Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova

Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova is an average Hidden Object Mystery. The music is good, and the puzzles are fine. There's some fun set pieces and decent characters. The game has not aged well and lacks some refinement. Probably get it on sale? Yes, real world Kisilova in Serbia had Austrian investigators in 1725 conclude that a series of deaths were probably vampire related. Yes, Rose from the cover art is based on a later local legend. The accused man was found dead in his own grave as expected, albeit in an oddly intact condition, which prompted his staking and cremation. The alleged attacks generally involved wasting curses and strangulation rather than biting, and the reported sightings were more along the lines of a talking zombie or a revenant than the refined vampire presented in this game. Basically, the game is a reimagining of events as if the rural proto-vampire had been replaced by Count Dracula. I'd probably object more to the odd stretching of a local mythos, but a good chunk of the dev team seem to be of Serbian descent. For people interested in the actual events and recorded legends, there are interviews with local historians in the bonus material. Most of the exterior backgrounds were also based on modern photographs of the Kisilova area, which is a very nice touch. The main story of the game is cliche and has anachronistic objects such as the book on Dracula-style vampires and a copy of Rodin's The Thinker. The optional epilogue is nicely put together and ends on a moral choice. That said, the bonus chapter has a ton of non-obvious items that are hiding amongst the backdrop. I found them by doing a careful mouse-over of the screen looking for interactable items, because the map feature indicated there was something somewhere. I have no idea how you'd find some of them on higher difficulty settings. I'd have a full run of Steam achievements, except the Hint Button activation range extends upwards into the searchable playing field. I managed to accidentally activate it twice in one scene, after playing through most of the game without issues. There might be subtle resolution issues? Most of the puzzles have odd distortions of the background texture, where decent sized chunks of the left and right edges are strangely mirrored.