My Brother Rabbit

Back to Artifex Mundi again for something slightly different this time in My Brother Rabbit. It doesn’t follow the traditional Mundi structure in that firstly, there is no dialogue and secondly, the story is told through pictures. The story itself centres around a little girl who is sick and the event of the game take place in her imagination where her ugly toy rabbit goes on an adventure to save her.

The gameplay itself is different too. There is more of a focus on indirect puzzle solving and having to collect lots of the same item to unlock the next steps of the game. Items are either hidden in the background or puzzles need to be solved in order to collect them. There are some that are slightly more advanced than the other games where you are required to pay attention to various elements in the background of the game.

There were three times this happens during the game and the first time you need to move sticks around to make patterns in order to release three items from a sealed chamber. The codes to these are hidden in other scenes but I didn’t realise this managed to unlock the chamber through luck rather than knowing what I was doing. The next one was comprised of a code of five different images, so no amount of guessing was going to open this one. Thankfully though, despite my luck of unlocking the first set of patterns, I started seeing them in the environments so was able to figure this one out as intended.

Graphically, it’s also very different from the standard Artifex Mundi games with a much more child friendly, cartoony look. This seems like a strange choice as the puzzles are certainly not child friendly for the most part. And the rabbit is also more scary than cute.

Musically, it does the same thing as other games where a child is sick and they are struggling to recover… so they make the music as depressing as humanly possible. Thankfully, the gameplay hides this as you will be too involved in the puzzle-findy goodness to pay much attention to the music.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

Being an Artifex Mundi game, it continues the trend of having a large offering of storyline achievements and there are 20 of them here. There are also no true missable achievements either as there is now a chapter select function which allows you to replay chapters. They’ve also removed the expert playthrough requirement too.

From the ones that are not storyline related, these can be obtained simply by clicking on everything there is to click on… okay, not quite but it will work for most of them. Some of the achievements are counter intuitive in this regard. On my first playthrough, I missed three achievements. One related to me not clicking on everything as there are four ducks in the first chapter that require clicking for an achievement. To be fair, these are well hidden, so you almost need to know they are there to click them. It’s not a secret achievement, I’m just stupid and didn’t plan in advance.

However, the other two that I missed, I missed because I had worked out the puzzle solutions and solved the puzzles before using every other option. The first of these is at the end of chapter one where you spray some plant thing with red paint. The nozzle has another eight colours and you need to use them all for the achievement and you can go back after you’ve used the red one.

The other one is in chapter three where this is a weird moose robot (that’s right, moose robot) that you can attach various arms to. You have to attach all three arms to the robot and use them but using two of the arms doesn’t move the game forward and are effectively mistakes. So again, I was punished for using the correct arm first.

The last one I’ll mention, which I was clever enough to research in advance, is for seeing some weird creatures fly away on a paper aeroplane. I’m not entirely sure if this is time based but you need to move between scenes to see them fly away and get the achievement. When I changed screens, I only just saw them, and I don’t know if I would have missed it if I was slower.

Downloadable Content – N/A

My Brother Rabbit is a simple and quick completion however, it again suffers from overpricing. The game retails at £11.99 and is completable in under 3 hours. There is no replayability either as once you’ve seen all the solutions, that’s it.

Eventide 3: Legacy of Legends

Artifex Mundi games are now quite easy to coast through in terms of the story and game play. There have been so many that Eventide 3 doesn’t offer anything new in terms of game play. The only real addition is the furthering of the story, but again, it only serves as context for the game play.

Eventide 3 suffers from the same stupidity of previous games where items you find have the one specific use despite appearing to be useful for more than one thing… and once they have been used for their defined tasks, they are discarded. Even if the item is a knife which has a multitude of practice uses. This is just par for the course at this point.

The only real issue with the gameplay is that sometimes, the cursor is a little picky in the hidden picture scenes. There were several instances where I thought I had found an item only to be told I was incorrect… then clicking maybe a millimetre to the left triggered the pick-up. Slightly annoying.

The main story focuses around another sassy female protagonist and her brother John. The fern flower from the previous story makes a reappearance and, as with any magical artefact, it attracts the attention of an evil sorcerer. In order to stop him and save your brother, you need to navigate hidden picture scenes and solve mini-games, as well as competing in rune battles with some enemies. There is also the usual double-cross where a character gets you to do something for them before revealing their true evil intentions. Essentially, it’s tried and tested so no real reason to change it.

Graphically, it’s the same as ever and musically it’s in keeping with the style and theme of the game. It doesn’t suffer from any niggles which is good considering it’s a basic structure but there have been music and inventory issues in past games so it’s good these don’t reoccur.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 27 Achievements

With 27 achievements, Eventide 3 follows the new trend of rewarding players with achievements just for playing the game. 11 are earned just for completing the story. There is another one for completing it all on expert as well.

With all the Mundi games there are a massive haul of missable achievements that can be categorised into three areas; puzzles and hints, collectibles, and rune battles/portal travel games. There are the usual ones for completing all the games without using hints and finding objects in pictures within a certain time limit. This one requires you to complete a hidden picture scene in less than 30 seconds and the only real way to do this on a first run is to abuse the fact that the timer stops when the game is paused as you can still see the hidden object puzzle.

Regarding collectibles, there are two sets to pick up and 6 achievements attached to them; pick up one, pick up half and pick up all of each set. This is where I came slightly unstuck as I missed one collectible on my playthrough. Luckily this was near the beginning of the game and I was able to cross it off quickly – and the collectibles carry across playthroughs.

The last set is for the rune battles and portal travel games. You need to win all the rune battles without making any mistakes and complete the portal travels in the same vein. There doesn’t appear to be a time limit for these and both games are spot the difference and pair matching respectively so it’s fairly straightforward.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Eventide 3 follows the tried and tested blueprint from the previous games. It doesn’t try anything risky and provides a casual gaming experience to be enjoyed by all. I managed to get through it in less than 4 hours so it’s not overly long. The only downside is the retail price as these are currently going for £11.99 on the Xbox marketplace. This feels overpriced for the amount of content you get.

Grim Legends 3: The Dark City

A return to Artifex Mundi had seemed well overdue and now there are another four titles available from a series I had cleaned up. It was time to get back into the point and click adventure mode and find some hidden objects.

Grim Legends III has the same story arc as most of the other games in the series. There is a guy who you think is against you, but it turns out he’s not against you after all and then you work together to stop the evil monster, all while listening to some bad voice acting and finding hundreds of objects you don’t need.

The main aspect of these games isn’t really the story, it’s very much the casual puzzle game play and while Grim Legends III doesn’t offer much new, it is a case of don’t fix what isn’t broken. With one exception. Get rid of the story boards. They aren’t puzzles and they are bad storytelling devices.

The music was forgettable but a note on the artwork; a lot of effort goes in to the design of these games where everything is hand designed and it looks great. A major plus with these types of games is that you can’t get stuck on any scenery as it simply won’t allow it. They are almost glitch proof too as if you can’t progress, it’s highly likely you’ve just missed something.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 29 Achievements

As with more of the modern games, there is a high percentage of story related achievements and Grim Legends III has 10 of them. 11 if you include playing through on Expert although playing on Expert means ‘playing the game’ where as casual means ‘watching someone else play the game.’ Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad but Expert requires you to figure out where to go and explore, whereas Casual will just tell you.

The best part about the remaining 19 achievements is that they are all missable. You get your standard Artifex Mundi ones for not skipping any puzzles or games (so playing the game) as well as the collectibles and these are the only real issue.

The game has such small points of no return that it’s difficult to get all of the collectibles on one run. Thankfully I only missed one very early on when doing a sweep up.

Outside of these, there are rune battles that need to be won without making any mistakes and memory mirrors that need to be solved within a certain amount of time. The Rune Battles weren’t too bad, but the memory mirrors were a nightmare. They are essentially a sequence of puzzles that aren’t a problem by themselves, but the time limit is the killer, especially on the final one. I had to replay most of the game after failing to get this one in the 3-minute time limit given to you.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Grim Legends III was still a relatively quick completion despite the need to replay most of the game. It’s not the best Artifex Mundi game but certainly not the worst and if you don’t mess up and use a guide for the puzzles, it can be completed in less than 5 hours.

Engimatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala

Back to Artifex Mundi now as they round off another series in Engimatis. We are in the shoes of the detective for the last time as she goes on the trail of the preacher who is trying to bring back his master, Asmodai.

The story starts in Maple Creek from the first Engimatis game which is a bit of a change of pace from other Mundi series games and it was a nice touch to revisit some cross-game locations. The story itself is a decent conclusion to the trilogy but suffers from the same small issues as all Artifex games – either bad translation or ridiculous, out of place, character skills.

Gameplay wise, it’s mostly the same as before; hidden picture scenes or a pair matching game; logic puzzles; and the deduction board which is unique to the Engimatis series but doesn’t make a lot of sense. Other than trial and error, I could not work out a lot of deductions and some of them were very loose. It feels more like a story driving exercise than a gameplay mechanic.

Looks wise, it’s the same as other Mundi games and does what it’s supposed to. The music is a bit blah, but there was also another nice bit at the start where you can use the car radio to listen to music from the previous games.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 35 Achievements

This is quite the haul for a Mundi game but they have upped the level of story based unmissables to 13 out of 35.

In addition to these, there’s the usual faire of completing the hidden picture scenes without making mistakes or using hints and the same stuff for the puzzles. One thing I did note though is that the hidden picture scenes are a lot harder than they have been before. Some of items took ages to spot and it has been reported that they are a lot fussier now. In the past, you could get away with clicking on the edge of an item and you would get it. Now, you have to get the item in the middle of the circle and any slight variation will cause an error. Not only did this cause me to think I had the wrong item (some of the word descriptions are shoddy at best) but it also makes getting the achievement for accuracy, and for finding 3 items in 3 seconds, a lot harder. Still, relatively easy though.

In addition to the hidden puzzles and stuff, there are three sets of collectibles to find and each set carries 3 achievements. You have to find widow’s sorrows, feathers and morphing objects, all of which are a lot harder to see than previous collectibles but you can sort of track your progress as there appears to be at least one collectible in every scene.

If you play on expert from the outset, it’s possible to get all of the achievements in one playthrough. They even fixed the issue I pointed out in the Davy Jones review. You have to complete at least one pair matching game in less than three minutes but this time, it can be done in the bonus episode avoiding a small replay of the opening of the game.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala is another solid offering and even better now that there is no requirement for a full double playthrough. It should take around 4 hours to complete for a full Gamerscore haul. The only real turn off is the price but you should know what you are paying for by now.

Nightmares from the Deep 3: Davy Jones

Now this really is the last Artifex Mundi game I will play for a while as there are currently no more remaining on the marketplace. I suspect there will be another few released as soon as this is published though.

Artifex Mundi have recently come under fire from the gaming community for upping the prices of their games. They have done this retrospectively too which is unusual, but again highlights why buying when the price is right is a good idea. There were a load of comments on a forum I was reading essentially saying how people weren’t going to buy their games and how their games are not worth the price hike. To put this into perspective, the UK prices when up from £8.99 to £11.99 – an increase of £3. That is about two loaves of bread for something that you keep for ever. This has been dressed up by describing it in terms of percentages. Saying there has been an increase of 33% seems extortionate – but if you increase the price from £1 to £2 that’s a 100% increase… but still not expensive.

What I’m trying to say is, I don’t understand the ire of the public on this. If you are a gamer you are doing something you don’t need to do to survive. If you don’t like the price of a game, don’t buy it. But at least have the sense to identify that Artifex Mundi are a business and need to make money to continue making games. On the flip side, if they didn’t raise the prices, people would be crying their eyes out that Artifex Mundi went out of business and no longer make any games. Also, the amount people saying, ‘I’ll just wait for a sale’ aren’t really supporting the gaming industry. If everyone got everything for free, there wouldn’t be a gaming industry to start with – then you’d have to find something else to complain about.

Anyway, on to the actual game review now I’ve got the padding out of the way. Davy Jones puts you back in the pants of Mrs Black, Artifex Mundi’s most notorious protagonist. After trying to deliver a presentation on Davy Jones, Davy Jones takes exception to this, smashes a hole in the museum and kidnaps Mrs Black and her daughter. He is going to make Mrs Black walk the plank when the daughter, the smartest character in gaming history, asks Captain Jones not to kill her and says she will do anything to save her mother. She signs some kind of deal thing and Mrs Black gets thrown in the ocean anyway. Davy Jones didn’t kill her, he tried to let the sea do it instead. Ha. Ha… Ha. ‘I pushed you into the shark tank but it was the shark that killed you, not me.’ Such tosh logic… but it’s typical pirate logic, I suppose.

Anyway, Mrs Black doesn’t die as Davy Jones knocks a rowing boat in the water, initially to prevent you from escaping, and Mrs Black lives to solve puzzles and hidden picture scenes to save her dumbass daughter from the even dumber Davy Jones and break the curse once and for all.

The gameplay is the same as we’ve already seen from these titles so I’ll talk about the story some more. The daughter is a real dick throughout. Stupid at the beginning and moronic later on. There is a point in the story, even though she is effectively Davy Jones’ prisoner, she acts like she is bored and just wants to go home. I mean, really? I know there is no time constraints on the life or death situations but my god, at least act like your life is in peril.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

Outside of the main body of the standard Artifex Mundi style achievements, there are collectibles to be had and lots of them. You have to collect 10 pirate cards, 12 seahorses and 24 puzzle pieces. Some of these are quite hard to see so you do have to keep an eye out but unlike other games, you can revisit all the way back to where the first collectible is right up to completing the game. In addition, you also have to interact with 16 different animals on the island. This one is bit tricky as you don’t get a counter for it (you do with the others) and you can miss interactions without even knowing it as some things count and others do not. It’s quite annoying.

The last one I unlocked was for completing games of mah-jong which is the additional game in this title. However, Artifex Mundi seem to have taken their achievement lists seriously and they only require you to play three games instead of all of them. That said, what was also annoying is that you don’t have to play the hidden picture scenes in the bonus adventure for any achievements but the games of mah-jong played in the bonus adventure don’t count towards this achievement. Why?? If they had counted it wouldn’t even require a small partial second playthough – made more frustrating by the fact that there are no hidden picture scenes in the opening 20 minutes of the original adventure!

Downloadable Content – N/A

Davy Jones is an enjoyable Artifex Mundi game and achievements wise, is much improved from earlier Xbox One ports. I will continue to buy their games as long as they remain of the same quality and offer the same style of puzzles. All of the Artifex Mundi games released to date have a total Gamerscore available of 14,000 points – quite the haul for some puzzling fun.

Lost Grimoires 2: The Shard of Mystery

I think I mentioned at the end of my last Artifex Mundi review that they had released another two games right when I thought I was done. Lost Grimoires 2 is the first one we have gotten around to playing. And we smashed it in one evening.

Lost Grimoires 2: The Shards of Mystery follows the story of… someone as they go on a mission to save the kingdom of somewhere from an evil person trapped in a mirror. Minor spoilers – this one doesn’t do the Artifex Mundi story trick here where you get to the end of the game only for the person you thought was evil to suddenly be revealed as not evil. This bitch in the mirror is evil throughout the entire thing.

You start by helping your nephew who becomes king at a young age and then when he goes a wondering one night you run into his bit of stuff who just happens to be the daughter of the evil bitch. The evil bitch is trying to escape the mirror and it’s up to you to a solve a load of puzzles save the kingdom and do away with evil bitch once and for all. It’s a pretty mystical and farfetched storyline and if I’m honest, I didn’t pay that much attention to it while it was happening.

The gameplay is standard faire by now. Solve puzzles, complete hidden picture scenes, etc. There were some slightly different hidden picture scenes where you have to find the items based on the pictures but it’s stuff being recycled from the previous games. The puzzles were good and still offer that rewarding feeling you get when you complete without a guide so it’s an all good more of the same.

I complained quite heavily about the music and ridiculous non-puzzle bits in the first Lost Grimoires and they have significantly cut down on these here which is good. The music wasn’t really noticeable at any point either and that’s only a good thing but that may have been down to the shortness of the game.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

It’s a short achievement list with only the single playthrough required to get all the achievements as there is no additional game to play here. All of the achievements bar two are missable. Playing the game through on expert will get you the two unmissable achievements for completing the game.

The remaining 11 are what you would expect from an Artifex Mundi game with the exception of finding hidden roses throughout the scenes. There are 31 roses to find, one in each scene you encounter and they are all fairly easy to spot. Of these 11, there are three achievements connected to the roses.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Lost Grimoires 2 is one of the quicker and easier Artifex Mundi games to complete. The storyline is just there as background for the puzzles which are the main selling point of the series. All in all, it’s a solid game with an easy achievement list.

Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden

This is another Artifex Mundi title and the last one I am likely to play for a while. At the time of completion there were no more games available on the marketplace and this one felt a bit stale after the time invested in the rest of the titles.

Abyss follows the story of a girl who goes deep sea diving looking for her lover Robert after he goes missing. She stumbles across Eden, an underwater city, similar to Rapture from Bioshock except instead of Big Daddys there are these Wraith things that suck the life out of you. They are apparently trying to resurrect some kind of ‘evil one’ and Robert is the vessel and you need to save him. The storyline is tried and tested and is only really there to give you a reason to go from one puzzle to the next.

The puzzles and hidden picture scenes are essentially the same as before but Abyss does require you to go back and forth a lot and some of the hidden picture scenes reopen despite you thinking you were done with the area some time ago. It’s very similar to the first Enigmatis in this regard.

Instead of doing the hidden picture scenes, you can play a game of dominos which has been in previous games so I’m guessing there won’t be a lot of variety going forward if they are repeating themselves here. Personally, I don’t see why they need to have these additional things and I would rather they just did away with them.

There is also a bonus episode which acts as a prequel to the main games which provides a little more story and some more hidden scenes. Other than this it doesn’t pull any extra punches.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 20 Achievements

This is average sized haul for an Artifex Mundi game now and eight of them are related to various parts of the story. There are another eight achievements related to doing all the puzzles and hidden picture scenes without skipping or hints as well as finding three items in three seconds, not making many mistakes and completing both a puzzle and hidden picture scene in less than a minute. Standard Artifex Mundi fare.

Where I struggled was the expert playthrough as it required a lot of faffing around and searching and it could have brought my playtime down dramatically if I had just played on normal first but there you go.

I also struggled to get the motivation up to complete a second playthrough and nab the three achievements related to playing all the dominos games. This sums up how much the game felt like a slog.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden is another solid game from Artifex Mundi that offers the same thing as before. As I said though I’ve had my fill of these games so this review probably comes across as negative. It’s still a good addition to the collection and offers new scenery as a lot of the others are turning in to series’.

Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren's Call

As it stands there’s only one more Artifex Mundi game to go after this one which probably means I’ll be picking up Outlast again soon and addressing more challenging things in the gaming universe. Just not Crackdown 2. However, since I drafted this paragraph another two games have been released so there’s actually three… oh well.

Anyway, The Siren’s Call, sees you step back into the shoes of the protagonist of the first Nightmares from the Deep game as a fish man comes to deliver a package you are not expecting in the middle of the night. This in itself contains a lot of questions. Why would this be happening? Why would you go to such lengths to open the package without any explanation? Especially after the last time this happened it didn’t go particularly well. As expected it all goes horribly wrong and after the initial scenes, you go sailing off to Tortuga to save the world from the Kraken. It couldn’t be more Pirates of the Caribbean if it tried.

My biggest issue with the game is that of your sidekick who you have actually come to Tortuga to help. He is completely useless, gets beaten up twice so you have to save him and then, later in the game, he has the audacity to turn around and say he can’t help you unless you go and get him a disguise. It’s the most ridiculous storytelling ever. I get that it’s driven by the game but seriously, did everyone forget you came here to help them? Fuck.

The gameplay is the standard faire of hidden picture scenes and puzzles and there’s no real new stuff. I did think there was a lot of backtracking required which was nice as you didn’t know when you were fully done with some scenes. This is more in keeping with the older Artifex Mundi games.

In addition to the hidden picture scenes, you can also play Mahjong and this is where the game being originally built for PCs suffers a bit. Having to move the highlighted tile around was troublesome to the point where I couldn’t actually select the one I wanted from time to time as it was in an isolated position and the cursor wouldn’t go there.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

In terms of the achievements, outside of the main game, hidden picture scenes, not using hints, blah, blah, blah there are two things you need to do to get 100%.

The first thing is collectibles. They have actually made this much more challenging than previous games. You need to find three sets of collectibles which include parrots which morph in and out of existence, octopi which are just normal collectibles but are sometimes quite tricky to see and hidden seahorses. There are only seven seahorses but in order to find them you have to click on things you wouldn’t normally click on to get them to show up. And they break the convention of having only one hidden item per scene – in one scene, there are two seahorses to be found!

The other thing is completing all of the Mahjong games which means two playthoughs of the game are required. You also have to complete one of these puzzles in less than 1 minute and the only real way to do this is by switching to Mahjong after finding the last item in a hidden picture scene. This tricks the game into thinking you done a Mahjong game in under a minute.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren’s Call is a relatively quick completion despite the second playthrough requirements. It’s one of the better games in terms of gameplay too. The story is good despite the questionable behaviour of some characters so all in all it’s a solid game as well as an easy 1,000 Gamerscore.

Eventide 2: The Sorcerer's Mirror

I swear these storylines are becoming even more ridiculous. Eventide 2 sees you doing some rock climbing with your niece Jenny, who is then kidnapped by the Russian sorcerer who then uses magic to cut a rope and send you plummeting from the rock face to your death. Just kidding. That wouldn’t be much of a game now would it? While you don’t actually die, this opening scene is ridiculous in that the sorcerer uses magic to cut a rope when a knife would have done the job a lot easier, and earlier in the scene, you use a knife to cut through a tree branch like it’s butter. Not to mention the Deus Ex that sees you survive the fall just because there wouldn’t be a game otherwise!

The remainder of the story sees you travel to the Sorcerer’s mansion making friends along the way as you try to rescue your niece. Naturally, she has been kidnapped as she looks a little bit like the sorcerer’s dead lover and needs to be sacrificed to bring her back to life.

This is where my main annoyance with the game is. I only know this part of the backstory because there are about six storyboard sections which are supposedly puzzles that don’t take any intellect to solve, but are essentially unskippable dialogue bits which are annoying on second subsequent playthoughs. But it also feels like a very lazy and stupid way of telling the story. Why do I need to complete some weird storyboard puzzle thing to open a gate to a cemetery and does that mean the gravedigger has to watch that shit every time he goes in there? It’s mental.

The game introduces two new mechanics; combining items and moral choices. The combining of items is a nice touch and it’s a wonder this hasn’t been in previous games as it did add a level of enjoyment to the series.

On the flip side, the moral choice mechanic can do one. It boils down to you, the player, being able to make five dialogue decisions throughout the game that will slightly alter the course of events you encounter. It’s ridiculous on many levels and here is an example.

The first moral choice you make is about whether or not you lie to the innkeeper about buying a drink for the gravedigger. If you tell him the truth - you are buying it for the gravedigger - then the gravedigger will have the key to the cemetery. However, if you lie and say it’s for you, the innkeeper will have the key and you have to do the same events in a different order. It’s totally redundant as a choice and how the fuck does this alter who has the key?!

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 29 Achievements

It feels a lot like I laboured through this list and the reason for that has a lot to do with the moral choice mechanic in the game. You do all the standard stuff like complete the game on expert, do all puzzles without skipping and complete all picture scenes without using hints and this will net pretty much all of the achievements.

Outside of this, there are not standard collectibles to get which include talking to all imps in the game (pretty hard to miss), collecting all glimmering mirrors and imp cards (slightly harder to find but not impossible). The biggest issue with the collectibles though, it how segmented the game is. Once you get through five or six scenes you cannot go back and explore. Not a problem for me but I can see how this would be irritating if you missed a mirror or card in the middle of the game.

Back to the moral choices issue, there is an achievement for playing the game again and making different choices. However, what this should say is the following: Play the games once making all choices on the left side of the screen which results in pink flowers on the book and then play it again making choices on the right side of the screen which gives orange flowers on the book. Oh, and do both of these playthroughs back to back otherwise you won’t get the achievement.

So this resulted in me playing through the game three times as lying to the innkeeper about who the drink is for is a bad choice. So one playthrough for everything and then two back to back playthroughs for this one achievement. As I said earlier, the moral choices in this game can do one.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Aside from the moral choices the game felt a bit shit. This is a combination of the story boards which felt lazy, and the moral choices which also felt lazy. That said, it’s still a quick completion as the story is somewhat shorter that the others.

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom

This one was a pile of shit that nearly caused me to lose my rag and also caused me to email Artifex Mundi with my issues.

Lost Grimoires follows the story of some twat who comes to a town to be an apprentice to some other twat who is so obviously the bad guy that it hurts. The biggest criticism of the story is that so much it only happens because of stupid decisions made by our character that we are not in control of.

The game also introduces ‘dialogue choices’ in quotation marks because they are not choices at all but merely boxes you need to click on. What’s made worse is the fact that your character is voiced in parts so why the fuck these bits couldn’t just be conversations, I don’t know.

The game is a lot shorter than the others. There is no bonus adventure after you complete the game either, which isn’t too much of a loss as these are normally unnecessary tag-ons anyway. They do introduce a new game mechanic though where the items you find in the environment are used as parts of recipes to make other items. This was quite good and it’s nice to see a new game mechanic.

The music is incredibly frustrating and irritating too. Actually I’m going to labour on this point. The music and sound effects are imbalanced in a lot of these games but it became really apparent here. The music was so irritating during certain sections that I turned it down. But it’s connected to the in game dialogue which means turning the sound down turns the dialogue down. It means that subtitles are a must which makes having dialogue redundant.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 13 Achievements

It’s another standard set of Artifex Mundi achievements here, but they are slightly reduced from some of the other titles. You only get one achievement for completing the game – two if you played on expert. I think this is also the easiest game in terms of an expert playthrough without any hints. The puzzles were not as advanced as some of the other ones I’ve played and the structure was a lot more forgiving this time round.

In addition to the main game and typical achievements, you need to collect Kestrel symbols which are hidden in the standard one per scene, however there is a difference this time which caused me to miss a collectible for the first time in a long time.

In previous Artifex Mundi titles, there are sections where you have to use codes to find routes through forests, mazes and the like and Lost Grimoires is no different in that you need to navigate through a dark sewer. In previous titles, these areas did not contain anything for you to collect that was missable and this is where Lost Grimoires differs. There is a Kestrel symbol in this section and due to my past experience with the game, I didn’t even think to look for it. This meant a partial second playthrough was required in a game where you don’t need to do one. That was annoying.

But not nearly as annoying as what happened to me when completing the game. So after completion, there were three achievements left to unlock. The Kestrel one I knew about and apparently I wasn’t quick enough to complete a hidden picture scene in less than a minute either. But the third one, for completing six hidden picture scenes in a row without using hints, had not unlocked despite the fact that I had done the whole game without using hints.

After replaying the opening to get the kestrel, the six scenes without hints unlocked and just seemed to be delayed. However, the one for doing a scene in under a minute refused to unlock even then. In the end I had to uninstall the game, delete my save data and start again. This worked for me but there are reports of other achievements not working and doing this didn’t address it either. It’s hard to say whether it’s the developer or Microsoft at fault here though.

Downloadable Content – N/A

 Lost Grimoires is the weakest title of the series thus far. It’s not a bad game, it just feels a bit rushed in how it was put together. Unfortunately, I am most likely to remember the game for the glitched achievements and I did write to Artifex Mundi about this. They pointed me in the direction of the True Achievements website and told me that loads of people had unlocked it... nothing like shifting focus away from you!

Eventide: Slavic Fable

This is another Artifex Mundi title here and another quick completion with a few more quirks to boot. Eventide sees you take control of a botanist who travels to some forest to save some flowers. However, she is attacked by Mothra and needs to go on a quest to stop the evil goat man from killing her grandma and becoming all powerful.

In the Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride, the protagonist had the uncanny ability to do pretty much anything. In Eventide, however it’s a different story. The character has had their brain melted to the point that they can’t do the simplest of things. Like using a stick to reach a high up object. Or using a knife to cut some string because it’s not the knife the game wants to use. Honestly, the specific item requirements seem to get more ridiculous the more of these games I play.

Outside of the game play there are two new sets of collectibles and not a lot else that different from previous titles. It’s not disappointing though and still provides the same level of fun as the others. None of the puzzles were ridiculous while still providing a challenge.

The one big annoyance though was the music. The sound was really high-pitched and jarring to the point where we had to turn it down.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 27 Achievements

As these games have come out, they seem to be swinging more towards story related achievements. 10 of the 27 are awarded for story completion, and another for playing through on expert. In addition to these lot, you’ve got the usual ones for completing the game without using any hints or skipping any puzzles. You also have to find three items in a hidden picture scene within 3 seconds which also should come naturally.

The unique achievements to this game involve having to collect ethereal flowers, which are bright purple and pretty difficult to miss. The only thing to be aware of is that they show up in both mini scenes and the main scenes so you have to look everywhere. There are three achievements associated with these.

There are another three achievements associated with collecting various bestiary cards which show the animals you encounter on your travels. These are a little harder to find but, unlike the flowers, can be tracked in the collectibles menu and they are recorded in the order they are found within the game. This makes it easier to know which ones you’ve missed and where you may be able to find them.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite character retardation, Eventide is still enjoyable albeit a little frustrating. There are not many games left in the series for me to play now and they are starting to grate on me a little. Hopefully the next title will be a little refreshing.

Grim Legends 2: Song of the Dark Swan

As far as the Artifex Mundi games go, this is probably one of the more simple ones to complete but only from an achievements perspective.

The story is in no way connected to the previous Grim Legends which is a majorly different approach from the Enigmatis series. This story follows a healer who has come to a castle to look into a sickness being suffered by the baby prince... however, like all things Mundi, shit goes wrong and the baby gets kidnapped and there is some kind of dark magic going on. As you explore the world, you discover that the there is a swan kingdom that was destroyed by evil magic and the swans turn into humans when they wear nettle shirts... but only for an hour??

It’s all really weird to be honest but as you can expect, you eventually save the day and the really obvious looking bad guy gets killed at the last minute and you save the day.

Game play wise, Song of the Dark Swan is slightly different in that you get three different companions throughout your adventure that all leave you for ridiculous reasons. The otter stops helping you because he finds a waterfall where he enjoys himself; the bird decides it can’t go too far away from his nest and the... forest sprite (who cannot speak English and just makes annoying noise every time he... talks?) can’t travel through magic portals. Which is actually fair enough.

Some of the puzzles in this one were an episode in monumental frustration. Not the puzzles themselves for the most part but getting from one scene to another and finding the items needed to progress was insane at some points, especially on expert. There were two reasons for this. The first being that some items were in specific scenes but, despite feeling very certain that I had clicked on every inch of the scene I had somehow missed what I needed to find... only to look up what needed to be done to find the thing I was looking for was where I had already looked. I’s very picky about where you click.

The other thing that was fucking infuriating was how fussy the game was in the hidden picture scenes. At points I had to click on an item up to four times in four different ways to get it to register – not great when there is a requirement to be accurate once in a while.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 26 Achievements

There’s no additional game to play instead of hidden picture scenes here so it’s just the single playthrough required. 13 achievements can be gained from playing through the story and another for completing it on expert. Another 9 are for doing the usual stuff of completing puzzles without skipping and not using hints for hidden picture scenes which just leaves three for the in-game collectibles.

There is basically one collectible per scene which makes it easy to track how far through the game you are and also relatively simple to know if you’ve missed one or not.

Downloadable Content – N/A

This is the first Mundi game where I’ve got the feeling that the series may start shitting all over itself. It is nice that some of the more recent ones only require the one playthrough though. Hopefully this follows on from the remaining titles in the series.

Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride

Another Artifex Mundi title for 100% and this one gave me more issues than the other 5 combined – I’m not really sure why as it’s not like it’s the first one they made.

Grim Legends follows the story of a girl called ‘Lily’s sister’ who has come to watch Lily get married. However, it all goes horribly wrong when Lily is kidnapped by a giant bear that can open doors and work secret passageways, and it’s up to Lily’s sister and fiancé to go and save her. In true Mundi style however, it all turns out to be the other way around and the fiancé is actually the evil one and the bear is actually trying to save her. This is really stupid because if you wanted to make it look like you were saving someone, running in on a party, trashing the place and injuring a bunch of people isn’t the best way to go about it.

The gameplay is a bit different too in that it moves quite quickly at the beginning and flashes through the first scenes as you chase down the bear. There is very little backtracking required and only one or two puzzles per scene. The game is then broken into mini segments. You will have two of three scenes which are all connected with no reason to backtrack further than this for any given section.

There is a new mini game included which sees you playing Dominoes instead of hidden object scenes and this was actually one of the better ones I’ve played. It’s still mostly down to luck though. You can’t make the moves if you don’t have the tiles.

The final observation was one of the main protagonist and that she seems to have an unlimited amount of abilities when it comes to getting things done, whether that be repairing gloves, heavy lifting, rope making and blacksmithing. There’s no end to her skills!

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 23 Achievements

With the addition of the dominoes game, there’s unfortunately another double run through of the story required to get 100%. Now there were lots of twists getting the full achievement set and I’m not sure if it’s bad coding or what, but one of them certainly didn’t unlock when it was supposed to.

Anyway, the standard completing all the mini games and hidden picture scenes without skipping are here but this time, they apply to the story and the bonus chapter as well. You can be forgiven for omitting rage and screaming at a broken game after completing five others where these unlock at the end of the main game but knowing is half the battle here.

That said, after I completed the game on expert, the achievement for doing so did not unlock for me – not even after completion of the bonus chapter. As you can imagine, I was annoyed as I could not see a reason why it hadn’t unlocked. I had accidently clicked the hint button twice through the playthrough but this hadn’t had an impact on any of the other achievements. It’s the only thing I did differently as well so I can only assume that there is some hidden requirement to not press the hint button at any point.

Other than this, there’s nothing different from the other games in the series.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite the achievement fuck-up Grim Legends is a good addition to the series. I didn’t really feel like it did anything differently other than tell a different story in a different environment. The stories and the hidden picture scenes are the main selling points of the series so there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. Except the achievements. Which are broken.

Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood

The second story in the Enigmatis series sees you take back control of the detective on the hunt for the priest who inexplicably escapes from you at the end of Ghosts of Maple Creek. The trek leads her to an abandoned camper van at the side of the road and some more... you guessed it – missing people that need to be found.

After a little bit of puzzle solving, you find a little girl and you need to find her parents who have mysteriously disappeared. This leads you on a quest to explore Ravenwood and find her parents who have been captured, not by the priest but by his evil counterpart – the Raven – who wants to drain their lifeforce to make him more powerful. There. That’s more of an explanation than the first game.

The best part about the game is that at a certain point, you encounter someone in a prison cell who starts helping you by giving you some items to assist you on your quest. It’s a similar mechanic to Nightmares from the Deep in that you have to collect coins to open his cell and set him free. The funny part is that, it is so fucking obvious that the guy in the cell is the priest – it looks and sounds like him so this is no spoiler – but even when the cell in opened, it’s still treated by the detective as a massive surprise.

Game play wise, in addition to hidden picture scenes, there is now a pair matching game, as well as the puzzles from Clockwork Tales where you need to find and build items from a scene instead of using words. You play the pairs game instead of doing hidden pictures so it’s up to you how you play.

The theme seems to stick with the similarly named titles in that the music is consistent with the first game – I actually found the music to be quite good in these titles which is saying something for me. However, there was one major annoyance with it in this game. The music drained out all of the dialogue from the cut scenes which meant I had to read it rather than listen to it. There didn’t seem to be a way to change this in the settings as the dialogue was connected to the music, so it looks like a development cock-up.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 36 Achievements

As these games seem to progress, they seem to build on what they’ve done previously in terms of both gameplay elements and achievements. The other titles in the series had between 11 and 20 achievements but this one boasts 36.

What they have done, though, is introduce a lot more story based achievements which are obtained by playing through the game. There are 17 story related achievements versus the 2 of 3 from the previous titles I’ve played. If you play the game on expert, you can 18 on one playthrough without going off the beaten track.

Next, you get the obligatory hidden scene achievements for completing a hidden scene in less than a minute, with less than 4 mistakes and finding three objects in three seconds as well as playing all of them without hints. There are the same achievements for not skipping any of the puzzles and also for finishing a puzzle in less than a minute.

We are now back to requiring two playthroughs as the pairs mini game needs to be played for all scenes as well but this time, they have realised that expecting their shitty slow automated games to be completed in less than a minute is ridiculous so now you have to do it in less than three minutes.

Now for the fun bits. There are more collectibles. You need to find 30 white butterflies and 30 illusive objects throughout the game world. The butterflies are fine but the illusive objects are irritating as they fade in and out of existence. You need to be able to see and click on them quickly which was fine for the most part but we missed one right at the beginning of the game. Convenient really, as it wasn’t time consuming to pick it up but as the game needs two playthroughs anyway, there’s no real pressure to get these without a guide on the first run through.

Downloadable Content – N/A

All in all, Enigmatis 2 was another enjoyable game despite the sound issues. I still think the second playthroughs are redundant and the additional games don’t offer anything exciting but it takes around 8 hours to run through twice and that includes playing exert mode without a guide.

Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek

It’s another Artifex Mundi title and the first one that gave me any real trouble. Playing through the game on expert for the first time when it doesn’t tell you where to go is one thing but the items and what they were used for were absolutely ridiculous for the most part.

I’ve started to be sensible now too knowing that I’m probably going to play all of their games, I bought this one as part of a bundle with Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood which I’ll be playing next and will be the first direct sequel from the publishers I’ll play.

The game follows the story of a detective with amnesia after a car crash looking for another missing woman (shocking, I know.) She is in the town of Maple Creek where an evil priest is trying to do something with women to gain some power or something. I don’t know; it’s not really explained but basically the job is to save the woman from the evil priest.

There were a few things that happened during this game that made me laugh. Firstly and in relation to the storyline, despite the appearance of there being a desperate race to save this woman, you can spend as long as you want dicking about. And if you are playing on expert, you will do this going backwards and forwards trying to find the relevant scene you need to explore to find that one item with its specific use to allow you to progress. There is no penalty for taking too long which makes sense in the context of the game but not if reality was applied.

Secondly, you have an amazing carry capacity when reality is applied. At one point you pick up a chainsaw and then run through the forest with it but if you think about it, you could have the detective running backwards and forwards looking for a hidden picture scene carrying a chainsaw. Unless she is some kind of faceless cyborg from the future, I’m pretty sure she would collapse after a few hours of lugging that thing around.

The last thing is the fact that at so many points during the game, you get items that have specific purposes which you can’t use even if you come across a situation where the item would be appropriate to use because it’s not the specific one. A couple of examples, you need to use a fishing pole to get a page out of a tree but you can’t use it to get a cork out of a drain. You have to use acid to melt some rusty metal but a hammer would have done the job just as well. The whole game is like that too - when you think you have what you need only for it to not be what you need and you need to traipse around all over the place looking for that one elusive item you missed at the beginning.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 11 Achievements

There are only hidden picture scenes here so there is no need for a second playthrough however there are 8 missable achievements. There are only two for just completing the game but the likelihood is you will get more than this without the use of a guide.

Finishing all the hidden pictures and puzzles without skipping any will net you 4 of the missables. Then there are the usual speed ones for a mini-game in under a minute, hidden scene in under a minute and three items in three seconds as well as the customary ‘complete a scene with less than 4 mistakes’ – so no major shakes for the missables either.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Enigmatis was an enjoyable, funny, sometimes frustrating experience but did actually feel a little rewarding playing through on expert without a guide. Some of the puzzles were hard but never illogical which is still the strongest credit to the series.

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink

The next Artifex Mundi game to fall by the wayside is Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink. You play as Evelyn Glass who is searching for professor Ambrose Ink, a guy who is researching something to do with earthquakes in a bizarre Neo-Nazi snow covered town. It’s a bit different from the previous Mundi games in that you actually find Professor Ink at the beginning of the game... only for him to be kidnapped by the Nazis and you have to find him all over again.

You are not alone on the rescue quest – you are joined by Matthew, a mechanical bird who will help you get items from hard to reach places. He doesn’t have much of a carry capacity though and most of his help results in him knocking stuff off of high shelves for you to then pick up. 

As with previous games, there are hidden picture scenes but this time, there is no alternative game to play instead. You will, however, come across different types of hidden picture scenes where you have to use various items you find within the scene in a sort of puzzle format in order to get one item at the end... I realise I’ve probably made that sound more complicated than it is.

Musically and graphically it works well where the music doesn’t annoy or get in the way. In fact, I can’t really remember the music much which is only a good thing.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

With the lack of an additional mini-game means that there is no need for an additional playthough of the game unless you miss some of the missable achievements – which I still managed to do but it wasn’t too bad for me luckily. You will get 9 achievements for just playing through the game. 10 if you do so in expert difficulty – which once again doesn’t make the game more difficult, simply drags out how long it will take you to complete without a guide.

You’ve then got the now standard missables for getting to the end without skipping any puzzles and completing a hidden object scene - this time without making any mistakes - however there are some additional bits to Clockwork Tales.

In most scenes, you will be able to find things call Steambugs. These are mechanical bugs that serve no purpose other than to be in the game as a set of collectibles and there are four achievements associates with them. You have to find one of them and then you have to find all of them spread over three locations.

I got lucky here as I missed one in the first location in the game so I only had to replay the first tiny bit rather than all of it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall it does exactly what you would expect an Artifex Mundi title to do by this point – more of the same with some slight differences to add to the mechanics. The collectibles offer a new angle to full completion in terms of achievements. I’ve now started playing these games in the order they were released and this is the second title they put out after Nightmares from the Deep so there may be more titles out there with collectibles.

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart

So after enjoying Dark Arcana: The Carnival, I thought I would give this one a go too. It wasn’t on sale or anything which shows how much I rated the first game I played.

Nightmares from the Deep follows the story of a mother and daughter who are looking to put together a museum exhibition of Captain Remmington, a notorious pirate from the past who supposedly had some kind of devil powers. This becomes apparent when his corpse reanimates and he kidnaps the daughter to perform a sacrifice to bring back his dead lover. Sound familiar?

The game is similar to Dark Arcana in that you have to search hidden object scenes to find items to help you on your quest however there are a few differences. In Nightmares, you play Mahjong instead of Monaco. This was a bit better and it felt more like a game. It’s still not as good as actually doing the hidden scenes though. The other thing which I liked was that some items you could use MORE THAN ONCE!! How novel that I could use a useful item on more than one occasion! Why this didn’t apply to some of the more obviously useful items, like a crowbar for example, I still don’t know.

Some of the puzzles were really good too. A lot of them require you to find various items before you can progress to the actual puzzle. Once again they offer a challenge without being too obscure to be solveable – a major plus point, especially over that bullshit Mr Pumpkin Adventure.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 15 Achievements

In terms of achievements there are only three that are related to the main story. Four if you include playing it through on expert mode. I was clued up this time and aware that I needed to do two playthroughs so started it on normal to learn what needed to happen first.

There are the normal achievements to expect now for finishing a hidden picture scene in less than a minute, without making mistakes and without skipping any puzzles - which is essentially not playing the game. Once you finish the first playthrough doing hidden picture scenes and puzzles, you should only have the Mah-jong achievements left, and the expert difficulty if you played on casual first.

One of these Mah-jong achievements is the hardest achievement in the game and it’s for completing a game of Mah-jong in less than a minute. The trick for Monaco from Dark Arcana goes one further here. What I had to do was complete the hidden picture scene, then once I picked the last object, quickly switch to Mah-jong. This tricks the game in to thinking you have completed a game of Mah-jong and unlocks the achievement.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Despite the shitty Mah-jong, Nightmares from the Deep is still another solid game. It took me just over eight hours to complete the game from start to finish so clocks in at about a £1 an hour in terms of fun pounds.

Dark Arcana: The Carnival

Following the sizeable completion that was Mafia II and my ongoing battle with ESO (Probably never to be completed) I decided to take some time investigating some more relaxing games. During this investigation, I stumbled across Developers Artifex Mundi who have released several Point and Click adventure games. I’ve been waiting for a while for one of their titles to go on sale so I can try them out and Dark Arcana: The Carnival was the first reduced title so I jumped on it.

Dark Arcana follows the story of an unnamed investigator who is looking for a woman who goes missing in a carnival. The investigation leads to Jim something, a knife thrower from the 70s who accidentally killed his lover performing a trick. He is trying to resurrect her but in actual fact he is being tricked by the Evil One who is trying to break into our world to destroy us all. The storyline is hilarious in its wildness and really plays on the fantasy behind the carnival. It’s actually really well executed too and adds value to finishing the game.

The gameplay can be broken down into two categories; puzzles and hidden picture scenes or Monaco. The puzzles very nearly achieve that measure of being challenging while not impossible and what I love about them is that some of them employ elements of common sense for you to solve them. A nice little touch is when you are unlocking a door you have to click to put the key in, click again to turn the key, again to remove the padlock and again to open the door. It’s one of those things where I can imagine a player clicking on the door, having it not open and then getting upset.

The hidden picture scenes are the best bit. I am guilty of having wasted several hours on application games and Facebook games because of my secret love affair with hidden picture scenes, so having an Xbox game where I can earn achievements for doing them was awesome. Instead of doing the hidden picture scenes, you have the option of playing a really shitty card game called Monaco. I didn’t really get the point of this one if I’m honest. It’s basically snap on a 3 by 4 grid where the cards have to be next to each other for you to make matches. There’s no real skill in manipulating the grid and it’s slow and unrewarding.

Another thing that I wasn’t keen on – but do understand – is that the items you can use during the adventure pointlessly break or disappear after one use. This feels annoying when you get, say a hammer, use it to break something, then come across something else that needs breaking only to not have a hammer anymore – a seemingly useful item – gone for no reason!

Musically, they have gone for a sinister backdrop for most of the game but sometimes the pace increases for no reason and it feels really out of sync with what you are doing. The graphics feel like you are within a comic book and this is very suitable for the gameplay style which is great as it doesn’t sacrifice gameplay for graphics.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 22 Achievements

On to the fun bits – there are six achievements for playing through the story of the game and the bonus chapter, and another for completing the game on expert mode. Now this is where I fell down in terms of making it easy for myself.

You need to play through the game twice to get all the achievements but I didn’t check this and just kicked off on expert mode straight away. In expert mode, the game doesn’t give you any indications of where to go and what scenes you need to go to in order to progress. I stubbornly ploughed through the game when in reality, playing it through on casual first would have made the whole thing a lot easier.

There are a lot of missable achievements too and this is where the two playthoughs come in. You have to do all hidden picture scenes as hidden pictures and you also have to play all the scenes as Monaco. For Monaco you have to complete three games without shuffling which is relatively straight forward although it does depend on luck. You also have to finish a game in less than a minute which I think is impossible due to how slow the cards move. What I did was play the game as a hidden picture scene until I only had one item left to find then switched to Monaco and finished the game. Thankfully, this counts as completing a game of Monaco in less than a minute.

Playing hidden picture scenes, you have to do the same things but also find 3 objects in 3 seconds and find all objects in all pictures without using hints. You also have to complete a scene making less than 5 mistakes but this is simple if you can actually find the objects and don’t just randomly click everywhere.

Outside of this there were 3 achievements that I missed on my initial playthough. One was for witnessing the evil world trying to take over ours and to do this you have to not go in the right direction at a specific point. You have to finish a puzzle in less than 15 seconds which is easy on the claw machine at the beginning but I inexplicably fucked this up and had to replay it. The last one was for completing the shooting mini game first time and this is really stupid because you need to know what you need to do before you do it in order to get it right. Again.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I enjoyed Dark Arcana for what it offered in terms of story and gameplay. It’s also decent value for money at £7.99 (RRP) and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It took me just over six hours to complete the entire game and not a moment of it was dull. Even a second playthough didn’t feel like an arduous task. I will definitely be trying out some of their other titles.