Review scoopings 2/5 · Aug 4, 2024
So Much Potential.. Squandered
Preliminary: Even tho the game itself actually has nothing to do with Elvira's Movie Macabre, I suppose I will keep it tied to that franchise here because she is extremely prominent on most versions of the cover and it's often presented as "Elvira's Horrorsoft Presents" (which really is just the developer company). I've heard very good things about the actual …
Preliminary: Even tho the game itself actually has nothing to do with Elvira's Movie Macabre, I suppose I will keep it tied to that franchise here because she is extremely prominent on most versions of the cover and it's often presented as "Elvira's Horrorsoft Presents" (which really is just the developer company). I've heard very good things about the actual Elvira adventure, but gotta play this one first, which isn't so highly reviewed.
Wow I was really unsure about this due to the slow beginning (as cool and horror-y and camp-y it is) and then credits rolling instead of letting me just start the game, dreading the sluggishness of graphic adventure games, but this is really a parser-based game. Like I can click the menu but I prefer the text parser based commands and things are moving along very quickly: screens load quickly, I don't have to sluggishly move my computer graphic adventure character around, etc. We'll see tho
Day 1
Indeed, in general, the UI was a highlight, like a text adventure meets graphic adventure 
Like Maniac Mansion and many of its contemporaries, this seems to be a time-based game. Uh oh. But it is neat how the car accident will happen regardless, etc.
I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying it so far, but I really don't like when you get to the UI of looking inside something, say the cupboard, it's not clear how to Take the item. I click Take it doesn't work; I try to type I can't type... Argh, overall really good UI but that's a big blemish.
Bahahaha how awful. Whyyyy are early adventure games so obsessed with bad action segments and easy deaths. Yea no. I had the stake, I was ready for the dog, and I am an insanely fast typer. But after just 2 tries, I realized, why am I playing this. The UI is neat and I like how seamlessly they balanced text and graphic adventures, and it's not as sluggish as many of its contemporaries, but the Look is blah, the horror theme isn't as brutal as I had hoped, and there is nothing to warrant pushing through the usual cheap deaths. Especially within a year of the great Loom! Moving on.
Look: 7/10 The UI bumped this, otherwise it's quite drab.
Sound: 6.5/10 Evil enough but could've been much more with the Amiga.
Play: 7/10 Does the early graphic adventure format mostly well, but its action elements were poorly done and the love of deaths as a means of replayability and "challenge" is not my favorite.
Feel: 6/10 It just felt blah and not worth pushing through, despite so much potential--a good game engine, a horror premise, and the Amiga's power... Quite disappointing what Feel they mustered with so much potential.
Attachment: 6.5/10 Part of me wants to see what I did wrong with the dog segment, especially since I'm a fast typer, but I know there are so many better games to look forward to so moving on.
Completion: Went to the Ivy Cottage, was headed to the gated house, not really sure how to sum up what point I was at
Playtime: ~30 mins