Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride

One of my favorite puzzle games from Artifex Mundi. The puzzles are simple, but they are fun and fit the story well, so it never feels boring or too hard. I liked how the hidden-object scenes and mini-games keep the game moving at a nice, relaxed pace. The story is about going to your twin sister’s wedding. But your journey goes wrong when a bear attacks your carriage and you crash. After that, you explore different places, collect items, and use them to solve puzzles and move forward. You also meet an adorable kitten who becomes your travel companion, which makes the journey feel more fun. Later in the story, your sister gets kidnapped by a bear, and you go on a rescue mission to save her. The story is a bit easy to guess, but it is still enjoyable. It has a dark fairy-tale feeling with mystery, magic, and some sadness. The gameplay includes hidden-object scenes, small mini-games like jigsaws, and simple item puzzles where you combine things to solve problems. Most puzzles are not too hard, but sometimes you need to remember where you saw items and go back later. A map helps you travel quickly, and there is also a hint system if you get stuck. There is even an expert mode for pla…

It works on a gameplay and technical level, it has a map, and if, for some reason, you don't purchase hidden object games to find hidden objects, there is an alternate dominoes mode you can play instead. The story is annoying, as is the protagonist, and the moral of the story is badly implemented. Also, gee, who would have guessed that the only guy with angry eyebrows was the bad guy? Seems a little subtle? He also likes hunting, the monster. But, as usual, I will rate it up because it works and isn't innately offensive, just stupid.

Great game. The right mix of puzzles and hidden objects.

Overview: an older but enjoyable HOP game, some of the graphics show their age but thats not inherently a bad thing. You are required to play through the game twice to get all achivements, as you need a fresh playthrough with no hints used, no skipping of puzzles, watching all cutscenes, doing all of the dominos (which are an alternative option to the HOPs) and on advanced mode. Buy it on sale if possible. Accessibility pros: master and sound sliders, multiple difficulty settings, voiceovers for cutscenes available, custom/default cursor options, fullscreen toggle, all cutscenes & HOPs available in the extras menu to watch at any time, all achivements and special items tracked in the in-game achivements menu, click to skip short cutsenes, skip button for big/cinematic cutscenes, multiple save slots, prgress is saved to each in-game user profile when uninstalled. Accessibility cons: shakey cam for many of the cutscenes and some of the post-cutscene gameplay, minor flashing, colour dependant puzzles with no colourblind friendly alternatives Content warnings: spiders, skulls, kidnapping, death, mummies, knives of various kinds, entrapment, kind of forced marriage in a way, someone …

I play on a Mac and I ran into to bugs, the first almost made me quit before even starting. The mouse arrow was stuck in the top left quadrant of the screen. I figured out how to get into the menu anyway (the shown arrow is not where the actual pointer is!) and deactivated custom arrow. This solved it. However you have to do this for every new save game. I had 2 because I thought I could get around the second bug. After maybe 10 minutes of game play there is a scene where a tutorial popup opens (one of way to many) that points to a domino game or something like that. But then the game is stuck. Nothing is clickable anymore and I had to force quit. Tried 3 times, always the same. Gave up. Puzzles are extremely low level anyway. Just click a few times here and there. Can't understand the good reviews. Maybe it's getting better, but I cannot find out because of that bug with the frozen game.

Very relaxing game