Mountain Trap: The Manor of Memories is a Hidden Object puzzle game, the type you normally see on mobile app stores or even as browser apps. There's literally hundreds of these on Steam, mostly published by Artifex Mundi, many of them free on mobile app stores, but this one will cost you money on Steam. There's a haunted house theme to the game, but this is a just a veneer over a tired and overdone set of hidden object minigames and Adobe Flash tier puzzles, wrapped together with a bunch of static screens that you "move" through by tapping your finger on your iPhone screen.
While these kinds of games are popular amongst casual gamers, it's difficult to argue this is a great value proposition as a PC game, especially considering the price of this compared to the hundreds of free HOGs on the mobile app stores.
And this isn't even one of the better HOGs you can get, with somewhat incoherent puzzles... and this thing is 10 years old!
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio, due to the age of the game, it predates the 16:9 widescreen gaming standard established back in 2006. It's possible they're marketing this towards people using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game is being specifically marketed towards people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. It's obviously not going to look right on a modern 16:9 gaming display.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this game does.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game.
Next is pricing and value. Is this game worth buying from among the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Mountain Trap: The Manor of Memories has the greedy, cash grab price of around $7 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $7 asking price for this game could get you games like "Wolfenstein - The New Order", "Rise of the Tomb Raider" or "Dead by Daylight". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. $7 for a 10 year old 4:3 browser tier game. No thanks.
There are over 140,000 games on Steam, not every one of them is a hidden gem. I'm here to try help gamers find the ones that actually matter in that sea of Steam Direct self published mess. If you don't agree with my findings in this review, you should definitely buy it, download it, and play it to see for yourself. I'm happy to have helped you make an informed choice, regardless of the outcome.
