Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit Reviews

I’ve got it 70% off and it still feels like too much money. The story is short, slow-paced, the lack of sprint is killing my soul. I didn’t really care for any of the characters, only Dana showed some kind of personality. But instead we are pushed to romance some random dude, can’t we simply romance Dana, or, actually, nobody? Why the mother is bitch? Does the father even exists? Can I take the librarian for a date? So many questions, no satisfaction.

I would like to give this a neutral review really. I enjoyed the settings and the history, and it works pretty well as a classic point and click adventure, the puzzles were varied enough. However, I found the characters generally unpleasant and one dimensional (the villain had a point that the heroine was treating priceless history like a get rich quick scheme), the storyline was predictable - I kept waiting for a betrayal from the love interest to shake things up but no. Possibly most annoying, the soundtrack was incredibly irritating. Some of the puzzles were not intuitive at all and by the end I'd lost patience and resorted to a walkthrough, mostly just to get away from the soundtrack loops. Due to these elements I can't recommend it. But it was all stuff that is personal taste, so your mileage may vary. It has the bones of a great game, and I would consider checking out more by this dev, but not with these characters!

A solid point and click game that harks back to the era of point and click games in the 2-2.5D style. Runaway, Broken Sword, ARK, Journey Down. However... it's borderline for me, the voice acting was surprisingly good but the storyline was a bit meh. I never really felt like I was invested in any of the characters that much, and it always seemed to be jumping from place to place. The game started off really well, having the option to pick character traits at the start really adds to the replayability, however there was literally only 1 place where this was really used, or even mattered. Similarly, the start with the different routes you could take for the trumpet man was really good, but this branching happened exactly once (excluding the character choice). When I encountered this I thought it would be a theme throughout the game, the USP of Crowns and Pawns whereby the path isn't as linear as other point and clicks, but I was disappointed. Some of the puzzles also made no sense except for just being there, like finding the nut early on then having to use it later 'just because' - it literally added nothing. This could have easily been enhanced by having a 'manual' in the room with different weights of items, and then a set of scales. Leaving the player to work out the best combination, and eventually stumbling across the use of the nut, but no, it was trial and error, and eventually I gave up and looked at a guide. This happened a few too many times for me, leaving a taste of slightly rushed, and unpolished, with a "what could have been" mindset. Despite that, as above, it is a sold game, about 6hrs for 1 playthrough, or nearing 8hrs without use of any guides. I'm glad I played it, but definitely only buy it on sale.