The Game Maker: A Carol Reed Mystery

First time playing the Carol Reed series. According to the website this is the 18th (!) game in the series (out of 20 so far), but the story it's completely standalone. I guess that Carol's friends who help her in the investigation are recurring characters but they have a small role anyway. The visual aspect are of course what immediately stands out: tons and tons of beautiful photographs of Swedish sceneries. I played the game on a big 4k tv and it was really gorgeous. The movement in the game is kinda like a dungeon crawler, you move with the on-screen arrows and you can almost always rotate 90° to look around, every time looking at a beautiful real life photo. The gameplay and the puzzles are mostly pretty simple (except for a few sections in the "game within the game" which are a bit more complex), a lot of the time you simply need to use an item that can be found in another location and, if you're like me and often miss them while looking at the pretty sights, there's luckily a very handy hint system. P&C games often have their own weird "logic" about items that can be picked up, combined and used in unexpected ways. I found it funny that here you need a little different k…

ㅤLove the series. Hope more to come.

It was a fun game to play. Sometimes the clues were a bit too vague, but the story was really gripping. The places you visit were also absolutely stunning. I highly recommend it!!

[i]Status: 100% Completed[/i] Carol Reed is a long series that spawned more than twenty point-and-click adventure games, and The Game Maker is the only one available on Steam. The game is created entirely from high-res real-life photos, and I must say, a lot of great hard work went into it. In fact, it inspired me to visit Sweden someday. The music is simple but effective, it adds a lot to the atmosphere. Some puzzles may seem hard to solve without a walkthrough, the map layout can get confusing, pixel-hunting is brutal (but thankfully you can highlight objects with Space), and there's a lot of unnecessary backtracking: some objects Carol grabs immediately no matter how big they are (without knowing why at the moment), but others she refuses to take until a certain moment later when you need them. I didn't experience a single bug. The price of 14$ is perfect, the game is completely worth it. It's not a short game, and I'd suggest not to rush completing it - think, walk around the scenes and enjoy the scenery. [i]Sasha Darko for Game Obscura[/i]

The resolution of the scenes is now fantasic and the countryside is certaintly beautiful but otherwise seems like a game stuck in the past. It feels lifeless; there is a handful of NPCs but its just static images for the most part and there is not enough voice acting from the protaganist. Mostly you will be wondering around scenes in complete silence or with an annoying bird chirping on a loop. The areas can be quite large with only maybe a single item to find but you have to explore everywhere in a dungeon crawlling style i.e. move forward, look to the left, look to the right follow each direction. Its easy to miss a direction as the pathing to places is not always obvious. It just gets really tedious. There is also no fast travel within an area so once you find the item of interest you have the annoying task of retracing your steps to the exit. Some puzzle design is decent enough but alot of it boils down to remebering where you saw an item as the game often will not let you pick up things until you need them. Even when you do have the necessary items in your inventory the combinations can be a bit nonsense. I think the puzzle design improves bit towards the end an…

Dark subject matter including multiple murders and white supremacy. An extremely linear point and click. Objects that cannot be used yet cannot be collected. Things that were obviously meant to be put together couldn't be combined until the exact time you needed them. The hint system wasn't really a hint, but a blunt go and do this here system. Beautiful photography of a lot of run down places. An interesting concept but didn't scratch the puzzle itch.