If you’re a gamer and Star Wars fan, you’ve more than likely heard of LucasArts, the videogame developer side of Lucasfilm. Most of us associate LucasArts with the point-and-click adventure game craze of the 80’s and 90’s, when the company wasn’t just milking the Star Wars franchise for all it was forth. And for a time, it was good. But then adventure games sort of just stopped, their market value having fallen once full 3D and the Quake era had begun. LucasArts decided to make Star Wars games instead, which has obviously payed off despite some quality issues on certain games.

So imagine my jubilations when I saw an interview with LucasArts president Darrel Rodriguez on GTTV, who promised to bring LucasArts back to their old style of game developing. Star Wars was still their bread and butter, obviously, but he wanted the company to branch out and bring more quality games onto the market. The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition had just been released on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, and more LucasArts adventure games was coming to Steam. LucasArts shut down for a week in order to generate new ideas and concepts. One of these concepts was Lucidity, which they decided to make into a full game.

read this entry »

If you’re a gamer willing to open yourself to new and inventive ideas, consider downloading Lucidity from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. The main menu introduces you to a hauntingly beautiful rendition of a well-known Swedish lullaby, Byssan Lull, whose origin is steeped in mystery.

Lucidity’s composer, Jesse Harlin wrote an interesting piece recently on how this Swedish lullaby came to be chosen for the game, as well as his opportunity to work with Swedish singer Lisa Eriksson.

The LucasArts composer provided a partial translation of the lyrics on the website which are used as a starting point for the subtitles included in the video below.

read this entry »

Yesterday we reported on LucasArts announcing a new original title on GTTV. That new title is called Lucidity

Head of LucasArts Darrel Rodriguez said the company wants to go back to their roots, and while Star Wars is their main bread and butter, they’re more open to experimentation. LucasArts shut down for a week and tried to get back to their old style of creativity and game development. Out of that came Lucidity.

Lucidity tells the story of Sophie and is described as a puzzle platformer. The main character is basically like the Lemmings of old, continously walking through the levels. As Sophie moves through the dreamscape levels the player places different pieces like stairs, platforms and trampolines to help her move along. Plot wise it’s been described as Little Red Riding Hood if Red decided to walk through Alice’s Wonderland.

According to project lead David Nottingham the inspiration for the game came from childrens books, creating a 2D title with a flat paper texture effect and multilayered backgrounds.

Lucidity comes to XBLA and PC sometime in December.