Amber's Blood 2: Out of Control

Oh silly me. So I sat down at the computer and fired up Amber's Blood, and golly gee darn it, I played the whole thing.

I was able to do that puzzle I found last night, but it took a few layers of investigation before I got the correct numbers. Wasn't difficult once I saw the clues, but you do have to visit several places to find them, as always.

OK, so it's true that the Carol Reed games are all alike, but if you enjoy 'em, that's what you want! This one was no exception. 

This one is about finding out the scandalous history of Stina's grandfather, who it turns out, unbeknownst to Stina, died only a few years ago instead of decades ago, as her family said. Why did Stina's family hide most of the life of her grandfather? And, if he lived all the way to age 94, what else might be going on?

Carol's investigation will take her to several derelict buildings (as usual), one of which we'll be visiting at least half a dozen times. Good thing the scenery's nice, but this is standard operating procedure in Carol Reed game.

The usual supporting characters all eventually appear: Stina, Jonas and Bigge. And as usual, we have to gallop all over Norrköping, back and forth, looking for items.

I confess that I used the hints four or five times. A couple of the "whadda-I-do-next" things were pretty darned obscure. I did, of course, hit my head once or twice because I'd already thought of the thing, but just hadn't looked closely enough at some of the screens. I'd like to say that's because I've been away from these games for so long, but yes, it's true--I miss stuff in every game.

And as always, the screens are some of the best parts of these games! For example:

 There are always lovely city parks

We always visit Carol's allotment

A scene from Carol's window

We get sepia-toned photos of sites we visit

We always have shots in four directions wherever we go

An unusual night scene of Norrköping at the beginning of the game

The lovely industrial park always shows up

A nice street scene

We explore some old windmills

Some art work in a museum (closed, but Carol gets in!)

With all that eye candy, who cares if we have to traipse around, back and forth, to get every little inventory item? That's actually part of the point. You explore a new area to find perhaps just one item, but usually you'll have to go there at least twice.

And there was humor. Bigge has started to get personal, for example. Also, "Amber's Blood" isn't what you think it is. Yes, Carol often does murder mysteries, but this title does not refer to a bloody body hiding in some obscure place.

However, as has been the case in the recent games, there is a villain who will threaten Carol with death or bodily harm--but don't worry. The villain will stand there threatening you until you figure out how to escape.

And the puzzles were pretty good in this one, perhaps even above average for an MDNA game.

I enjoyed it a lot, obviously!

And here's another little treat (I'm sure this isn't real):

There's at least one more visual reference to adventures in the game for those who look!

Have fun!

Amber's Blood 1: Long Time No See

Ah the joy of finishing one fun game and starting another. I've had this No. 8 Carol Reed game for months now (No. 9 is already pubilished!), but have been so snowed under with Kirkus books that I haven't been able to get to it at all.

So now, Carol, I'm finally back! 

And already stuck.

Actually, I have found a puzzle that I ought to be able to solve--a coded box. Just haven't figured it out yet. I have a date and I have numbers that seem to correspond on the box, and I have a document to examine for more clues. 

This is the game's first actual puzzle, so it ought to be doable. Plus, at the moment there are no further leads.

But my baked ziti finished cooking, so I had to go and eat that. And, after spending much of the day with the Cliffhouse game, I'm kind of all adventured out for tonight. Gonna watch some Netflix shows.

My made-from-scratch baked ziti. Tempting, yes?

Yum.

So, tomorrow for Amber!

Next Entry

Haunting at Cliffhouse: REVIEW

The fun new adventure Haunting at Cliffhouse was done mostly as a one-woman production from Cindy Pondillo, who gave us the simple but entertaining Intrigue at Oakhaven Plantation some years back. 

If you enjoy the Carol Reed games you'll probably enjoy Cliffhouse. Although this is a ghost story, don't worry. You won't be scared. The ghosts here are intended to be intriguing, not to frighten players.

You play as Sarah, a recently bereaved widow. You find a brochure to the Cliffhouse Bed and Breakfast hotel in the mail and decide on the spur of the moment to go there. It turns out to be a beautiful place, but you'll be seeing ghosts almost as soon as you arrive. The puzzles and the plot of a historical, hidden romance begin right away, easily pulling players into the game world.

Cliffhouse continues Ms. Pondillo's tradition of making simple games, although this effort is far more polished than Oakhaven. The puzzles are much more difficult and the story more complex. Nevertheless, we deal with static scenes and stationary cutouts of people, although the characters do come with voiceovers and subtitles. Much of the voice acting is quite good, with Marinda as the standout. The lead actress does very well. She's perfectly pleasant to hear throughout the game, and adds a lot to the experience. 

Of course it's primarily a puzzle game, with the rewards for solutions coming as ghostly scenes that fill out the historical plot. Again, the puzzles may seem simple, but several can challenge players quite well enough to keep attention turned up to high. Several picture-assembly games take some thought, as does a nice jigsaw puzzle and an ongoing scavenger hunt. You can play an ESP game with Zener cards just for fun as many times as you like. The climactic puzzle comes as a nifty logic game, with clues available onscreen. However, once you begin a puzzle there appears to be no way out of it until it's solved, so saving the game before beginning a puzzle might be a good idea. I learned late in the game that you can automatically solve a puzzle by hitting a certain key, but I'm glad I didn't know it earlier. 

I will reveal, however, that you access the save/load/quit screen by hitting the space bar. Nowhere does the game tell you that. It is, apparently, one of the puzzles.

Nevertheless, Ms. Pondillo makes sure players won't experience too much frustration even as she deliveres some nicely involving gameplay. No one should need a walkthough for this game, although players must be certain they access every node and hot spot in order to advance. Some patience may be required, but the cursor is large and changes color to red whenever it touches a hot spot, and all exits are nicely labeled. Players will not be getting lost. Even the maze features a little fairy as an optional guide for maze haters. 

Art and music really stand out here, even in such a low-budget effort. Plenty of work went into the lovely graphics, and the music throughout the game remains equally pleasant and appropriate to the scenes. Nighttime scenes come with hooting owls and beautifully rendered pastels. Appropriate sound effects work well throughout the game without causing any distraction. I was really impressed with the production values.

The Japanese Garden at night, with cursor

OK folks, this isn't a twenty-hour, complex adventure in the vein of Jane Jensen or Jonathan Boakes and wasn't meant to be anything like those major efforts, but it certainly is a highly pleasant way to spend an evening or two.

If you enjoy adventures but don't want to get your hands too dirty with a weeks-long gaming excursion, Haunting at Cliffhouse delivers everything you could want as a fun, intriguing little puzzler. It doesn't claim to be more than it is, but what it is works quite well indeed.

A lovely little game! We'll look for more!

Haunting at Cliffhouse 3: Endgame

Finished! The above picture is a reference to the fairy who will guide you through the maze if you need help or despise mazes. (I used her advice to get out once I'd solved the logic puzzle.)

So I indeed was close to the endgame, although there still remained a few puzzles to solve. Now I recognize what the clue on the windows referred to. When I found that puzzle, it just didn't click with me, darn it. Had I not known about the tab-key escape, I probably eventually would have figured it out on my own.

The chapel puzzle is easy peasy, but has nice atmosphere. Lots of work on the art for just that little scene!

The Chapel at night

I did have a short stuckness with the lotus candle puzzle. You need seven candles. You'll find five easily, but have to turn just the correct way to get the last two. 

The Lotus Candle Puzzle. Pretty!

Once that's done, you've got two more puzzles to solve--another picture assembly, but done in an unique way, and that nice little logic puzzle.

I do like logic puzzles. This one wasn't terribly devious, and you can refer to the clues onscreen, but I was happy I'd copied them down.

The endgame wasn't at all what I was expecting. We get a suspenseful video and a nice resolution.

So that was fun! Very glad I played this!

Next Entry

Haunting at Cliffhouse 2: In the Shadows

A new day, and finally triggered the nighttime. I wasn't as close as I thought. Found a buncha new puzzles and a room I hadn't been to: the attic. Once I figured out how to grab that last item for my scavenger hunt (and where it most likely would be), I found several more puzzles. Mostly these were "assemble the picture" types, and a few were fairly challenging. However, once completed, there was a bit more figuring to do and some bumbling around. (Hint, you need to look at the pond more than once.)

One odd thing happened. I went to one of the bathroom scenes, where you can turn on the faucet of both the tub and the sink. I clicked on some "essential oils" and the voiceover said "I can use these." But after that, the hotspot died and I had not picked up anything. A glitch? Something planned and later cut? Or a clue for later? We'll see.

There was a slider puzzle that you can skip by pressing the tab key. I did. Often I don't mind sliders, but somehow this one frustrated me early. Nice to know about that tab key.

I had quite a bit of trouble figuring out how the totem pole puzzle in the attic worked despite the instructions given, but once I tumbled to it, I only needed some patience to get it solved. I'm still not sure what I was supposed to do with the music box "puzzle." I hit the tab key and the thing opened with a nice clue and a lovely tune.

I have also picked up a few clues that clearly are meant for later in the game. Numbers and letters shine on windows, and we find instructions for what's obviously going to be a logic puzzle. Oh goody. I like logic puzzles. I took notes.

So my stuckness merely required wandering around to see what I'd missed. Patience, grasshopper.

And the garden looks really nice:

Cliffhouse Garden scene

I will pause here for awhile. I have achieved the nighttime, and have just stepped outside my room to chase a ghost that's whispering my name (we are "Sarah" in this game).

Time to eat, do some actual gardening and more de-dusting in my own house. Then I will give myself the reward of perhaps finishing the game!

Next Entry

Haunting at Cliffhouse 1: A Pleasant Time

Having finished my entire stack of Kirkus books, and having done some good de-dusting (my house was the empire of dust during the worst part of the rennovation), I earned the pleasure of playing a simple but fun new adventure game. This one is made by the same lady who did Intrigue at Oakhaven Plantation, which I reviewed for Four Fat Chicks years ago. It's essentially the same style of game, although more complex.

You can get Haunting at Cliffhouse as a digital download, available here. You can get it on CD from the same site, if you like. It's a very nice little game done by one independent lover of adventure games, and so far I think it's well worth the price.

I am having fun! There are puzzles to solve, and while they're certainly not devious in the slightest, they still require some concentration. The easiest so far was in fact a game of concentration. There was a nice jigsaw puzzle that I really enjoyed. It had enough pieces to make it a real jigsaw puzzle, and not one that you could just slap together in two minutes. There was, alas, a piano puzzle, but the clues were simple and non-audible, and you can go back to the piano and have it play some nice music for you anytime you want. There's an ongoing scavenger hunt for which I've found everything except one item that needs to be combined with another item. I just haven't seen that ellusive item yet.

The basic premise is that after your husband suddenly died, you decide to take a vacation at this lovely old place on the Oregon coast. There you explore the place, pick up inventory items and start seeing ghosts almost immediately. As a reward for completing puzzles, you get another ghost scene. These scenes reveal the history of the family that built the house. There is conflict and scandal.

Cliffhouse

Isn't it pretty?

The screens are all static, as with Oakhaven, and the folks you talk to are immobile. Some of the shots are really lovely, as above. Some real work went into the art. 

This time, unlike Oakhaven, there is voice acting. The lead character (you) is quite good. Others range from excellent to pretty bad, down to just reading out the script. But who cares--this isn't a high budget game. As with the Carol Reed games, I think the use of some obvious amateurs contributes to its charm.

Once we get into a scene, it's fairly easy to find hot spots. The large blue cursor changes to red, so you have no excuse for missing anything. 

Entry Hall

Plenty of exits here!

So far I think I'm pretty far into the game. I've found lots of items, used a few, and done lots of stuff over the course of two or three hours (ha, I lost track of time!). I've played a couple of games of ESP. I've even broken into a couple of rooms and stolen stuff. I was pretty sure I would not get caught.

However, obviously I still have plenty more to do! There are a couple of puzzles I haven't been able to access in the "Japanese" garden (which looks entirely Chinese and is run by a Chinese guy, Lu Ling, who's family has been in the country for more than 100 years but who, oddly, still dresses and sounds like a refugee from the China of the 1850s--no, I don't think he's a ghost). I also can't get into the chapel, and I have a mission to go "in the morning" up the coast to a rain forest, for which I have acquired a map.

The Chinese Gardener in the Japanese Garden

However, somehow I'm going to have to find the trigger that lets me end this day so I can get to the morning mission. I'm in a bit of a stuckness until I find that trigger. Ergo, there is more fun ahead! Ah, how nice it is to just immerse myself in a fun little game made with love.

Tomorrow! Literally!

Next Entry

Adventure Games History!

Wow! I found this outstanding series of five YouTube videos done by "Machinima." These are a really excellent video retrospective on the early history of adventure games, from the very start with the first text game of "Colossal Cave," which morphed into "Adventure," which morphed into the "Zork" series, and thence to graphic adventures.

These videos cover the major publishers, the major games, and get into how adventure games changed everything.

Of course I completely disagree with his premise that the genre "vanished," although he does leave room for its revival in his final video. Certainly the genre is far from the top of the bestseller lists, but it isn't dead by a long shot and never was. Excellent, good, mediocre and lousy adventures found publishers well beyond the '90s and are published today. Adventure games have a rich history after the late 1990s. He misses, for example, the marvelous second and third Gabriel Knight games, the brilliant Obsidian and Pilgrim, The Longest Journey, the Syberia and other B. Sokal games, Keepsake, Scratches, the Dracula games, Mysterious Island, the Journeyman and Rhem series, The Longest Journey, the popular Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew series, and a whole host of others. Independent authors like Jonathan Boakes have continued to produce wonderful point and click adventures to this day such as the outstanding Darkfall series and the Lost Crown, with more on the way. Jane Jensen has returned with the excellent Gray Matter. Michael Nyqvist continues to keep a niche audience happy with his Carol Reed mysteries. Here's a list of the Adventure Gamers website's opinion about the top 100 games, as of a few years ago. A third of them were released after the turn of the millennium.

Nevertheless, this YouTube series is a really outstanding early history of the genre, at least up to the late 1990s.

And the narration is actually good!

Watch and enjoy!

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Part Five: