A Winter Haunting

Really liked the art style and the decision of not adding any features (eyes, mouth, nose) to faces. Makes art more unique. The dialogs are witty (which I always consider a must in point n click adventure games) and the story is looking pretty interesting, with puzzle variety.

A short but engaging adventure! The art style is cozy and some puzzle will get you to scratch your head. Worth playing.

I received early access to this game. The faceless characters of this game really pops out the spooky vibe. The graphics, the story line and music brought out the feeling of suspense that kept me at the edge of my seat. The puzzles were really fun to solve. This game has all kinds of puzzles: word based, math, logical thinking etc. One of my favorite puzzles was [spoiler] trying to figure out which one was the real necklace. [/spoiler] I highly recommend you play this game with a friend (although its a great game to play alone as well). It is fun to spend time with your friends or SO and play this game. I absolutely loved the ENDING!!!

Full Gameplay(maybe even considered a walkthrough): https://youtube.com/live/Vxn5EJz4quY This is one of the more adorable adventure games of the year, and quite possibly my favorite of the year. A unique art style, a mysterious story, and an almost escape room style puzzle aspect to it. The puzzles are well written, with only a few leaving me somewhat stumped. The hints are in the game to help you, and not in a way that would be over the top. You can make your character, Everlyn, as nice or mean-spirited as you'd like. Your choices have consequences and will play out towards the end of the story. There are a few aspects from those choices that you might have to think about a little in order to make the choice that is appropriate for you. There are no wrong choices, and I personally found my choices to be an appropriate reflection of how I played the game. There's a lot of detail put into the rooms, and the writing brings the characters alive. But they have no faces, you might say. This is true. But, the way the game's storytelling is made I really found that I barely noticed. There are subtle hints of poetry, elegant writing, and a intricate world building. I feel like we don't get Adventure titles like this very often any more. I don't think there's a lack of an audience for them, I think they just might be somewhat difficult to find. I do hope more people find A Winter Haunting, because it's a great showing of why this genre will always thrive if given the chance.

A beautiful, haunting game with a terrific story and truly puzzling puzzles. I really enjoyed my time with this game. The art is lovely, the story top notch, and the puzzles were difficult but not impossible. I would recommend this point and click adventure to everyone.

A Winter Haunting is a mix of a point-and-click a puzzle adventure game. There are some interactions with NPCs and simple inventory puzzles, but the emphasis is on information/logic puzzles. The inventory-based puzzles are quite reasonable, and there are lots of responses for using items, letting you know whether or not you're on the right track. The logic puzzles are pretty good, except perhaps for one annoyance where there is a reference to hours and to a clock and then it turns out it has nothing to do with the clock puzzle. It's always neat to see some real-world things used as a puzzle. If you're not familiar with matrix multiplication, it does feel like a solid puzzle to do some in-game research to find out the rules and then apply those rules to get the result. The game has two levels of hints: there's an optional source of information that gives slightly different (usually more transparent) hints in addition to the hints collected in the main game. I got a little lost and overwhelmed towards the end with all the letters, notes, lists of items to collect, their counts and orderings as well as all the names and complex relations (which is all necessary information), so I was just filling in some missing pieces by trial and error in a couple of later puzzles. The UI is quite good, with fast movement, fast interactions, and a convenient way to use notes and look up collected puzzle pieces.

Overall, I really liked this game. I was able to unlock all achievements after multiple iterations of the game, so I know it quite well by now. I can speed-run it in ~5 minutes. The artwork is stunning, and the music matches the tone of each scene in the game. The puzzles were very clever. I didn't believe there would be much in a simple point-click game (with a few shortcut keys), but it actually proved me wrong and got me hooked. I also liked how some of the dialogue hinted to the puzzle solutions, and it gave me that feeling of "ugh I wished I paid attention!" once I solved the puzzle. What I appreciated in particular was how the very responses I would give, as Everlyn, ended up being used against me. Nonchalantly, I just went with whatever I thought was interesting, and didn't realize how it backfired. That caught me off guard, as I assumed it would just be a point-click game where I solve puzzles - it became more than that, and it was like I had to reassess my every decision in the game. In fact, because of this very feature, it becomes a great game to play with friends - if they control Everlyn together, it's very entertaining when a wrong move was made and we point the finger at that friend, which is a shared excitement. My main problem is that it was too short, perhaps it should be 3-4 times as long considering the $10 price. I expected more content, or more intriguing content. [spoiler] When Everlyn meets the 'eye' character, that was the real conflict of the game where things would start to get interesting, and there would be more riddles to solve while knowing that the eye is present. I was sort of let down when it really was the start to the end. [/spoiler]. It was also obvious that [spoiler] Mel was the real Amy, since she showed up randomly in the opening of the game after Finley leaves, which made me suspicious of her presence from the beginning. As more clues unfolded I figured it out, and was underwhelmed with the reveal. [/spoiler] This also wasn't really a horror game, more like thriller or mystery. But because of the intended mood of the game, hence "A Winter Haunting", I anticipated an eerie theme and was let down with how it didn't really deliver. There could've been more done to achieve that, like something gruesome, a jump scare, or a deranged twist of events. It was a fine plot, but not really spooky. All in all, I was glad to have played it and can't wait for the next games AB will create! If this is just the first one, the next ones will be exceptional for sure. PS: As someone who grows orange and lemon trees, those are the smallest orange and lemon trees I've ever seen :P