Lucius

About Lucius

Lucius is a horror adventure by the Finnish studio Shiver Games, released on Steam on 26 October 2012; Lace Mamba Global published the boxed version. Its hero is the villain: Lucius, born on 6 June 1966, is an ordinary-seeming boy until his sixth birthday party, when Lucifer visits him and tells him his true gifts have come. From then on he works through the household of Dante Manor, killing his family and its staff one at a time.

You explore the manor and its grounds in third person: a tiled cold room hung with carcasses, the kitchen, the wine cellar, gardens under snow and older, darker rooms below, down to a candlelit ritual chamber. Each chapter gives you a victim. You watch them, read your notebook, pick up and combine items and, as the game goes on, unlock powers from Hell such as telekinesis and mind control. The goal is a death that looks like an accident, so that no one suspects the quiet little boy.

The fear is less about being chased than about what you are made to do. The game borrows openly from 1970s occult films about an evil child: the deaths are shown graphically, the manor is dim and cold, and red occult circles and a devil's shadow appear around Lucius as his power grows. Critics were split, and its Metacritic score sits at 59: GameSpot found that the core ideas are not explained well, and a Finnish review called it a child's version of Hitman built on The Omen. Players are kinder, and many say some puzzle solutions are rigid and need trial and error.

Lucius suits players who like dark, puzzle-led horror adventures and playing the monster for once, and who can put up with older, sometimes buggy design. It is a single-player game on Windows only, with full English, German, Italian and Spanish voice acting and text in five more languages. It was followed by Lucius II: The Prophecy in 2015 and Lucius III in 2018.

How to play Lucius

1. Start a new game and watch the opening on Lucius's sixth birthday, which sets up his task.
2. Explore Dante Manor and find the victim the chapter asks for; your notebook keeps track of what you have learned.
3. Pick up items and combine them in your inventory to prepare an accident.
4. Use the powers you unlock, such as telekinesis and mind control, to move objects or make other people act for you.
5. Stage the death so it looks like an accident, then go on to the next chapter.

Tips

• Read the notebook whenever you are stuck; it records clues about the current target. Right-click puts it away again.
• Watch where a victim goes and what they do before trying anything; most solutions depend on their routine.
• Some puzzles want one specific way of doing things, so if a plan that should work fails, try the same idea with a different object or spot.
• Save often; players report occasional bugs with menus and placing items.

Questions