Ah, glorious fun! Jonathan Boakes has done it yet again. At last I can just immerse myself in a creative, challenging but not impossible adventure, steeped in gloomy atmosphere, and not have to worry about how I walk around. It's just an old-fashioned point and click, which is intuitive, so I can concentrate entirely on the game and not on navigation. What a relief! (And thank you Jonathan, for listening to your fans about that.)
And I'm back to the most fun kind of game for me, just wandering around, finding clues, learning the story, and doing decent puzzles! It's like going back to my first immersive experience with Uninvited, except the graphics in this game are a bit more sophisticated (ahem).
The Van. Nice graphics.
I finally got some playing time yesterday. Only planned to play for about two hours. Wound up playing for five hours, and would have gone on except it was well past dinnertime and I was hungry! Plus, I had reached a perfect place to pause for the day.
(Oh, a heads-up: so far when I load the game it takes a full 30 seconds to get the first screen. I have a black screen for that long. Don't crash the game; it'll work.)
So! What have I done? I did indeed take a tour of the rest of the outside area, and just as I was trying to enter the house my malware protection kicked in with a scan and crashed the game. So, lesson learned: save often. I didn't lose much, and I learned a bit more about where things are. I also rode the slide and a rocking horse in the playground and found numerous doors with locks.
And I found the graphic for the Dark Fall. And somehow the name "Jemima" came up. Nice little Easter eggs for Jonathan's longtime fans.
There it is! The Dark Fall symbol!
And another blast from the past: the TLC ghosts in the Fenland Eye say "You can help us!"
Got into the attic and poked around and poked around and found lots of stuff. I learned how to operate the four-camera surveillance system and found more than enough ghostly events on that. But Matt Clark put out an updated version of the game because he said people were getting stuck in the attic. I could leave the attic, so perhaps I wasn't one of the victims, but I was just sure I'd been there far too long. Getting the update required another full install which I was fearful of doing, but I did it and it worked this time without a hitch. Plus, it's good to have the latest version of the game.
I did make a teensy mistake. I realized after I did it that I could have entered my name into the system. Instead, I just kept accepting "guest." So that's who I am. However, I believe that Jonathan has put my name somewhere in the game after I responded to a Facebook opportunity. I will wait for that! (It knows my name . . .)
Does the Spirit Board know my name?
Having done that I finally realized that the probable real reason I couldn't expand the game beyond the attic was that I had not completed all the task list. "Steve," the lead ghost hunter, kept telling me to find the assignment list, but it took me a good two hours to do it. Never mind. I had plenty to do in the meantime, and had completed two of the six tasks by then. Having the task list is hugely important though, because you would never think to do everything on it without that guidance. Plus, warning: you have to do some of the tasks more than once, a fact not indicated in the list.
A helpful sceen in your PDF
Capturing EVPs is rather fun. Once you get them you have to translate them. Only one is a bit problematical, but it didn't take me long to solve it.
Not telling you what else is on the list. Find it yourself.
I have made it into the lab, the next venue for my efforts. Saved there and WILL PLAY today no matter what happens! I'm caught up in it now!
My first glimpse of the lab.
Honestly, it's such a relief to find a game that grabs me like, well, like Jonathan's other games have grabbed me. Also, Uninvited, Shivers, Gabriel Knight and other stuff by Jane Jensen, the Dracula series, those kinds of games. I mean, Fran Bow was wild, but extremely difficult and more horrific than I like. Grim Fandango, a true masterpiece, was impossible for me to play because the puzzles are so outlandish. I wound up watching a YouTube video playthrough of it. Edith Finch, another masterpiece that I hugely enjoyed, was a bit marred for me by the difficult navigation, even though it used only a mouse. I enjoy the Carol Reed games but although enjoyable they're all the same, and not as immersive as these real PnC adventure classics.
But this is taking me back to the joy I felt playing those great adventures! I want a game I feel compelled to keep playing. I believe I have found it!
So, I'm back into a true classic adventure world! I have missed it badly. I cannot wait to find out what happens next!
Next Entry.
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