LucasArts Dreams Up Lucidity

This was announced a few days ago, but being that it’s a LucasArts game that’s not Star Wars in nature, it seems to have fallen between the cracks. According to President Darrell Rodriguez, “Lucidity comes from our effort at LucasArts to form several small internal development teams and give them the creative freedom to make games that surprise, amaze and inspire,” explaining that the recent reboot of the Monkey Island franchise is a small part of that.

Lucidity is a platforming puzzle title, seemingly in the same genre as the award winning Braid, but rather than control a character, players control the environment and random objects to keep Sofi, the protagonist, in motion through her dreamscape safely. In a way it sounds a little Lemmings-ish, with a spoonful of Scribblenauts and a dash of The Incredible Machine for flavor.

Without being able to really grasp the gameplay having not seen it in action, my only draw to the title is a very unique art style typically reserved for children’s literature. The characters are soft, with rounded features, a bit reminiscent of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. The environments however don a sharper edge, similar to those of modern day animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack).

I’m very curious to see how an original property from LucasArts will fare. They’ve got a pretty good track record and it would be nice to see them as a gaming benchmark once again.

Lucidity is due out October 7th, 2009 for Xbox Live and PC (digital distribution).