REVIEW · 2021-05-20
Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure
A sci-fi detective drama in rain and smoke
First Impressions
Steam reads 2,731 of 2,978 reviews positive. What positives name first is the pixel art mood, the music, and the science-fiction setting. The feel of a classic detective story, walked through rain and smoke, is what people like.
Looking at the same screens, negative reviews say the pixels don't flatter this game and the story is stock. So the reaction to the look is split, though mildly: the praising side is far larger.
Another thing stands out: a gap between tags and expectation. 'It's a detective game, but not the kind you expected' shows up as an opening line in both positive and negative reviews.
Lacuna gameplay — Steam store screenshot
Putting the Mechanics into Words
Reading the reviews, the verbs narrow to walking, talking, checking clues, and choosing. A few positives say it matters to pay attention to clues. Many others read it as closer to a visual novel with choices than to deduction.
In Puzzlebyrinth's vocabulary, this puts observation and deduction second and makes narrative branching the verb. For those who take the detective machinery as light, it feels thin. For those who enjoy branching, the choice itself stands in for deduction.
What the negative side repeats is the tedium of running around: pick up the phone, talk, hand over a form. Few verbs can read as virtue or as monotony. Here the subtraction does not raise the resolution of observation.
One of the puzzle rooms — Steam store screenshot
Place in the Lineage
The comparison points are the developer's earlier games and other detective games. Several reviews note shared weaknesses with that developer's earlier titles: cutscenes that can't be skipped and saves that can't be loaded manually.
Set beside a deduction-first work such as Return of the Obra Dinn, this one puts its weight on how the story moves. Where Her Story made searching records the play itself, here searching is a way in to the narrative.
My reading is that its reach is people who want to take in a science-fiction political drama slowly. For those seeking the pull of deduction, the hopes are placed elsewhere.
Lacuna gameplay — Steam store screenshot
The Texture of Difficulty
On difficulty, most reviews say normal or easy. Few say they got stuck. What gets talked about instead is the weight of effort.
One of the most-upvoted negatives is having to replay many times to see several endings. With no manual saving and no skipping of scenes, collecting achievements becomes a chore. Concrete numbers like 'eighth playthrough' and 'ninth playthrough' appeared across several reviews.
The other is that outcomes of choices are hard to read. Some write that wrong choices railroaded them into an unwinnable spot. When a heavy result lands without enough clues, it is taken as unkindness rather than difficulty.
Lacuna gameplay — Steam store screenshot
Sources
This piece was written from the Steam store's user reviews as of 2026-10-01.
· Steam: Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure (Overall 2,731 of 2,978 positive, about 92%, Very Positive)
· I read the opening portions of 20 positive and 20 negative reviews from the last year, retrieved via the appreviews API. Because of how they were retrieved this was not full close reading, so I reconstruct typical claims rather than quote.
· Many reviews were in Chinese, Russian, and Spanish; I saw only their openings and could not confirm finer detail.
Closing
Steam reads about 92% positive overall (2,731 of 2,978, snapshot 2026-10-01). My design-critique score is 7.0. Lower than the number because the deduction verb is thin and the game leans on narrative branching.
The pool's verdict reads: good as an atmospheric detective drama, don't expect the pull of deduction. Many endings exist, and the shared caution is that replaying for achievements is painful.
What it's worth depends almost entirely on what you ask of a detective game. Recommended if you want pixel art, music, and a political plot; outside its reach if you want to assemble clues yourself.
Lacuna gameplay — Steam store screenshot
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