The Inheritance of Crimson Manor

An escape room/puzzle style game, you play as the executor of the last will from the Hadley Strange. You enter the mansion and explore its secrets and puzzles to uncover the secret of the Hadley and his family. The mansion has a nice Victorian aesthetic; you slowly open it up through exploring and finding keys to open up doors and the like. There's a lot of details put into the mansion which gives it a feeling of being lived in. The story is told through various notes you find, it's okay but the ending is a bit underwhelming. There are some good puzzles but also many simple ones and some with confusing logic. One puzzle related to Steam valves I had to check an online walkthrough as it appeared to be bugged (after duplicating the inputs the puzzle was 'solved' but the 'solution' made zero sense). There's a lot of key-hunting and running between rooms and sometimes the true puzzle is figuring out where you're actually supposed to go. The game has a built in hint system which is useful when you get stuck but I wish they made the hint system more layered so you had the option to get minor hints before telling you what to do. Multiple times I accidentally overlooked an important item and I needed to check the hint to learn I missed something. Ultimately it was merely okay but can be picked up on sale if you're looking for this style of game. 6.5/10

Sehr schönes Spiel und hat mich zeit vertreiben gelohnt und Spass gemacht

Entretenido, buena atmosfera, interesante historia.

Alright enough, but clunky controls. After finishing it with some hints (because some things you merely have to tinker with for so long to really know that you are on the right track at all), the end felt interesting, but not very satisfying. The big mystery is kept until the very end, then revealed, you make a "choice" for cutscene and credits roll, all within one minute. No time to let anything sink in.

Really fun game and I loved the atmosphere but some of the puzzles need work (ex: masquerade mask puzzle gives incorrect position of a mask). Most of the puzzles were intuitive and not extremely challenging and it was nice going through the manor, which I was able to navigate without the map after a bit, and I appreciate extra objects being interactable even if they weren't part of the story. I do wish that the map icons for puzzles were a bit more clear, maybe with alt text when you hover over them, or that we could write notes about rooms. It was also nice that some clues autosaved to the journal so that we knew what was important but it felt incomplete and like more clues should've been saved.

Very reminiscent of Nancy Drew. A little rough around the edges but was a fun, quick playthrough. It has some early Resident Evil style puzzles that are essentially "pick up item on one side of house, run to other side to get another item, rinse and repeat." If you are looking for a quick puzzle/mystery game that isn't too deep and has an OK hint system, I would recommend picking this up. If you want to spend more than 5 hours on something, maybe not. (It did give me Scratches vibes but no silly voice acting unfortunately lol) I will mention that the overlay for text notes if you're having a hard time reading cursive is also a little rough to look at, and any setting below Ultra makes the game look very much like it was made in the 90s lol.

[h2] Atmospheric game with unfortunate flaws and weak puzzles [/h2] tl:dr I have three major complaints with this title: non-sale price is too steep for what is offered, puzzles are mostly of the lock-and-key variety or otherwise very simple, and there are many minor and some bigger non-gamebreaking bugs. [h3] Atmosphere, music and graphics [/h3] The greatest strength of this title is the level of detail put into the manor. Each and every nook and cranny seems to be littered with books and papers, almost all of the cupboards and drawers can be opened and contain something, making it feel alive and lived in. Sometimes one may find a readable news article or private letter foreshadowing some of the happenings around the Strange family, or simply the Lord's intrigueing taste in literature. Especially the Lord's portrait in the entrance hall leaves quite the impression, along with other original artwork. The music serves as an accomodating backgrond note, never too noticeable, but fitting for the vibe. Graphics are fine I guess, but feel a tad dated at times, and some assets are noticeable blurry and stretched. There are no reflections at all, making for some sad looking mirrors, and the lighting never gets an opportunity to truely shine. There's a missed opportunity to make the manor not just look good, but grandiose. I've played on Ultra graphics, however I didn't notice much of a difference compared to Normal settings tbh. [h3]the puzzles (or lack thereof)[/h3] In my personal opinion, the best early puzzles are [spoiler] finding the desk key [/spoiler] and [spoiler] the library light puzzle [/spoiler]. Both of those puzzles have an accommodating hint nearby hidden in the environment, thus rewarding exploration, while also being able to solve them without finding or using the additional hints. Unfortunately, there are many lock and key puzzles, many literal keys, some equivalent, like a combination to enter, that sometines yield just another key again. Most of the challenge is remembering WHERE to use it. I should note positively that most(unfortunately not exactly all) relevant clues get added into a journal automatically, and unsolved puzzles or contraptions get marked on the map. Also, the hints point you to your next objective if stuck. About one(or two) puzzles per room are ones that requires actual thought to solve, however three are trial-and-error combination locks, one ball maze with a front instead of top view for some reason, and some contain just enough clues so the last part can be inferred by guesswork, which may leave you searching for a last clue that didn't exist. The [spoiler] Lens [/spoiler] is underused, two times in the beginning and then another time when you may already forgotten about it. Overall the puzzles feel simple and easy, even for point-and-click or adventure type games, with a handful of interesting puzzles. [h3]I'd fire my maid if there're so many bugs in my manor[/h3] Yup, bugs aplenty. While I didn't find any hard-locking bugs or crashes, there're too many bugs I stumbled by accident, including: grabbing stuff through the walls of a closed safe, trunks refusing to close, buggy door behaviour, a dial of a puzzle that was somehow offset by a couple degrees, making it unsolveable until I restarted. Said restart also resetting the options to defaults. Being unable to close the tutorial message on controller. Add on top some of the jank in some puzzles, like not registering inputs properly with mouse or if you're too quick, not being able to reset puzzles to default, as well as very non-diagetic (and also unnecessary complicated) design show a lot of flaws that really could (and should) have been avoided. [h3]should you buy[/h3] I cannot recommend this title for it's asking price while you could get almost 3/4 entries of a series that I believe is both far superior and will give you about as much playtime (~5h) PER TITLE as this one. If you really like the sound of a relaxing adventure game with the atmosphere of a (slightly creepy) victorian mansion, don't mind some flaws and bugs here and there, and it's on sale, sure, go for it.