

Look how cute she is!!! The goggles are even way too big for her face!

I recently had the honor of playing the full version of Lilly Looking Through. In case you hadn't seen it, I'd played and reviewed the demo already, and I'm happy to report that the full game continues the demo gloriously!

For those not familiar, Lilly Looking Through is a delightful Myst-style point-and-click adventure game for PC/Linux/Mac. Lilly, an insanely adorable little girl, begins by mimicking a frog, and when a scarf goes blowing by her she decides to chase after it. Along the way, she discovers some magical goggles that let her see (and even go into) the past to mess around, allowing her to get across now-broken areas or mess with things that entirely change the present.

The scarf makes for a great scene selection screen!

The demo that was released was based on the unfinished version of the game, and as such there are numerous things that have been improved upon. Lilly herself, for example, seems to fit into her environments better and she perhaps has even more animations that make her movements smoother and more adorable. There's an awesome menu for replaying scenes you've already cleared, there are wonderful new loading animations that display what's going on between scenes and, of course, there are lots of new scenes to play!

The further the game goes along, the more difficult the puzzles can get, but nearly all of them make sense with a bit of messing around. The fact that I'm not particularly good at these types of games, and I had to rely on a walkthrough for about 80% of any Myst game I've ever played doesn't help things... But for every puzzle I had difficulty with there were at least two or three that were a ton of fun and made me feel brilliant. After all, since I played the game before it officially released, I had to do it without a walkthrough and I managed! I did email Steve, one of the developers, but he simply gave me a hint. I would have figured it out with a little more messing around on my own, I was just feeling a bit lazy at the moment... And the fact that he replied to my question so quickly really says a lot about Geeta Games!

Water and an acorn in the past...

... Becomes a giant tree in the present!

What never ceased to amuse me during this game was just how adorable it was. It was very obvious the entire game that it was made by a couple who know how magical a child and their curiosity can be, their sense of adventure and amusement. As I stated in the demo review, Lilly never just stands around, she looks around at different objects as if she's trying to figure out the puzzle herself. She jumps and slides down big objects, she hops up onto switches to pull them down because she's so little. She stumbles and falls and gets right back up.

The game seemed to go by pretty fast - with the difficulty messing with puzzles, I ended up playing it for maybe 7-10 hours spread over 3 days. That's really the only complaint I had about the game at all, it's really a magical, wonderful game and something that everyone should experience.

I received a review copy of the game.

Available for: PC/Mac/Linux ($9.99 for standard, $19.99 for deluxe, which includes Steam key and a PDF of artwork from the game. As I write this, deluxe is on sale for $14.99)

Website: http://geetagames.com

Developed by: Geeta Games