This is a fantastic adventure and hidden-object game. You are an investigator of the supernatural. The ghost of the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne ( who was born and raised in Salem Massachusetts and is in reality related to one of the Judges who oversaw the actual Witch Trials) appears before you suddenly begging you to help him escape the chains of injustice that have bound him to the earth by searching out the truth behind the infamous Salem Witch Trials.
This is a beautifully constructed game with very detailed scenes that have animated movement, the flicker of candelight , the moving of clouds overhead, eerie sound effects, and even many of the items you search for are themselves in motion or animated in some way.
There are plenty of hints available during the game in case you get stuck, and no timer or time limit on searching for items, which lets you advance at your own pace. This is a huge game, expanding to over 400 megabytes, which enhances its visual effects and the overall feel of the gameplay. Also, you can unlock an extra unlimited hidden-object game by collecting a certain number of clovers during regular gameplay.
The version I downloaded is for Windows and I encountered no problem with it. This software should work well on most Windows systems. The system requirements are 1.6 gig processor speed, 512 megabytes of memory, 460 megabytes of hard drive space, a video card with 64 megabytes or more of memory, and Microsoft Direct-X 9.0 or better. Most computers today running a Windows based system will meet these requirements easily.
To see your processor speed and system memory, right click on your "My Computer" icon on your desktop and then select, "properties". You can find out your available hard drive space by double-clicking (left mouse button) on the My Computer icon to open it, and then right clicking on the "hard disk drive" icon or image and selecting "properites". It will show "used space" and "free space".
At various points in the game you will encounter puzzles that you have solve in order to advance. For example, strange locks on doors that you have to figure out how to open. These are relatively easy to complete, it may take you a few minutes to figure them out but they are not too difficult. However, the game provides a "skip" button that allows you to skip over the puzzle and advance if it's too hard for you. The "skip" button that appears for each puzzle is an outline image of a raven on the lower right part of the screen that slowly fills in. When it completely fills in you can click on it to "skip" the puzzle you are facing.
At some parts of the game there are tasks that you need to complete in order to advance. These do not have a "skip" button, but instead require you to gather certain objects or manipulate certain items in order to find or locate a key element of the game. Again, I found these tasks to be not too difficult. However, two of the tasks really gave me trouble. I am going to explain these, below, and give you the answer to these tasks, so if you don't want to know.., and would rather figure these out on your own, don't read the next two paragraphs.
At one point in the game you are required to locate and obtain the corpse of the Sheriff who arrested one of the victims accused of being a witch. Finding the sheriff's coffin was not very difficult, but.., opening the sheriff's coffin made me pause. I couldn't figure out which tool to use to open it. I finally realized that you need to use the inventory item that looks like a key, it's actually a wrench and will unscrew the bolts on the coffin.
The other puzzle that baffled me, was near the very end of the game in the parlor at the House Of the Seven Gables, it involved opening the fireplace. There are two posts in front of the fire place, and when you press them they recede slightly into the floor and then rise up again automatically. I thought there might have been a certain number of times each post had to be pressed, but I finally figured out that they simply need to be pressed quickly in succession. Press one post, and as it is receding press the other post right away. This will open the fireplace and reveal the hidden stairway. At the top of the stairway is the final puzzle of the game, a locked door that requires you to fill in missing numbers in a sequence. It's much easier than it looks. Simply use the game pieces you find in the parlor and other areas of the game to fill in the missing numbers.
The only thing I was disappointed in is that I could not locate all 50 clovers during the game, I could only find 49 of them. Darn it. So I couldn't unlock the extra hidden-object game. I hope you have better luck on that than I did. Just be sure to check each scene carefully, the clover symbols are cleverly placed in discrete parts of the scenery.
- Mike Silverman
source: amazon.com
