Nancy Drew®: The Final Scene
ah, the theater! the stars! an audience’s anticipation! set designs! lights! positions! murder…? having only fully played 6 Nancy Drew games at ‘press time’ (quite fitting since Nancy’s friend is a reporter in “The Final Scene”), this one is among my top 2 favorites. (*note: i foresee the 7th i’m currently engaged in becoming my #1, although i’m not here to jump the gun… unless someone points it at me as Nancy, bwuahaha!) all jokes aside, the story line is immediately compelling, unlike any i have yet encountered in this game series. while each player’s preference differs, i found the puzzles less frustrating than in other releases. the characters/ suspects were most engaging, regardless of loving/ hating them. as a critic/ player, i extend rave reviews!
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Classic Games.
Wow this one is a shining star among the early Nancy Drew games. You are thrown right into the action; no introductory dialogue that bores you to sleep, no obnoxiously long cut-scenes or menial tasks. Instead, the most exciting missing persons case in any Nancy Drew game I’ve played begins and from the first second to the final moments you are viciously tracking a kidnapper that always seems one step ahead, always taunting you with their stupid, low voice. The game is short but I will take a short and intuitive Nancy game over a long, frustrating and drawn-out one any day. There is a three-day time limit that puts the game nicely into a three-act structure. As you uncover new clues and puzzles, the time is always running out. The last day even has an actual timer that counts down to destruction ominously. I liked the characters, they weren’t the strongest I’ve encountered but how can you beat Henrik am I right? The thing that sets a good Nancy game apart from the rabble for me is whether or not you need a game guide to find your way around it. This is a classic example of a game that doesn’t require one, and is honestly a lot more fun because of it. 9/10
– Real player with 9.1 hrs in game
Hyper Treasure - The Legend of Macaron
I always appreciate a good game that is different than others, which this was.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Indie Games.
Very fun to play through
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Sacred Almanac Traces of Greed
A short casual point-and-click adventure. Note that it does not have hidden-object scenes, but it does have nice puzzle mini-games.
Despite its short length and thin story, it manages to create a certain atmosphere through good visuals and characterizations, Nothing in the game will wow you, but it may very well succeed in transporting you, for a short while, into its setting.
Almost all the achievements are all un-skippable. If you avoid using the “hint” button you will get 100% achievements by finishing the game.
– Real player with 13.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Singleplayer Games.
Was cute, until I had to replay it because the guy didn’t want to give me the keys to the gem mine. I checked the walkthrough just to see if I missed something as well as hints … it did nothing except showed me where the keys were meant to be. To be honest this game has so many problems its just not funny, its not worth buying, Also I noticed many complaints about it on another forum (when I tried looking for help), a post was created to post the problems people experience and then just got locked and cut off the last person who asked for help. Very unprofessional, I wish I didn’t buy this game. Feels cheated
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Dream Hills: Captured Magic
I loved it!
There is a nostalgic charm that combines kids' games and fairytales, that is so wonderfully relaxing for an old soul. I love the character design, the pokemon-esque soundtrack, and the puzzles. My only criticism is that it’s too short - I’d love to play 100+ hours of this!
There are no achievements, to exp hunting or grinding, just plain old enjoyment with no pressure!
Highly recommended!
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Just okay. The graphics are gorgeous but the game has maybe two or three music soundtracks so the game soon becomes very repetitive. The puzzles are okay but the developer used the HOG trope of a dark palate to increase the dificutly in finding objects. Also the game has no map so there is a ton of walking back and forth. Fortunately the journal is great at telling you what to do so you will not be completely lost.
Overall, while I was disppointed in the final product (I expected way more) I can still recommend the game becasue it truly is a casual game. I got the game in a bundle so I feel I got my money’s worth.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Heal
I am disappointed with the game, I think it just wasn’t for and was not what I expected. If you can’t handle clunky controls think twice before buying this. In every single level the game annoyed me with its controls in some way.
I understand that it’s a port, but it could have been done better.
EDIT: Turns out the game is not a port, but a multi platform release. Which does excuse the controls somewhat, since releasing on mobile and PC is difficult. However since PC is the main market for the game, I still believe it could have been done better.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
This piano melody seems vaguely familiar…
Heal sets you in the shoes of an unnamed old man as he wakes up from a dreamless sleep. However, the house he wakes up in is different from what you’d expect. Instead of waking up to the same old room, the door is locked and the only way to unlock it is to solve some puzzles around the room. From here, you guide the old man through seven different rooms where you’ll solve many puzzles along the way.
Heal is pretty easy to pick up, both from how it controls and how the puzzles are designed. You control the old man’s movement by just clicking where you want him to go with icons popping up for items or areas that you can interact with. These icons do require you to hold them down for about two seconds, but you’ll pretty quickly get used to it. Usually, this includes zooming into a puzzle (where you’ll be able to click or drag moving pieces), but it also includes looking through a cracked door or a window to see a puzzle hint/solution and walking through a door to get to the next chapter.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Blue Tear
I"m surprised there isn’t one review and honestly I"m not sure how this works so not even sure this one will show up.
The reason for this review being negative isn’t because I didn’t enjoy the game.
I actually liked the game and was having fun playing until it was unplayable due to you can’t finish the game because of the huge flaw in the game play design of it near the end of the game.
What makes this a game not to purchase is that the developers designed this game so that an essential item you need to finish the game that is used way before near the end of it simply disappears because you use it on a previous task, leaving you stuck at a crucial part near the end of the game because you can’t find another source for this item or way to get it back without starting completely over.
– Real player with 12.4 hrs in game
This is a long and detailed casual point-and-click adventure withs lots of hidden-object scenes and puzzles, but it is hampered by technical problems.
First, I and many other people could not get it to run in full-screen mode. Depending on your resolution, it could mean that the game appears naturally as a tiny little window. The way to fix this is to change your desktop resolution: an awkward and annoying workaround. This might make most people pass on this game.
It also crashed on me a few times. This was easily solvable by restarting the game: it continued from exactly the same place.
– Real player with 9.0 hrs in game
Mountain Trap: The Manor of Memories
I rather nice casual point-and-click adventure, with lovely music and graphics, and a pleasant, slow pace. There are hidden-object scenes and puzzle mini-games, but the bulk of the gameplay is in the point-and-click adventure.
Unfortunately, though there is a lot to do in this game, it all takes place in a rather limited number of scenes. Another deficiency is the stilted English text and poor voice acting.
The story is not very interesting, although it does have surprises. It’s also unfinished, though note that the sequel, Mountain Trap 2, seems to have been made by a different team and is quite a different game. It also only indirectly provides closure for the story here.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
The only thing that was good about this game was the ending.
after almost 3 hours of boredom i finally get to the ending and lookie here… it was a cliff hanger preparing for the second part….
pros.
ok art work
ok game play time (almost 3 hours for the main story)
cons.
very very boring…. i almost fell to sleep
no bonus chapter
very bland and boring voice acting… the voice is sooo low.. and with russian accent… it sounded like the women were recording while hiding in a room and trying not to wake someone up…. very annoying -.-"
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
The Secret Order 7: Shadow Breach
Let’s keep this short: this is an Artifex Mundi-published HOG. You know how they work, and you know what to expect both in terms of gameplay and graphics here.
The good news is that this one, like most of the games in this particular series, does not disappoint. The graphics are nice, gameplay is smooth, and most of the puzzles are at least decent and functional (although I’m getting kind of tired of the three-rings-of-beads puzzle that keeps getting used in every single game). No sliding tiles, so that’s always good.
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
Well, yet another classic Artifex Mundi game. You walk over odd locations, collect various junk, stick it in the oddly shaped places and get oddly reasonable results. All that makes perfectly absurd kinds of sense. Someone made a royal mess out of everything around, so our heroine with a bad case of OCD is always busy with sorting through piles of useless junk.
Basically, it’s more of the same. Same puzzles as in previous games with different pictures, same problems with these games, one bugged 3-colored-lasers minigame which I had to fiddle around with to make it work and a reused location from the previous game I guess. Nothing new. Overall image and video quality on the higher end of the spectrum for Artifex games, so I have nothing to complain about here. I have seen worse from them. Much worse.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Gordian Rooms 1: A curious heritage
I enjoy the ‘Escape the Room’ genre because (typically) they run shorter, can be played in bursts, and involve pure puzzle solving. They are more relaxing than having a complex story to keep track of and success is rewarded. For me, a good Escape game has a variety of puzzles, different environments, and uses conceptual (rather than outright) clues which make me think. Gordian Rooms met all of my criteria and my only complaint is that it is over. I would have loved to play through a few more room before seeing the credits and hope that Crimsonite Games will consider another installment!
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
This is a very good “Roomlike” game. The visuals are impressive (in fact they improve substantially as the game goes on- the demo is somewhat misleading in this regard!), the premise and setting are neat, and the writing can actually be quite clever.
Overall it is more challenging than the Room series; for the most part this is a very good thing as the puzzles are clever and complex. There are some “hidden clickable thing” puzzles, possibly about 50% of the interactables in the game- while I usually find these frustrating and bordering on unfair, the ones here I mostly actually like because it is possible to reason about where objects might likely be hidden. There are, however, a few cases where I thought the game did verge on being straight-up unfair (two or three puzzles to get to the ending, another two to get 100% completion out of maybe 25 total?).
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Insane Cold: Back to the Ice Age
I’m crazy for HOG so I think that’s the only reason I have finished this game. I don’t know if other people experienced crashes, but this game crashed 10 times during my play. The first crash happened after just half an hour. When I restarted the game there was no sound any more. I had to uninstall the game and start over. I didn’t mind the slow pace, bad English or non-sense solutions. It’s on par with most other game in the genre. I liked the puzzles as they seem quite challenging. The crashing however greatly reduced the enjoyment. You don’t know when it will happen again and erase part of your progress. The last crash happened four times at the same spot near the end when I was about 95% done. Yes I restarted four time to get past one scene. After that it’s OK. Overall I don’t recommend this game unless you’re looking for a game to test your patience.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
The story is not too bad - basically the main character is searching for a way to save his fiance. I was a little uncomfortable with the ethics of the main character stealing people’s souls in order to save his fiance (don’t these other people deserve to be saved as well?), but they resolve it all in the end.
The graphics are ok; definitely not what I would call gorgeous.
The main issue is in the HO puzzles. They are of the type that require intermediate actions in order to find some of the objects. Typically when this is required, the cursor changes shape in some areas of the scene to indicate that an action is possible, e.g. changes to a hand to indicate a pocket can be opened. This game only does this half of the time inside a single HO puzzle. The end result is that you think you have taken all the possible actions and assume that the remaining objects must now be visible. If the game either always changed the cursor or never changed the cursor, this wouldn’t be a problem. It is the randomness by which it chooses to change the cursor that is the problem. The end result is simply random clicking throughout the HO puzzle because you are never certain if there is an action to take or not. In the end, the game just felt like it was low quality and not even worth the sales price (much less full price).
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game