The idea is interesting--a girl looks behind a door and you can ask her 5 questions about what she saw. She'll say things like "it is vast" or "it was hot" or "I saw lots of cute animals" and then you'll guess one of 6 biomes--mountain, desert, tropical island, etc--that it could have been. After 3-5 rounds, you'll reach an ending to the game. Easy enough. But there are some wrinkles. For one thing, one of her responses may be a lie in an effort to trip you up. Also, some answers can apply to more than one biome. Plus, depending on how well you are doing (or not doing), she may descend into the depths of madness while ghosts and paranormal beings invade the game. You know, the usual 20 Questions type stuff. The idea is cute and interesting. The problem is...there's just not much there. There are only 8 possible endings and I had 5 of them within 20 minutes (each round is only 2-3 minutes). The others were a little trickier, but all endings and achievements only took about 40. Her answers never change, either. It's not like she has 30 different ways to describe the desert biome. She has 5 or 6, so you can figure out the combo for each biome in just a few minutes. You can beat the whole game in a single bus ride--with the saving grace being that it costs less than a bus ride, so the ROI is balanced. The sad part is that it feels like just a little more programming & writing could have really upped the complexity, length, & replayability of the game--giving more answer options for each biome to make them trickier to memorize, or maybe having 10 biomes, 6 of which are possible answers in each round (instead of the exact same 6 virtually all the time) would also mix it up more. Or adding 1 or 2 more things to interact with in the space. Things like that. But ultimately, the game's simplicity is what makes it a curious--and fun--little game to kill half an hour on. It looks like the publisher has several other games, so I'm curious how they iterate on the formula.
Nine Witches is a decent pixel art, point-and-click style adventure. Pros: - Interesting story. Set in WWII, Nazis are weaponizing an ancient anti-Viking curse in an attempt to win the war. You play a a quadriplegic professor of the occult & his Japanese assistant who are sent undercover to stop them. - Decent length. Took me about 7 hours--long enough to be enjoyable without over-staying its welcome. - Decent, stupid humor. Lots of dumb jokes, puns, & some meta 4th wall stuff. It's not going to win awards for it, but most of the humor aligns with what is typical in these types of games. - Proper difficulty. Some minor 'moon logic' puzzles, but not that bad--and not hard to get around. Cons: - Too much body humor. Poo, pee, vomit, etc...it's just NEVER as funny as people think it is, especially when the balance is off. It's sad because they clearly can write better jokes, but instead chose not to, I guess? Like one major character's personality is essentially only "gets drunk and farts...a lot. HA HA!" - Action sequences. 95% of the game is an inventory-based puzzle adventure, but then there are these weird gun battle bits that scale poorly. First time, you fight one thing. Then later another. Then on like your third exposure you fight 7 or 8 things, in waves, moving at different speeds, in a limited mobility environment. What? The fire lines are also pixel-perfect so you think you've lined up a good shot & it goes right "through" an enemy. The rules also aren't explained (there may randomly be other guns lying around you can use that you just have to notice exist). It got infuriating & I just stopped playing for the day several times when one popped up. - No fast travel. My god, it is 2023. There is no excuse for making us rewalk a half-a-dozen useless interstitial screens after we've unlocked or beaten an area. All in all, this is a good 4-star game. Despite a couple of glaring negatives, the overall experience is still well worth it for fans of the genre.
This is a simple point-and-click style puzzle game, with a few quirks. First thing to know is that every puzzle is self-contained. You'll enter a screen, have some goals, complete them, then start fresh on a new screen. It's not a "find an object on screen 3 and save it until screen 12" kinda puzzler. This makes it fairly easy as everything you need is always in your little area, but there were a couple of trickier, borderline moon logic puzzles that can take a while to crack. It is also a short game. It is only about 2-3 hours long on first playthrough, so it is nice if you want a game to piddle at for an evening or two, but it isn't going to take you days or weeks to beat. Not that you could play it over days or weeks anyway as...it has no save option. If you want to beat the game, you kinda have to commit the time to go through the whole thing at once (or be willing to leave it running in the background between playing sessions). The game does have a really neat core idea, though it never really delivers on it in a truly fulfilling way--you play as two characters, Chief and Colleague, and each of them can interact with objects differently. Chief is more serious, while Colleague is goofier--and occasionally that does result in some interesting, character-appropriate object interactions--but generally it seems almost random who can or cannot complete a task--and why one treats an object one way and the other doesn't seems almost an after-thought. It's like they make one character refuse to pick up a hammer or something simply because they promised the characters would act differently, NOT because it actually makes sense for that character to avoid picking up a hammer. Overall, I'm glad I played it and it served as a nice palate cleanser between more serious titles. I also understand it is viewed with nostalgia by many from former Soviet bloc countries. But given it's shortcomings, and short length, I'd only passively recommend it (a good deal when on sale).
This is a point-and-click adventure game that hits all the right notes. It's got that refined, but old school look, good clean puzzles (no moon logic), solid writing, compelling voice acting, some modern mechanics that vary up the game, and multiple endings. It's not a terribly long game, I think it took me about 10 hours or so, but that can be a good thing. Especially with replay to get different achievements or endings. Only one or two puzzles gave me issues, but I pushed through them after a bit. I liked the plot and the world and would love to see a sequel or different story set in the same setting. Overall I'd say this is a good, solid addition to any point-and-click fan's collection.
If you liked Rusty Lake: Hotel, then you'll probably like this title. It follows the family that settled the area and you play across several generations of the family tree. It has the same art and puzzle design of Rusty Lake: Hotel, but there are a lot more of them this time around. And, unlike Hotel, you can pull out of a puzzle here and jump into a different one if you hit a wall, which is nice. The puzzles are pretty good, though there is some repetition in the puzzle types. Occasionally the puzzle mechanisms aren't clear (I got stuck on one where I knew the right answer, but couldn't input it because it was unclear how the answer entry fields worked at first). But these are minor things. Overall the game is fun, quirky, odd, and well-done. It's not a particularly long game, though it is much longer than Hotel. Still, I found it a great game to play between longer, more serious games. Like a palate cleanser for a few evenings between main courses. Definitely recommended for fans of puzzle genre games.
Overall, I really liked this game. It had a few misses, but not many. It plays like many other Wadjet Eye titles which it feels like a familiar world, but a whole new chapter all the same. Pros: - You build a team and then pick 2 people for each mission. Each person has different skills. All puzzles can be solved in some way with any character combination, so this allows you to come at puzzles in the way you prefer, which is nice. - Fits into the "Wadjet Eye Universe" with references and nods to other titles, most notably the Blackwell series. - Good plot with lots of supernatural elements and some interesting takes on a few of them (mer-folk, faeries, dryads, djinn, etc). - Good voice work. - Mostly solid puzzles. Standard point-and-click gaming stuff, but most make sense (no 'moon logic' that is super esoteric to solve). Cons: - Once you pick a mission, you are stuck in that mission until it is done. That's not so bad, but it also occasionally locks you in an even smaller location until you've solved the puzzle there (like a single apartment). While it can be helpful (because it means what you need to solve it IS in that location), it can also be frustrating if you are stuck and just want to walk away and come back later. - Some art assets are hard to see. Sometimes this is a small item you may overlook, but I also had problems with ghosts being almost invisible. I saw some screenshots where the ghosts stood out, so I don't know why mine were so hard to see and if that just happens on some machines, but it was annoying. - Some puzzles have a lot of back-and-forthing, which gets a little repetitive in 1 or 2 points (but it's not that bad). If you liked other Wadjet Eye games (and I do), then I think this is right up your alley. And if you like point-and-click adventure titles, this is definitely one to add to your library.
Puzzle Agent was a good game with a few key flaws. But overall it was a great deal for the price (on sale for $5). Pros: - Fun game overall. Great low-stress time-killer. - A nice range of puzzle types--and some good ones I'd not seen before in puzzle games. - Goofy characters and wacky plot. - Minimal, but creative art and animation that gives it a unique style and feel. - Short play time--which could be a detriment except I think this game works best not drawn out. It is around 4-5 hours; just a few evenings of short gaming sessions. Personally, I thought it was a great 'palette cleanser' between more serious games. - Played a lot of it with my 9-year old helping out and it was a really fun parent/child bonding game. Cons: - Some puzzle repetition (though each repetition does get more difficult, so it's not terrible that some puzzles repeat). - Most are good, but a couple of puzzles do have poor design that render them almost useless as puzzles (like there is one 4x4 grid where you click on each tile to rotate it. You have to rotate them all to form a pattern. However, ALL of the edge pieces include the flat edge INSIDE the tile design. So you immediately know the proper orientation of 12 of the 16 tiles instantly. No thinking at all. There were 3 or 4 like that where you had to wonder how they passed a QA review without being refined). Some have complained about the overall puzzle difficulty or harsh scoring system. I didn't have a problem with that. Not that a couple weren't tricky. They were. But I liked that. One was so tricky to solve in-game (just hard to wrap your head around it on a screen) that I had to draw it out and solve it in the physical world. But I actually liked that. It reminded me of drawing my own King's Quest maps and that old school gaming. A couple were real stumpers at first, but they can all be solved with some thought. Overall, I recommend the game. Just know that you are buying a relative short, if humorous and fun, experience.
This game is a bit of a mixed bag, but there's more going on than is evident at first. High-level, set in the early 1990s, you arrive home after travel abroad (though your family moved while you were away and you've never actually lived in this house). A note on the front door from you sister tells you she can't be there to greet you, but don't go looking for her. You enter, no one home, begin to walk around and look at things, and the mystery of where everyone is begins. If you play this like a puzzle game/walking simulator to run through and beat as quick as possible and that's it, it may feel anti-climactic and stale. BUT...if you really start reading everything and thinking about the subtext of each note, how they fit on a timeline, and what's hidden between the lines, there is a lot more going on under the hood than is at first apparent. Each family member has a story unfolding, some of which is obvious, but a lot of which is very subtly handled and requires some inference. And that hidden story was the saving grace of the game for me. On the downside it was sometimes wonky to control and everything felt very big which meant a lot of walking (designers were used to making FPS games and admitted to making a the floor plan a smidge too spacious in hindsight). And there were a lot of repeated items and wasted opportunities for some form of character insight. But in the end, learning about the people that live there and their hidden secrets, traumas, and relationships was fulfilling. The whole thing can be played in a couple of hours. I think it took me 4 or 5 and I was picking up and examining EVERY thing (which was overkill). You can probably do it in 3 or so on a first play through if you are more focused. Just know you aren't investing in a particularly long experience. It is a good atmospheric game and fun to play in the dark or on a rainy afternoon with nothing else to do. Give it a go, think about the story elements, and I think you'll like it.
