Castle of Secrets

Buggy mess, story is all over the place with many gaps you have to fill in yourself, and so many chapters. I had to look at a video to see how many, 17. and you have to do it 3 times for each ending. It is worth the $5 sale but man, the bugs that make you restart are absurdly awful.

This game was all over place and not in a good way unfortunately. So, originally I played the demo of this (called Prologue although it's a demo of the first level and doesn't include anything unique) and I liked the art style of it, and the puzzle in the introduction was serviceable. I like hidden object games and exploration type of games, so this seemed like it might be fun to play through. And some parts of it are done well, even charming. The characters in the game are all in a style that seems hand-painted or hand-illustrated and are 2D sprites that turn and move almost like a Paper Mario game. It's a nice visual identity, and while I would have like having the backgrounds also be painted / illustrated in the same way, the game still looked nice and had a really striking presentation. The music and audio were average, but not bad by any measure. The voice acting also seemed mostly fine to me, although there were issues around the voices not related to the performance of the voice actors themselves that I will cover later. But the narrative overall is very unsatisfying and really nonsensical. Mild spoilers, but the main character that you control, Susan, traverses …

I like the gothic horror aesthetics, but the gameplay is just awful and clunky.

No accessibility provisions. Saving permitted at any time, but loads only at the start of a chapter rather than at the point of saving. Controls are wonky and unresponsive; Settings may change when loading saved games.

The game up to level 8 is fun. The problem with level 8 is when you get to the collecting the ladies items. That is all fine and dandy until you need to use the statues. For whatever reason, the statues seems to not work with all three statues and even worse, the locket acts like the statue but I need the locket to progress. It creates this really nasty and annoying softlock. I have played it twice, first time realizing and second time not being able to do it. I do not mind this game, it a bueatiful game if not for the softlock that can happen with level 8 and 7. 7 being if you fling the mummies suddenly, you can't progress further with the level. Maybe in the future, work on the 3D controls and the 2.5 space before pushing it out there. Or have a contingency plan when it comes to losing pieces or missing items. Even better, have a realistic check point and save mechanic. Reset from last check point to restart level. Don't play it for the annoyance that is the soft lock.

I really like playing and story line was interesting. But the mask problem in the swamp was to painful and frustrating to continue. There really should be a skip to go on with the game. I am not coordinated with my keyboard to complete the mask in the swamp and go onward. To some I guess this kind of challenge would be fun but not for me