3D Escape Room: Detective Story

This is mainly an puzzle game. While the game's title has "escape" on it, the gameplay isn't an actual "escape room" as you´re only going between crime scenes, solving the puzzles to get the clue to the next location. It's easy to spot that the developers got a lot of inspiration from "The Room" and "The House of Da Vinci" series, wich in itself it's not bad, since it doesn't look as a pure copy and paste; none of the puzzles on the game looked similar to other puzzles from previous games I played.

The first scene is the same that is featured on the demo the developers released during Steam's last Next Fest in February. Although there isn't that many puzzles in this scene, there's a lot of hidden compartments and pieces to use on several mechanisms found here. The few puzzles are purposely easy, just so you can get used to the game mechanics.

Also, throughout the game, there's moments where you have extra rooms whitin the scene with more puzzles, this happens on all chapters, and it's an good way yo incresse the game's content.

The 2nd scene introduces new mechanics and obviously the puzzle difficulty ramps a little, they're not too easy nor too frustrating. Some puzzles in this scene are challenging, but satisfying once solved.

The 3rd scene had some good puzzles but one of them was tricky, because you have to interpret it's clue on a specific way to use another clue to solve the puzzle. On another one, I solved it without actually using the clue for it, felt like I cheated... This scene is quite long, but good overall nonethless.

The 4th scene is where the puzzles start to get hard; I even failed to catch the clues for some of them. The "roomception" in one particular puzzle was great, each time I had to enter the "room" inside the room, something new was waiting for me...

The final chapter was the longest, but also the best one. It had a lot of "roomceptions" and one of the puzzles here were, at leasr for me, the hardest of the game. It took a while to really link the clue I already had to the puzzle Itself.
There's also a lot of bactracing within the "rooms" on this scene, but they are very well done, and keep engaing you on solving the next puzzle.

Unfortunately, I felt that the story was kinda weak, without a deep plot/characters, but the puzzles really compensate this fact.

Overall, I really reccommend this game for anyone who played game series like The Room/The Da Vinci House, the puzzles are very well designed and they make up for the weak story.

Nancy Drew - Curse of Blackmoor Manor take place in a Manor named Blackmoor in England, where Nancy is contacted by Mrs. Petrov to investigate the Manor to discover if Petrov's daughter, Linda, is under some supposed curse wich is turning her into a werewolf and if the curse is real or not.

From all the Nancy games I've played so far, This is my favorite and also the hardest one, as you can tell by my gameplay time : 32 hours and 32 minutes, played on Senior Detective (I'm using an external program wich tracks my playtime more accurately, skipping AFK moments).

The puzzles on this one are well integrated into the story and give a very rewarding sensation once solved; they rely a lot on backtracing to an specific location, but most of the information you need to solve them are with this same location. The typing minigame, despite beating it, I didn't enjoyed it very much. All the other puzzles were very satisfying to solve and this time, I enjoyed the story way more and also the ending had the best plot-twist so far, as the culprit wasn't who I thought it was.

Definitely recemmend this entry for those looking for harder puzzles and a great amount of gameplay, you won't be disappointed.

Nancy Drew - Warnings at Waverly Academy takes place on a school for girls named Waverly Academy.
Nancy was contacted by it's headmistress to investigate some incidents with some students regarding someone named "Black Cat" wich has been leaving notes to students wich are running for valedictorian; even one of them ended on the hospital and their parents made a threat of suing Waverly for what happened to her.

The gameplay mechanics are still much the same as previous games where Nancy has a modern cellphone and the flow on this one is very linear.

The puzzles in this game are tricky, as it's easy to overlook the clues and misunderstand how to use them properly; one thing I really liked was having to use the library computer to search for books to progress on the story. Also, regarding having to do the Snack Shop mini-game; while I thought that it would be annoying, i was very peaceful and way easier to do it and it was another part wich I liked.

The library part was kinda hard, because on the moments I was supposed to search the library; it took a while to figure it out that I needed to go to the library computer and search about an certain subject.

Some of the puzzle solutions weren't straightfoward, you need to analyze the clues carefully or you may fail in them as I did.

While I enjoyed the puzzles on this one, the story on this one is my least favorite so far, as I thought the plot was very cliché (will not spoil anything of it for those who didn't played it yet) and the culprit was kinda obvious. But I still recemmend this entry of the series for those who like the school setting and everything related to it.

Nancy Drew - Secret of the Old Clock takes place in Lilac Inn. Nancy goes there to visit Emily, since she asked Nancy to safeguard the jewelry that belonged to her mother, but Nancy ends finding her very first mystery to solve: Finding Josiah's real wil and who's trying to steal the inheritance money Emily is supposed to receive from Josiah.

I'm not gonna go into details about the gameplay mechanics, since it's still the same as previous games, but here my regards about the flow in general:

There's things that I was able to do way before I was really supposed to do, but they didn't ruined the experience. While the game is surprisingly short, is also very enjoyable. The few puzzles in the game aren't too hard that you end up resorting to looking up the answers and also are very rewarding once you beat them.
The only gripe with the flow was the strings of tasks that you have to do just for an single item; besides that, the story advances pretty quicly.

Overall, I enjoyed the story as a whole as well the ending and I can recommend this entry in the series for those who already enjoy mystery/puzzle type of games.

Disclaimer: don't take my playtime seriously, I played the game via an shortcut to the exe directly to be able to use an 3rd party tool to accurately track my playtime by excluding AFK time.

Also, the games does work on windows 10. I used the compatibility settings provided by other people on the forums in conjuction with dgVoodoo to fix the hidden mouse problem and remove black bars (the menus are slightly stretched, but the game scenery and cutscenes themselves are not and everything works well).

Total play time: 10h 36min

Salammbô: Battle for Carthage is a 2003 game, an adaptation of Philippe Druillet's comic strip books, wich are also an adaptation of Gustavo Flaubert's 1862 novel "Salammbô". Philippe was heavily involved during the game's development, wich impacts the architecture and character designs you'll see throughout the game.

You are Spendius, an prisoner of Carthage; you manage to escape the prison but before you leave Carthage, Salammbô, daughter of Carthage forces commander, asks you to send an statue of her to Mathos on the Mercenaries Camp.

From now on you'll find yourself forced to commit murders, robberies and even identity theft; all to help the Mercenaries defeat Carthage once and for all.

The game controls are very Myst-like, as other already pointed, but I quickly got acquainted with the speed of the panning and how to pick up objects. The graphics are incredibly good considering the time it was released, as well the full voice acting.

The best parts of the game for me were the logbook and the cutscenes, because, at the same time I felt that I was watching a movie and reading an graphic novel (when I learned upon finishing the game that it was based off Philippe Druillet' work I understood why) and they really makes you want to progress on the game to see what happens next.

The few puzzles that are presented throughout the game are pretty straightfoward, but the ones that rely on the poems/riddles are tricky and must be studied carefully to avoid being stuck, but nonentheless, are very enjoyable.

Finishing the game made me really interested in reading the original novel and I can definitely recommend it as the gameplay isn't too hard nor too easy and will definitely please anyone looking for a adventure/puzzle/mystery type of game.

Disclaimer: I've never played an Agatha game nor read any of her books, I just know about her because of how well know and spread her works are.
Having said that, this was my first Agatha game, and I really enjoyed it overall.

While the first gray cells you have to solve are easy, they get harder as you advance through the game. The amount of detective work and puzzles are well balanced, and he puzzles are not too hard and well placed within the story; having the choices affect how the events happen is interesting, because you can replay it to see the different outcomes.

While the game is short (less than 10 hours) I think that I got enough gameplay for the price I paid.

I really recommend this game for any Agatha fan or for those who like detective/point and click/puzzle games, you won't be disappointed.

PSA: Don't go by the negative reviews that say that the game isn't working, there's already a nice guide available (is the very first one on the guide section) showing on how to use dgVoodoo to make the game playable on newer systems and also it works for every Kheops game available.

Now onto the game itself: Where I was in the world when this and other games by Kheops released? I wish I had discovered it before, it's right up my alley, and the level of difficulty on this one is on point:
Not too easy that you get bored, nor too hard that you get frustrated by not managing to solve the puzzles.
The graphics are surprisingly good considering that this is a 18 years old game and it holds up very well.
Also, the flow of the game is very smooth, I personally didn't found any of the order that I had to follow weird or wrong.

Higly recommend this game for anyone that likes puzzle driven games and/or mystery/detective games such as the Nancy Drew ones.

Após ter jogado a série The Room, fiquei com vontade de quero mais, e comecei a procurar mais jogos no mesmo estilo/mecânicas de The Room. The House of Da Vinci é um "insta-buy" para quem já jogou os jogos da série The Room.
O que mais gostei foi os diversos cenários e a dificuldade, que estava na medida certa. Recomendo a todos que gostam de desafiar a mente e jogos do gênero.

Pros: Great variety of tables
Cons: The price for the DLC is a little high

Highly recommended for anyone who likes pinball.

Como muitos já disseram em outras análises, também me surpreendi pelo fato de este provavelmente ser o primeiro jogo da desenvolvedora, visto que sou experiente em HOGs e já ter jogado vários outros jogos do gênero.

O jogo narra a história de Mary, que está em busca da filha, Sophie, que foi raptada pelo Darkarta, um homem que faz parte da vida passada de Mary, que perdeu sua esposa devido a um encantamento de imortalidade que ela jogou sobre ele, e como castigo, ao mesmo tempo, ela também se amaldiçoou e seu corpo começou a queimar inteiramente.

Durante o jogo, Mary vai descobrindo mais sobre sua vida passada e por que sua filha fora raptada.
No capítulo bônus, descobrimos como termina a história de Sophie de de sua família.

Não demonstro emoções facilmente, mas em alguns cutscenes o jogo arrancou algumas lágrimas, o que é difícil em jogos desse tipo.

O único problema que encontrei é que o jogo não permite que comecemos o jogo de novo para que possamos coletar os Morphing Objects, Memorie Objects e os achievements faltantes.

10/10