where is my desk where is my case file?? :(
I had pretty low standards going in, ngl. And the change in format did not help my first impression. The main menu is now just a generic video game menu, not the Nancy Drew Center of Operations desk nor my beloved and iconic stack of books menu. There’s no case file to give you like, even a little bit of context for the mystery. It’s just straight to Choose Difficulty and then Ominous Cutscene. i don’t like change I want nostalgia
ok i actually really like the new ui but i can’t accept the other changes
Setting: I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of the Ancient Egypt time period/aesthetic, so I was pretty underwhelmed with this location. But I will say the tomb was an enjoyable environment to explore and slowly unlocking new rooms is an excellent mechanic I love tangible progression
As for navigation, it seemed a bit more annoying than usual. I completely missed the fact that you can enter the second tent, I only found that out after the hint guide mentioned an artifact tent. Several puzzles on the walls in some of the tomb tunnels were obnoxiously placed just at the edge of the screen. You can’t pan the camera towards them, just hope you mouse over the wall and notice that you can interact with a small fraction of it.
Ok another fun thing about the location was the spooky whispering that happened in some sections. totally wasn’t explained ever, but it was good for the spooky, cursed tomb atmosphere
Characters: I liked having two characters that only showed up after a couple puzzles were solved, rather than having them all start out scattered around the map like usual.
But despite that, I didn’t find myself wanting to talk to them that often. They were all fine, I just never liked any one of them that much. Plus there was no cell service in the tomb, so I just didn’t call people unless I actually had to.
Puzzles: yooooo cryptograms are my shit and there’s so many of them here! Actually, maybe too many of them. I want to thank the developer who looked at the 10 or so repeated cryptogram decoding puzzles of varying length and said “yeah, this is tedious as hell, even by our standards.“ and then added a quick translate button. Like, I really enjoy that puzzle format and I still skipped probably 3 of them.
I always like when the puzzles are just scattered about a location and you just solve them as you please, and this game delivered. Unfortunately this format usually results in me mainlining all the puzzles and ignoring conversations until I need some outside information to solve one or advance the plot. So I’m pretty sure I missed out on a bunch of extra dialogue and a few story beats, like apparently there’s a water tank sabotage? And locusts??
Anyway, the puzzles were fairly unique with not many repeats from previous games. None that are particularly memorable, but I remember enjoying them at least. The raising and lowering pillar one stands out because I solved it in like 4 tries by complete accident. No clue what was happening but glad it worked.
Oh and the 7 childrens names one was pretty fun, I’m a big fan of research puzzles that make you look for hints in documents and different locations. I love taking notes gamers today just don’t understand
Story: well, I appreciate what they were going for. Unlucky Egyptian tomb exploration team, bad things happen on site and numbers start dwindling, is it a curse or sabotage? I guess I haven’t really seen much media with this plot, but it still felt pretty predictable for the most part. Towards the middle it got a bit more muddled and the story started to lose me. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, i missed what seems like a good chunk of the optional scenes and dialogue so that might also explain why i was confused
I gotta say, this felt like an Egyptian reskin of Scarlet Hand in a lot of ways. Just, at an actual archaeological site and not a museum. I still vastly prefer Scarlet Hand over this one, but I don’t hate this game. It’s just…forgettable? It’s only been a couple days since I finished it, but I already don’t remember a ton about it. The location wasn’t my thing, the characters weren’t engaging, and the story was predictable. But then it went off the rails, but not in a fun wacky Nancy Drew PC Game way, but in a confusing I Don’t Know What’s Happening In This Story Anymore kinda way.
Overall, very mid game. But hey, at least I had fun with the puzzles
I had pretty low standards going in, ngl. And the change in format did not help my first impression. The main menu is now just a generic video game menu, not the Nancy Drew Center of Operations desk nor my beloved and iconic stack of books menu. There’s no case file to give you like, even a little bit of context for the mystery. It’s just straight to Choose Difficulty and then Ominous Cutscene. i don’t like change I want nostalgia
ok i actually really like the new ui but i can’t accept the other changes
Setting: I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of the Ancient Egypt time period/aesthetic, so I was pretty underwhelmed with this location. But I will say the tomb was an enjoyable environment to explore and slowly unlocking new rooms is an excellent mechanic I love tangible progression
As for navigation, it seemed a bit more annoying than usual. I completely missed the fact that you can enter the second tent, I only found that out after the hint guide mentioned an artifact tent. Several puzzles on the walls in some of the tomb tunnels were obnoxiously placed just at the edge of the screen. You can’t pan the camera towards them, just hope you mouse over the wall and notice that you can interact with a small fraction of it.
Ok another fun thing about the location was the spooky whispering that happened in some sections. totally wasn’t explained ever, but it was good for the spooky, cursed tomb atmosphere
Characters: I liked having two characters that only showed up after a couple puzzles were solved, rather than having them all start out scattered around the map like usual.
But despite that, I didn’t find myself wanting to talk to them that often. They were all fine, I just never liked any one of them that much. Plus there was no cell service in the tomb, so I just didn’t call people unless I actually had to.
Puzzles: yooooo cryptograms are my shit and there’s so many of them here! Actually, maybe too many of them. I want to thank the developer who looked at the 10 or so repeated cryptogram decoding puzzles of varying length and said “yeah, this is tedious as hell, even by our standards.“ and then added a quick translate button. Like, I really enjoy that puzzle format and I still skipped probably 3 of them.
I always like when the puzzles are just scattered about a location and you just solve them as you please, and this game delivered. Unfortunately this format usually results in me mainlining all the puzzles and ignoring conversations until I need some outside information to solve one or advance the plot. So I’m pretty sure I missed out on a bunch of extra dialogue and a few story beats, like apparently there’s a water tank sabotage? And locusts??
Anyway, the puzzles were fairly unique with not many repeats from previous games. None that are particularly memorable, but I remember enjoying them at least. The raising and lowering pillar one stands out because I solved it in like 4 tries by complete accident. No clue what was happening but glad it worked.
Oh and the 7 childrens names one was pretty fun, I’m a big fan of research puzzles that make you look for hints in documents and different locations. I love taking notes gamers today just don’t understand
Story: well, I appreciate what they were going for. Unlucky Egyptian tomb exploration team, bad things happen on site and numbers start dwindling, is it a curse or sabotage? I guess I haven’t really seen much media with this plot, but it still felt pretty predictable for the most part. Towards the middle it got a bit more muddled and the story started to lose me. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, i missed what seems like a good chunk of the optional scenes and dialogue so that might also explain why i was confused
I gotta say, this felt like an Egyptian reskin of Scarlet Hand in a lot of ways. Just, at an actual archaeological site and not a museum. I still vastly prefer Scarlet Hand over this one, but I don’t hate this game. It’s just…forgettable? It’s only been a couple days since I finished it, but I already don’t remember a ton about it. The location wasn’t my thing, the characters weren’t engaging, and the story was predictable. But then it went off the rails, but not in a fun wacky Nancy Drew PC Game way, but in a confusing I Don’t Know What’s Happening In This Story Anymore kinda way.
Overall, very mid game. But hey, at least I had fun with the puzzles