Haunted Past: Realm of Ghosts

Short above-average HOPA game, recommended for fans of the genre but get the Collector's edition somewhere else if you can. The story was interesting but not everything was explained by the end in the plain Steam version. The sound effects and music were atmospheric and well made, didn't feel repetitive. The hidden objects were fair to find, not too easy or too hard. The originality of this game was switching between the past and the present through mirrors. You could see some rooms initially in their old dilapidated state and then in their original full glory. And those rooms looked very nice, especially the paintings, which were probably scanned real ones. I appreciated the mention at the top when an area was cleared. Other small problems were no Steam overlay and that the game didn't close properly. You had to hit the green "Stop" button in your library.

Duration : 4.1 hours (I'm surprised looking at reviews with only 2 hours, I didn't waste time and used "Hint" only once). Difficulty level : easy GOOD Truly easy (in easy mode) Easy puzzles An "Area cleared" indication as soon as you have done everything possible in a screen, I enjoyed this feature a lot because that prevents frustration of revisiting everything to click everywhere just in case you could have missed something, and this gives you a real sense of progression and "clean" areas. Classic haunted house with a curse, it's certainly not original but still the best natural place for emotional horror and sad family stories. Nothing scary or gross, no cheap visual or audio jump-scares. A hint system if you are stuck (I used it only once). An original and simple past-present travel system in areas. Few areas of a manor and obvious transitions between them. Hidden objects screens were well designed and fair, you won't waste time searching forever for nearly invisible objects (some objects you know in their modern version look weird because they are from the past, so it adds some realism) NEUTRAL The many usual absurdities of many adventure games, especially hidden objects one…

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a very short, but surprisingly well-done HOG. it's not as funny to play as other HOGs, but it was actually really fun to play still- i do think it ends very abruptly, as others have noted, but it didn't ruin the experience, in my opinion

I got this game really cheap cause of sales and that's why I don't regret the purchase. It doesn't deserve the money in normal price though cause it is sooooo short. Finished it in like an hour or so. Also, it was way too easy and I could use infinite hints and skips which is lame. Didn't struggle with any puzzle.... I recommend it though cause the art was nice and the story was okay. I am not super happy with it but I've played worse.

Frustrating, but fun puzzle.