LONELY, LUSTFUL, ARROGANT, HATEFUL

Intriguing, but ultimately lacking in story and character development. Definitely worth a go considering its price point.
Lonely Lustful Arrogant Hateful is an adventure game with puzzle elements based around a game show format.
Enter a deadly dystopian game show where challenges await and puzzles need to be solved to progress. Within the maze-like arenas, you will discover other contestants who can join you in your quest to escape. If you can survive the current quest, another one awaits. If you can complete all the trials then you can live a life of luxury and honor in The City of Champions.
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🤔Overall Impressions🤔
I very nearly gave this a negative review as I was frustrated at the lack of visual clues provided to progress through the initial level. The developer kept advising that you need to remember where you’ve been, which seemed incredibly unhelpful at the time.
Navigating a maze can be a little disorientating, but my sense of direction is usually very good. The initial maze has identical looking rooms apart from some have remnants of dead bodies, bones and blood. Apart from these distinguishable features, the rooms are homogenous. Entering these rooms was a bum clenching time as I had no idea whether I was going to get killed or not. For an hour, I tried and tried again, only to be decapitated by a laser every time I stepped foot in one of these vague looking rooms. It was very annoying and frustrating! Check my video out.
Gameplay Video
I was about to give up, but the words of the dev kept ringing in my ears. “Remember where you’ve been!”
I tried it again but this time I mapped it out with pen and paper, and completed it on the first attempt. He was right. It is funny how a maze can mess with your head!!
Don’t expect to be Indiana Jones or The Running Man. The mazes are quite rudimentary in appearance and the challenges will test your mental attributes more than your dexterity or physical prowess. There is no rolling around, avoiding deadly swinging deathtraps or cunning hidden pressure points. You will mostly be navigating mazes in top-down view and solving mental puzzles.
After each challenge is completed, there is a very brief character analysis, as the game show host asks you questions about your reasons for entering the contest. These are very concise and don’t delve very deeply into your psyche, but provide some background into the story and inject some welcome character development, breaking up the game play and adding some intrigue to proceedings. There are four characters in the game each with different reasons for risking their lives in this barbaric but illustrious game show environment.
This provides some replay value if you want to explore their characters further, but is it worth it?
Personally, I would say no, and one play through was enough for me.
If there was a little more emphasis on the story elements and character development then I think this would have been a very interesting game. The scenes are so quick and shallow that they don’t provide enough insight into their lives. There are some layers added as you progress, and there is an intriguing psychiatric session with each character, but again it is too brief and feels superficial. It’s a shame, as the story manages to scratch the souls of each contestant, and this was my favorite part, but I wished it had lasted longer and peeled more layers.
Playing the game again would involve repeating the same challenges, and I think this would get boring once you know what to expect.
Completing the game does unlock one of the two hidden stories that you can play afterwards. I played one of them and it is just another maze to navigate with stealth game play. It’s not clear what is needed to unlock each story but these could prolong the game life.
There are two difficulty levels. Easy and hard. The description tells us that the hard difficulty is the way the game should be played and ridicules us for playing the easy mode.
Playing on the hard difficulty means once all your characters are dead you must start the game again from level one. As far as I am aware there are no extra rewards for playing on the hard difficulty. There are no extra story elements or even an achievement. The game play isn’t more difficult, but there is more to risk. Obviously, it can feel annoying repeating sections you’ve already played to get back to the position you were at, so it’s your choice.
Graphics and sound are quite basic but perfectly adequate. There is no voice acting, and all discussions are purely text based.
I was happy to see that the game can be played using a controller as well as keyboard, and controls are easy to grasp.
🍳 Conclusion🍳
There are certainly a lot of great ideas here, and for the price point it satisfies completely, if you can progress after the initial level, which is by far the most difficult.
I think the game would have excelled if it had just delved deeper into the character and story side a bit further, but I can understand that this would probably have meant a higher price point.
Not exceptional, but there are enough elements to keep you interested for a few hours at least.

I bought this game, only because the creator made the I'm on observation duty series. I thought it would be something similar, but man i was wrong. I love how depending on who is alive, there will be different conversations. One thing i didn't like though is that some puzzles are challenging and make you think, meanwhile others are easy and just boring.

I really enjoyed it. It's unique and fun, and the story is really interesting, unpredictable and fairly compelling.
I honestly hope Notovia keeps making games like this. It's a refreshing change of pace from I'm On Observation Duty which are also great games. It really demonstrates the dev's range and creativity.
Love seeing stuff like this! Definitely worth the money.
Nate
<3

Cool puzzle game with a Squid Game twist and branching narrative. Notovia doesn't disappoint when it comes to weird and quirky indie games. I wonder what kind of easter eggs are in store this time around!
Graphics serve the game well and controls are solid with a gamepad controller. Should run with no problems even on an older machine.
EDIT: The bugs I encountered on launch day have been fixed in less than 24 hours. Very quick support from the developer!

It's worth the price point.
Fun (if easy) puzzles and plot is enough to hook you. I wanted to see where things were going.
Feels like if David Lynch liked anime and tried to make a game by himself.

Weird and interesting. Having a lot of fun with it!

Yeah, this game is super weird, but I genuinely liked it. It grew on me.