[Sorry for the bad screenies, these games won't let me ctrl prtscr due to using a third party download suit for all these kind of games I play, so these are taken the old fashioned way of photographing the screen.]
Anyway...
Whelp, that's was certainly a game!
I hereby forward this game to the council for establishing codex classics. Those obscure gems come train-wrecks that just have that something to them. Of course, in order to have this claim verified it will require some of you poor suckers who evaluate such things to actually play the game yourself, for quality assurance and record keeping purposes.
So, what is it?
It's called: "Mystery Case Files: Escape From Ravenhearst" and is the third instalment of the specific Ravenhearst setting within the wider universe of the Mystery Case Files games, of which this is the eighth instalment. Mystery Case Files currently has 17 titles in its universe & is on its third set of developers, the first stopping developing them after the 9th game.
The very first Mystery Case Files game was a pure hidden object game called "Huntsville". As the series progressed the hidden object games became less and less of an element as puzzles started to become the main focus. from this point Adventure Game elements started to appear and started to replace puzzles for priority. By the release of Escape From Ravenhearst hidden object puzzles of the type from the first game had been completely removed and the game was, to all intents and purposes, just an adventure game with some token refence to Hidden Object gaming via some occasional morphing object collection screens. So it went like this:
1st game: 95% hidden objects, 5% puzzles
3rd game (first Ravenhearst): 80% hidden objects, 20% puzzles
5th game (second Ravenhearst): 50% hidden objects, 30% puzzles, 20% adventure game (also now using live actors in scenes)
8th game (third Ravenhearst): 20% hidden objects, but now morphing objects rather than specific items, 20% puzzles & 60% adventure game (the screenshot above are all of live actors, though none in the OP, except the face in the tele)
So, by just the eighth game in the series the games had completely and 100% morphed, if you'll excuse the pun, from simple hidden object games into full blown adventure games.
1st codex classic criteria therefore: a game series where each game has distinctly developed and changed over time whereby the instalment in question bares virtually zero resemblance to its original.
Likewise, the instalment in question severely angered a large section of the established fanbase and generated all kinds of thoroughly entertaining butthurt, whilst still remaining a playable and somewhat popular game. As with the gradual change above, the 'edgy' content of the games went from:
1st game: light hearted mocking humour
3rd game (first Ravenhearst): light horror themes with very little sense of real creep
5th game (second Ravenhearst): quite edgy with more bizarre and creepiness than one would expect
8th game (third Ravenhearst): So over the top in its creep that it's folded itself back round to humour, but the humour now being dark humour rather than light, outright offensive rather than simply mocking etc.
2nd codex classic criteria therefore: the game courts controversy, but not from intention, just from incongruous development drifts to the point where something has been made that no-one predicted, no-one expected & the fallout was majestic.
3rd codex classic criteria: it's actually a pretty hard game, and even has a couple of puzzles that will make even the most hardcore adventure gamer be tempted to reach for a walkthrough with a coherent atmosphere and design aesthetic and some genuinely laugh out loud moments, including both gameplay and cutscenes. The people who made it, from the developers to the actors all seemed to be having a ball making it.
But is my offering to the codex trough going to elicit nothing but a single day eyebrow raise? Or are those who judge such things going to take up the gifthorse challenge and investigate the merits of the claim by actually giving it a whirl?
Dare to Play?
