Blood On The Thames

I wanted to like this game. I actually was liking it. But it’s too buggy for me to finish. The game is a Lovecraftian mystery with still photos of the characters. It was both cute and creepy at the same time. There are a couple of puzzles per chapter that were interesting. However … 1) the achievements don’t work, and more importantly 2) the game kept locking up on me. Since there are no manual saves and if it freezes you have to play the whole chapter again, I just don’t have the patience to go through all the dialogues and puzzles again. I was also not thrilled with the chapter ending confrontations being timed. If you don’t match the right phrases and documents, you have to start all over again. It doesn’t make sense to me that this would be a timed task. Anyway, I would have put up with that because I was enjoying the story and concept. I just don’t want to keep replaying it due to the game freezing up at least once per chapter (11 chapters in full game).

Initially, I was going to be a bit harsher on this game, but when I got to the credits and saw how small the studio was, I decided to go much easier. This game has a lot going for it. The photographs are super interesting and unique, and give it a very distinct feel and personality. The pencil look, while a little muddy, very much so throws you into the atmosphere of the game, enhancing the 1800’s feel. That said, there are a lot of little things that I hope get patched up. Animations, random visual glitches, and spelling errors mostly. This was where I was going to be harsher, but I am pretty sure they don’t have anyone on QA. Hopefully they will find and fix most of these. Overall, I had a good time, and I hope that they are able to improve it more for the future.

Victorian Lovecraft murder mystery? Yes please!

While I am unfamiliar with the setting this game takes place in, the added element of the supernatural adds on an unexpected twist. I feel like this game is a theatre kid's passion project come true. Anyway- super excited to keep playing past the first chapter!

This is such a well thought out point-and-click murder mystery - you can tell how much effort and love went into the game. I've only played through the first chapters and I can't believe how much more is ahead of me - it's long and there's lots to explore! Great storyline, and cool use of actors in the graphics - it adds dimension to the sometimes simple point and click games. However there are a few formatting issues, and the Mac version still needs some cleaning up. Bonus: you get to pet a dog named Buck as much as you want :)

One of the benefits of using glitchy stuff for your magic system: Is that a bug or a feature? Yes It does make it a bit muddy as to what is intentional and what isn’t, but there is enough good here to forgive some of the stranger elements