I wanted to write about a game that is almost a lost memory to me. Lurid Land is a 1997 platformer made up of time-limited levels where the player must solve puzzles and rescue trapped elves while trying not to get caught by the guards.
I remember playing its demo on a CD that came with an old Turkish computer magazine called Byte. The game has a charming atmosphere with its colorful graphics, music, and difficult challenges. I remember constantly getting caught or falling from heights. Like many older games, Lurid Land was not very forgiving.
I only got to play a few levels in the demo back in 1997–98 and eventually forgot about it. Only fragments of the game remained in my memory, and they were almost like corrupted data. For years, I remembered the game as having a blue wizard character who jumped around, shot magic arrows at enemies, and solved puzzles. Luckily, I was able to use ChatGPT to figure out what the game was actually called.
I want to show a gameplay video from one of the levels I remember:
I was also able to find and run the game successfully on my Steam Deck using EmuDeck. It runs just fine after adjusting the controls a little.