The Inheritance of Crimson Manor

I picked this up during the Winter Sale, installed it, and finished it all on the same day. Took me between 6-7 hours, and that was with some idling in between. The overall story was engaging, with a bit of a surprise you discover at the end, with a choice you have to make. I liked that. The puzzles are not frustrating or unfair, but if you still want help... beware of the hints. They are more like solutions than hints and give quite a bit away. Before you give up on a puzzle to get a hint, make SURE you want to. Everything made sense in the puzzles and the story, and there was nothing superfluous or left hanging. It was quite an enjoyable play session. The spooky gothic atmosphere was wonderful with good sounds and music, and there are zero jump scare types of things (I was expecting maybe one or two because I was getting a little tense as the story progressed, but thankfully, all is calm). Nice game.

Crimson Manor is similar to Gone Home, but with Resident Evil-style puzzles. The environments and 3D models are very well done, although there are occasional visual issues like unnatural lighting. The 2D art is fantastic; I loved the original drawings, especially the penny dreadfuls. The puzzles are mostly straightforward, and I was able to complete them all without getting frustrated enough to use hints. Once you unlock different wings of the house, it can become hard to remember where the unsolved puzzles are; I started keeping notes at that point. The story is pretty good. There are a few small bugs that can cause a little confusion at times, but nothing major. You can't remap the keys. Although it's not shown in the key map, you can use Tab to see your inventory, which is more convenient than using I. If you like this type of game, and especially if you like the time period, I'd recommend it.

Graphics are quite nice but overall the game is bland and the story uninteresting. Puzzles are pretty easy, most being trial and error. Complete puzzle, get key to room, do the puzzle in that room and get next key and repeat.

Looks nice, plays nice. The map gets extremely useful after a while, the journal could store more, but then you had nothing to take notes of by yourself ... the part we all love with puzzlegames, don`t we ... When completely lost there is an in-game hint system which doesn`t take all the pleasure. The end of the story is ... well ... let´s call it "ok". Dont`t expect to much. If you like searching for keys and get some instant reward every time you find one, this is a game for you. It took me 10 hours to complete (I am a slow player) and I liked it.