Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit

"Where did the animation budget go? Oh right, the scooter scene." The game gets a lot of the basics right—the voice acting is solid, and the scooter scene was surprisingly good (and clearly where all the visual effort went). However, as a point-and-click adventure, it feels frustratingly stiff. Click on a closed door? Zip—it's open in the next frame with no animation in between. For me, the most rewarding part of adventure games is watching your actions and puzzle solutions play out visually. Skipping basic interaction animations makes the world feel static and lowers the satisfaction of solving puzzles.

Absurd moon logic puzzles. Waste of time.

I am a sucker for a good globe trotting adventure game where you go after some lost treasure from the past. This game follows our young protagonist as she travels to Lithuania to claim her late grandfather's home, and in doing so falls head first into a race to grab a mystical crown that is said to be magical. The point-and-clicking, puzzles, and story are gripping to anyone who enjoys a game in the vein of Broken Sword, but the length of the game just feels a bit too short for my taste. That said, I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys this kind of story, and I'm looking forward to seeing where future installments take us.

Had a lot of fun playing this game! :D Laughed a lot, and had some shocks over surprising events that I didn't see coming. It allowed me to think creatively with what I had acquired throughout the game, although it sometimes was really difficult to understand what I was supposed to do with the things. Super nice to travel between European countries, it was a nice touch that I haven't experienced before in the games I play. While the ending felt kind of good, I also felt like there were too many loose threads that I wanted to tie up. I wanted to see the art piece that Dana sketched. :<

Interesting story that absorbs the player, although it basically paints a vague picture of the mission. The settings are beautiful and help immersion. The game follows all the conventions of a successful point and click adventure game. The riddles are carefully designed; sometimes they are overly challenging but they are interesting enough to keep the player going. However, I got the impression that the game is packed with riddles at the expense of the narrative, but also at the expense of character development. We barely get to know the characters, except the leading one. In my opinion the game would benefit from some more content that would add to the story (without presenting more tasks), in order to help the player gradually build a more detailed picture of their mission.

A lovely, feel-good adventure that reminds me of Broken Sword. Really nice art, cool (and sometimes annoying) puzzles.