Lucid Blocks Review (PC)

I can’t quite tell if I’m disturbed by Lucid Blocks or in love with it. It’s like a fever dream that I can’t wake up from. Sweaty, perplexed, and burdened by the sheer amount of supernatural wisps and abstract details, I have this unusual sense that something is wrong, and that I shouldn’t be where I am. It’s like Minecraft, but with amplified weirdness and a lot of confusing layers that make its liminal appearance awfully difficult to comprehend. I don’t know if I’m coming or if I’m going, or if the blocks I plant are plastic or an inkblot incubated from imaginary materials. I’m lost, and I have absolutely no idea what is happening. And yet, I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot more for me to uncover. The fog is drawing me in, and I have this uncontrollable urge to venture deeper into its depths.

Initially, Lucid Blocks felt like little more than a mod for Minecraft—a love letter, of sorts, that was able to implement all of the same basic features, but also a lot of its own unorthodox design elements. It took me about eight minutes to realize that it wasn’t, in fact, just an ode to Minecraft, but an entirely different void that had its own story to tell. The concept was similar—to craft and build a world with blocks and materials in an open-ended space. But, it had more to it. It was a game that wanted me to experiment with facets that I didn’t know could exist in a liminal cortex. It wasn’t just about building; it was about utilizing the world to explore vast possibilities, some of which required the use of a grappling hook, a glider, or a belt of bombs to unearth. What’s more, it ushered me to believe that almost anything could be manipulated. Another few minutes went by, and suddenly it hit me like a freight train—that feeling that there was so much more to unpack than a vivid dream with a few familiar blocks and silhouettes. Lucid Blocks pulled me further away, and it kept me there until I couldn’t find the way back to the front door.

At the heart of Lucid Blocks’ seemingly endless world is a dream-like carcass that doesn’t always know what it is, much less what it wants. Instead, it hands you the reins and simply tells you to weave lucid thoughts into structured realities, where monolithic buildings and thought-provoking landmarks meet in the form of cluttered creations of an almost nonsensical kind. In this world, you aren’t just told to build, however, but to take full advantage of one of several tools to scour the landscape and transform it into your own voxel-crafted oil painting. And there’s a great deal to paint, too, with thanks to an in-game synthesis tool that allows you to conjure troves of cubes, lights, and flora, to list just  a few of its items and natural resources.

As it turns out, Lucid Blocks isn’t just about exploring a voxel landscape and ruffling a few dream-like feathers; it’s also about surviving in a liminal world that houses dozens of peculiar creatures and untamed creations. And believe me when I say, there is a ton of things here that can prevent you from crafting and enjoying the voxel suite for its simple pleasures. In addition to the task of developing gargantuan worlds, you also have the rather demanding goal of fending off giant spiders, ominous gels, and extraterrestrial beings, among dozens of other territorial species.

Lucid Blocks isn’t really a game that you can describe without a four-hundred page encyclopedia to hand. Despite it being enclosed within a liminal setting with relatively easy mechanics, there are still tons of things that can pique your interest and perplex you here. But that’s sort of what makes it so darn special: the fact that it has so much to offer and countless ways for you to unpack it, block by block, jelly by jelly. It’s a wild ride that feels awfully compelling, even when it makes little to effort to illuminate the purpose of the journey. It’ll make you laugh, and it’ll make you cry. Heck, it’ll make your wildest fever dreams feel like harmless visions taken from a toddler’s imagination. But again, that’s sort of the point.

All in all there’s a great game here that blends the familiarity of Minecraft’s voxel-centric building suite with its own unique hallucinogenic twist and absurd block-based aesthetic. Moreover, it’s a surprisingly easy game to jump into and get lost in, more so given that you don’t need an objective in order to just enjoy it for what it truly is. And that’s all that you need to know before slipping behind the wheel here. Again, it’s a difficult one that explain without putting you in the limelight. For the sake of keeping it simple and to the point, though, we’ll leave you with this: if it’s a quirky and creative sandbox game that you want—a game that will not only allow you to craft and develop monolithic worlds in liminal environments, but will also grant you access to a wealth of wacky creatures and LSD-inspired imagery—then you ought to consider giving Lucid Blocks a whirl.

Verdict

Lucid Blocks is like a sweat-inducing sleep paralysis demon that forces you to bear witness to a perpetual nightmare that has no real meaning or moral. To call it a strange sandbox IP wouldn’t be giving it a proper moniker. No, Lucid Blocks is—and I mean this in the best possible way—a fever dream that you can’t help but tangle with, even when you relish the thought of arising from a grueling slumber. It’s unusual, and it is a little “out there” as far as voxel-crafted build ‘em ups go. But, it’s also a great game that brings a bunch of intriguing layers to the canvas, including an intuitive crafting suite, a sizable collection of customizable blueprints and set pieces, and a plethora of creatures and gadgets, materials and biomes. That’s what I’m willing to take away from all of this: the fact that, while it is and ridiculously bizarre and nonsensical, it’s also a tremendous amount of fun to chomp on.