Short and relatively charming adventure in the vein of Samorost and Botanicula. No inventory management, no verbs, no dialogue, just clicking hotspots on the screen in the right order. Nice animation and graphics, soothing music and the puzzles occasionally provide a challenge. Sadly the challenge is more about trying to figure out what you should be doing than actually solving the problem itself - the age-old Myst™ curse. You find yourself spending lots of time flipping colored switches with no concept of what you're supposed to accomplish.

The story doesn't really make much sense or seem to be going anywhere. When it finally does the game just abruptly ends, and the said anticlimax just seems to underline the already short length of the game. If you've already played all Amanita Design games and still want more, then and only then consider Lilly Looking Through. Lilly doesn't quite fall in the same league, but is pleasant enough to waste a couple of hours with.

TL;DR - Wait for a bundle. It's cute but short and tedious with no story and no replay value.

Lilly looking through is a point and click atmospheric puzzle game. I hesitate to even call it an Adventure game because there's no dialog and really no story at all. It's basically a short series screens designed to create an atmosphere of whimsy with puzzles to stretch the time out. The one story element there is, chasing the little boy, is really nothing more than a macguffin to get you to the next screen.

At no time are we ever told who these kids are, where they come from, what world they are in, what the rules of it are, why they are there, where if anywhere they were planning or going and what if anything they were planning on doing before the boy was swept away.

That it appears to be presented in a package of magical whimsical mystery is just covering for the fact that in actuality there is no story at all. It's just an experience game made to set a mood and impression. That the bulk of the short play time is made up of puzzles that once figured out are almost immediately solvable the second time around and beyond just means it's experience game that you'll really only want to play once.

Speaking of the puzzles, every time you have Lilly click to go somewhere or do something you to wait. Having to sit through the slow animations every single time and not being able to skip or cancel them no matter how many times you were redoing the same motions made me want to stab my eyes out. It was just so tedious.

The fact that this game is still very short in spite of all this tediousness and the fact that they reached their Kickstarter stretch goal to make the game longer is really saying something.

If you come to the end and think 'That's it?' a short length of a game is more likely to feel noticeable and problematic than another game of the same length with a satisfying conclusion that feels like a complete, whole experience. To the Moon is a good example of the latter. It is short but that never feels problematic because there's a definite, clear conclusion that makes sense in the context of the game and the journey.

This game in comparison definitely gives a 'Huh? That's it? What does that even mean?' feel at the end which just makes the short length all the more noticeable and unforgivable. If you are going to make a game first and foremost about soaking up the atomsphere framed by gameplay that that gives no replayability to speak of then at least make it long enough so that we feel we get enough time in that world to soak up the atmosphere.

Seeing as it's both short and without a story, all your are left with is a short time with a feeling of whimsy that's mostly padded out by puzzles made tedious due to all the slow unskippable animations between motions.

Lastly, I want to talk about pricing and packages. I bought the 'Deluxe Edition' through their Humble store. The regular version for $10 pre-order at the humble store did not come with a Steam key. The 'Deluxe Edition' for $15 did. It also came with a PDF artbook, which turned out to be very short and mostly just pictures of one particular locale in the game. It's also the same PDF they are giving at GOG for $9, the price of the regular version minus 10% off new release sale. They literally charged $5 extra to for a Steam key if you bought the game from the Humble Store which is not only shady, I've honestly never seen another developer do this.

The music was excellent, relaxing, magical sounding and ambient and the best thing about the game in my opinion. It would have been nice if this had come with the 'Deluxe Edition' for $15. It didn't. The soundtrack will put you out another $10. I'll pass as I've already spent more than I should have for what I ended up getting. It's a real shame because I wanted to love this game.

Lilly Looking Through manages to captivate without being dragged down by some of the more cumbersome aspects of the genre. The beautiful artwork and animations will draw you in while the clever puzzles are a challenge without ever becoming too obscure. I only wish there was more to experience as the adventure ended all too soon. Check out http://www.gameramble.com/lilly-looking-through-pc-game-review.html for a full review.

A beautiful adventure with clever puzzle mechanics and great music. I usually don't go for thsee, but Lilly snagged me.

TL;DR LLL is a good point and click game with tons of adventure game errors.

Yes, I know I said it wasn't recommended. I'm probably gonna get shot in the head for this, but, Lilly Looking Through just feels like wasted potential. When I was going into this game, I had high expectations because people were saying it's good, and that it's like Machinarium and so on. After finishing the game (yes, it was that short), I don't feel like it's really that great.

Lilly Looking Through is a story about a girl named Lilly, who has to rescue her brother Row, from a... magcial cloth who has appeard to taken Row away. Yeah. Anyway, let's start with pros. The pros are that the game is charming and whatever, and has a nice setting. You can switch between two worlds to solve puzzles in and the art style is really cool. The animation in this game is wonderful, and it just looks overall great. The game isn't too hard, and you'll have fun playing it. Maybe.

Now it's time for the long list of cons. Some are personal, some are obvious.

1. The game is waaay too short. After finishing a puzzle, I was thinking what would happen next to these two protagonists. Then the game ends. Seriously. On a cliffhanger. one second I'm partially enjoying myself and the next second the credits are rolling. It's bad, but still not as bad as Dark Matter (the game that literally stopped halfway through).
2. YOU CANNOT skip animations. So whenever you're doing a puzzle, you have to watch every slow animation Lilly makes. It looks nice, but not when you're sitting there for minutes watching Lilly shamble on. It makes the games pace noticeably slower, like playing King's Quest on Low Speed without cutting through animations. It akes the game super ♥♥♥♥ing tedious and I can't enjoy it if it's like that.
3. Variety. There were a lot of the same puzzles. Ones with color mixing. I no like colors. I never thought a really short game could get repetitive.
4. Random. There's an appearance from Lilly's Grandpa at the end that had nothing to do with anything and it baffled the ♥♥♥♥ out of me. Also, there's like 5 lines of voice acting that randomly appear and I don't get it.

Overall, I wanted to like this game, but I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy it. There were a lot of cool things, but when you stop and look at it, you'll realize that there's problems abound. With that said, I wouldn't mind a sequel with some improvements or a new game from these guys. There's still a lot of potential here.