Well, what can I say. The Mermaid Mask is on first impression a game packed with superb art: The characterdesigns and backgrounds are colorful and expressive (the smooth animation adding to it a ton) the voice acting and music is wonderful as well. (The soundtrack especially striking a wonderful balance between eerie and whimsical, I liked it a lot.)
This is what you can already tell from the trailer, I still wanted to mention it.
The gameplay: The Mermaid Mask is not a -difficult- game. The puzzles are relatively easy, I spent maybe 5 minutes on each. I still found them satisfying to solve! (There are not many puzzles, maybe one per room on average, so it never gets repetitive.) The real joy of the gameplay however lies in the clues. You collect a decent amount of clues (50ish I believe) that you can turn and read, each of them relating to a substory/character.
Still: The Mermaid Mask clearly focuses on the story/avoids to be frustrating. I played a lot of Professor Layton and similar point and click games, occasionally one gets stuck because one fails to find the one last interaction/evidence to progress the story, resulting in an aimless clicking from screen to screen.
The Mermaid Mask avoids this by providing optional hints. "Talk to this person/ Look in this room" which saved me quite a few minutes of rechecking every room for a fifth time at one point.
Furthermore: There are no penalties for being "wrong" in the ace attorney style gameplay sections. Which might remove the thrill for some people, but I found it fun to just see the story unravel.
Speaking of the story: (No spoilers, esp if you played Tangle Tower too)
I LOVE the main characters. Their dynamic is amazing and a great spin on the "silly vs reserved" dynamic. Both have an equally cute humour and make nonchalant jokes, without ever ruining the mood when it counts, I enjoyed them a lot.
The other characters are also fun each of them equally likeable and unique, it was a joy to find out what they know/how they like each other. Everyone had their one major gimmick, along with their own little background story that you uncover.
The Mermaid Mask has a very similar structure to Tangle Tower, in which it introduces you to multiple suspicious sub stories that all get tied together in a big spectacle at the end, it was very fun!
I would recommend this game to people that:
-Enjoyed Tangle Tower (It is a good sequel, including some references and more art, animation etc)
-Enjoy Professor Layton/Ace Attorney type games for the sake of the story and or mystery
-Like pretty/well crafted games
-Like story games generally
I would NOT recommend this game if:
-You hate reading (half of the gameplay is essentially reading comprehension)
-Want really difficult math puzzles/found Layton games too easy
-want a really dark and scary game
Overall I liked it, it was exactly what I expected from this game and it could fill a couple of evenings :)
