First, this is a quick game, maybe 2-3 hours total. But there are times that's exactly what you want. And at a sub-$5 price point, it's totally worth it, even with the short play time. Second, some have dinged it for being weird for weird's sake...and it is. But I think that's part of the charm. It doesn't make much sense, but if you like odd imagery with a little tongue-in-cheek to it, this is a fun aesthetic. Look at the screenshots above. If the art speaks to you, you'll like it. If not, you probably won't. The basic plot is 5 guests (different animals) come to the hotel and you're job is to help/murder them one by one and feed them to the remaining guests. You know, your standard fare. Pros: - Fun, but not super hard. Provides a few hours of casual, simple fun. - Fun look and feel. - Some creative puzzles, not always the old stand-bys you see in other games. - Not hard to figure out. Very self-explanatory (but without feeling like hand-holding). - Affordable (two bucks and lasted longer than many movies). - First in a game series/world. So if you like this, there's more to play. Cons: - Some of the puzzle patterns/types do repeat making subsequent puzzles a little easier and predictable. - Once you start a puzzle series, you can't stop. You pick a guest's room to "help" each night, but once you pick, you have to play out that guest's range of puzzles and it won't let you leave the room to pick a different one. - Low replayability, at least for a while after. At the end of the day, it is what it is...a whimsical, dark little puzzle game that you can knock out with an 80% score in a couple of hours (or another hour more if you are trying to 100% it). It's not perfect, but it's creative and original and fun--and at this price point it's a great deal. I recommend it.
Overall, this is a wonderful game with a few key shortcomings. On the "plus" side, the game had a LOT of good things going for it: -- Beautiful graphics that set a wonderful tone and realistic world -- Some of the best, most natural voice acting in any game I've ever played. -- Nice, subtle score that sets the mood without being invasive -- Interesting plot with a lot of thought and detail packed in -- Isolationist feel is really atmospheric (you are in contact with a boss by radio, but barely see another person the entire time you play) However, it is not all perfect. -- The game is short, maybe 5 hours. Sometimes this is a plus, but just know going in you aren't buying a massive 80-hour adventure. This was a letdown for me because I enjoyed the world so musch. Some games I'd love to play, beat, and move on, but I WANTED to spend more time in this one so the short playtime hurt. -- It's dialogue driven, but dialogue doesn't matter. That is to say you have choices in each conversation, but none of them truly affect the plot or even the next radio interaction. It seems like a game that SHOULD have multiple endings, depending on how you answered certain questions, but it doesn't, which is a real shame. -- Speaking of ending (no spoilers), it just wasn't what I wanted. There are two "endings" in a way--one for the events in the game and one for the larger events of your life. The game events ending was fine, but I wish the larger ending could have turned out different. I felt like it was going to end like it did early on, but never wanted it to. -- Similar to dialogue, there were other items in the game that you wanted to have meaning or influence, that just didn't. --Finally, the controls can be a little wonky, but it does allow for button remapping, which helped. In the end, I think the experience of the game is DEFINITELY worth it, but I'd wait for a sale price given the short playtime. I still give it a well-earned 4-stars despite the shortcomings.
This game has some general faults, but overall it is just a fun little time waster. It's great for when you don't want to get super deep into something, but would love to unwind for an hour or so with a quick pop of humorous gaming. Pros - Nice art style, simple objective, fun pop culture Easter eggs hidden throughout, good humor and characters, good imagination in concept and execution (kids using their own imaginations to make their Halloween costumes real to fight candy-stealing monsters in-between Trick-or-Treating), and fun to play with a kid (my 5 year old couldn't control it well enough, but LOVED sitting with dad playing it together every night leading up to Halloween). Cons - Movement is a little wonky and counter-intuitive (on keyboard), overall game is generally repetitive, combat is pretty flat, easy, and without much variation, and it has bad contrast in too many places (it takes place at night, so it's often dark, and in some areas or with some characters, it can be really hard to see well). It's not terribly long--maybe 6 to 8 hours--which could be a detriment, but helps the game shine a little more when it risks far too repetitive gameplay were it any longer. Save points aren't as common as I'd like, but it's pretty easy to find one and play the game in casual intervals. You also basically can't lose, which makes it a great game for young kids (you may lose a battle, but there's no real consequence, you just get to try again--no loss to your candy stash or health or anything). Nice upgrades would be to mix and match costume parts to different effect (I know that would be hard to do with the art, though), more combat options and better combat mechanics (have powering up your special power more meaningful or have damage continue across battles instead of resetting), and making sure every costume had a special power outside battle. Also, it would be nice for each stage to have different mini-games.
Overall, like the first game, the biggest selling points of BM2 are the atmosphere and story. It does a good job of using good art, good sounds, and a sufficiently creepy plot to create a world that feels brooding and dangerous--and that's just when it's set in New Jersey! (Zing!) Soon, though, you find your way across the pond and begin exploring the Black Mirror Castle grounds and the sleepy little hamlet nearby, now a fading tourist trap (much like New Jersey, Zing2!) after a boom of people came to gawk at the sites of the murders from the first game. The puzzles are good, with most being complex without being too hard--though a few will require you to burn a few brain cells. The game is very long, too, which makes it a really good deal for the price. You meet some old characters and some new, many very distinct and interesting. It is not without problems, though. One is that it is just the first half of a two-game plot, basically. It would have been too much for one game, but don't expect total fulfillment at the end of this entry in the series because it's really just setting up part 3. Also, the character...man...this was an issue with the previous entry a little too, but it really stands out here. First, he can be rude. Like even when he says "I'll have to sweet talk my way past this person," the dialogue for half your topic choices are antagonistic and angry. Often he seems overly angsty in a conversation for no real reason. It can get really whiny and the character doesn't have much of an emotional arc in the game in terms of how he relates to the world around him. Second, he often acts a certain way just because script needs him to do so. Like he meets this girl one time and then will do anything to prove her innocence when she's accused of a crime. Why? Because she's kinda cute and they spoke once? His motivation is often to just keep the game moving and not as realistic as you may expect for the situation.
Overall, I liked this game. It does a great job with moody, atmospheric art and music and the story is interesting enough--centering around a dying noble bloodline and the prodigal son returning home after losing his family in a fire at the family estate years before. Of course, satanic rituals get involved, as they are wont to do with dying noble bloodlines, and soon our hero finds himself in the grips of a growing madness and with revelations of hidden parts of his past (also common among dying noble bloodlines). Throw in a secret laboratory or two, ancient family crypts, a curse passed down to each generation for 800 years, fratricide, a morgue, a spate of unsolved local killings, an isolated village, and the fact the family also owns an insane asylum for kicks, and you get the gist of how the plot goes. The puzzles mostly work well, your standard pick-up-an-item-and-apply-it-creatively later format. There are a few distractor items, as well, which is always nice and adds a simple complexity in puzzle solving. However, it's not without its flaws, either. For one thing, you can die in the game--only it doesn't tell you this until like 70% of the way through when something suddenly kills you...so I hope you saved early and often! Surprise! Also, there are a few out-of-place, "filler" type puzzles that I personally loathe (like a randomized "sliding tiles" puzzle. Only one in the game. I wound up finding a saved game from someone else online that picks up just past it so I could skip it). At times the story lulls or it feels like you are on a bit of a side-quest. And sometimes you can't click on something more than once. You click it and you expect a line of dialogue describing it (as happens 99% of the time), so you reach for a soda and something flashes on screen and you missed it and you can't re-create it. But overall, it's a fun enough game for adventure format fans, with two sequels to enjoy as well. I'd recommend it.
As others have said, this is a good little story, but it really is more of a "playable story" and less of a "game." It's pretty linear and there are few real choices to be made. If you want to, you can play through it in a long evening, or over a few short gaming sessions. But that's OK. It's a good plot with some creative ideas about how one lives their life, how memories haunt and affect us as echos across time, and what one might do differently if able to go back and make different choices (though altered memories, which is the game's premise). It's short, sweet, and poignant and one of the few "games" I would actually love to see made into a movie. Because it is basically an interactive plot, even with the low-res 16-bit graphics, it has a very cinematic feel to it storytelling-wise (in how information is revealed, etc).
I bought the first Blackwell game on sale and didn't expect much out of it. And honestly, it wasn't a particularly long game, or terribly challenging. But it was fun. And I found myself thinking about the characters and premise for several weeks after. I came back and bought the rest and I really enjoyed the ride. I don't know how much they planned from the outset, but the games really build on one another; characters reappear (sometimes with new revelations about their past actions) ideas of life and death build into recurring themes, the protagonists' bond deepens, locations come back, and the series naturally builds from a simple little one-off mystery game to a sequel with some callbacks to a series-spanning plot with the fate of millions in the balance. This is a great point-and-click adventure game series that has a few small flaws, but nothing severe (for example, there is an interesting mechanic in the first game to combine your notes/clues to make new deductions, that disappears in the next game even though you still take notes, but then comes back in future games though it is never as informative or useful as it seemed in the first one). Many of the puzzles are of a good complexity level, neither terribly obvious nor impossible. I recommend it for fans of the old late-80s, early-90s adventure games.
