THIS is what I’ve been looking for. There is this elusive sweet spot in the Hidden Object Adventure genre that I have sacrificed countless hours wading through mediocrity to find: and this is it.

You have: amazing early 90’s FMV characters with so much b-movie charm, hand-painted rooms and items, a large interconnected map, density of puzzles, variety of inventory puzzles, mini-games, and chain sequence hidden object games, and a nice dark story to tie it all together.

This developer, ERS (later named AMAX studios) seems to have had a sweet little streak of games between 2011-2013. I’ve tried everything before and after, and there’s issues all around. The earlier games are just pure hidden object games - no inventory puzzles, hardly any other mini games, just monotonous hidden object hunting. The later games ditched the open-ended map, making the game way too easy and boring (not to mention a less refined art style).

But in this sweet spot, there is some serious gold. Besides this, Dark Alleys: Pemumbra Hotel, Gothic Fiction: Dark Saga, and the Haunted Halls series are all pretty amazing. Absolutely bonkers art style, with a nice colored pencil look and some very interesting puzzles and solutions.

But this one is just great. Like Gothic Fiction, it has got a more serious tone than games like Haunted Halls. And I just loved every minute of it - even though it was missing a map!

Gonna dig through every single game they’ve put out in this time period, hopefully I will find some more gems (even if the plot summary doesn’t exactly excite me)

8.5/10 for me!