True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 1

An excellent adventure game featuring a rich and engaging story, intuitive item interactions, well designed puzzles, optional hidden object scenes, and convenient fast travel. Even a decade later, it remains an enjoyable experience. Holly has a nightmare that shows her an asylum where people have died under mysterious circumstances, with some kind of evil presence hanging over the place. The dream turns out to be a premonition. Just as she wakes up, there's a knock at the door, and a postman delivers a letter from her sister. The letter leads Holly to an abandoned house, where she hopes to uncover the truth about her mother and learn what happened to her sister, who disappeared shortly after their mother's death. Since the game is divided into three games that largely share the same mechanics, there is not much new that can be said about them, and one review fits them all. From a gameplay perspective, this is a point and click adventure. You explore scenes looking for interaction points and activate them with the left mouse button. Hotspots are not highlighted, so you need to move the cursor around and watch for it to change into a different icon that already indicates what action will take place. The most common icons are a magnifying glass, which either triggers a comment from Holly or opens a close up view of an object, a hand that lets you pick up or use an item, and a larger arrow that moves you to another scene. There are three acts: the first act in one location, while the second and third acts share a location that contains a respectable number of rooms and areas to explore. To make navigation easier, a map allows you to quickly travel between rooms by clicking on their images. Collected items are stored in an inventory at the bottom of the screen. If you prefer to keep it visible at all times, you can lock it in place. Otherwise, it only appears when you move the cursor to the bottom edge. To use an item, simply click on it to attach it to your cursor and then click on a location where it might be useful. Areas that require an item are marked with a spinning gear icon. Since only a limited number of locations are available at any given time, it is easy to test items on every interactive spot. Fortunately, the solutions are logical and item combinations make sense, so progress rarely becomes frustrating. Holly also provides useful comments that often point you in the right direction. Occasionally, certain interaction points disappear to help direct your attention elsewhere. While this can be useful, it may also lock you out of collectibles and achievements. Because of that, it pays to stay observant, as missing something can mean replaying the entire game to obtain everything. The collectibles come in two forms. Facts expand your journal with additional story details that help explain what is happening, while small figurines provide background information about the game's characters. Since two of the acts take place in the same location, keeping track of collectibles becomes a little easier. A handful of locations throughout the game feature hidden object puzzles. The nice thing is that the game lets you choose how you want to approach them. You can either play a traditional hidden object scene by searching for items from a list, or keep things consistent with the main adventure by finding objects and using them in the correct places. Any items used in these sequences remain exclusive to the puzzle itself. Beyond item usage, some challenges come in the form of logical puzzles. Their difficulty depends on the setting you choose at the start, although it can be adjusted at any point during the game. The puzzles are fair, fit naturally into the adventure, and never feel forced. There is also no need to take notes because Holly's journal automatically records clues and information relevant to puzzle solutions. After completing the main story, you unlock a bonus chapter that serves as a bridge to the second game. The amount of extra content is quite generous. Alongside the usual wallpapers and music tracks, you can review all collected facts and figurines, replay unlocked puzzles and hidden object scenes, rewatch cutscenes, and browse several deleted scenes and production sketches. There is also a selection of achievements. Most are tied to finishing the game on the highest difficulty or avoiding hints altogether. They are generally fine, with one unfortunate exception. One achievement requires completing the entire game in a single session without quitting. If the game crashes or you decide to exit, you will have to start over from the beginning, which feels unnecessarily punishing.