Trouble Hunter Chronicles: The Stolen Creed Reviews

I voiced the train conductor in this game and it was my first experience with voice acting. 10/10

[H1] What can you tell me about... Napoleon?[/h1] Trouble Hunter Chronicles is the first major effort for Iskonsko Studio. Set in post-WWII France, this is a detective point+click adventure in which we play as an American ex-special forces soldier who is approached by his old war buddy's attractive sister as he is drinking in the bar. She says her brother has gone missing under mysterious circumstances, and she wants you to check it out. We discover his apartment has been ransacked, but we do find some suspicious papers under a floorboard and some encoded playing cards. Armed with this information, we spend the rest of the game running all over the city, tracking down leads. Gameplay is a series of static images in the first person, much like Morningstar: Descent to Deadrock or Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure, and the game uses a verb coin interface for interactions. When you start the game, you can only access a handful of locations, but as you speak to people and solve puzzles, many more locations open up. Many modern games will restrict access to locations where the player has already seen/done everything, but Trouble Hunter Chronicles leaves them open and accessible, leading to quite a sprawling map to scour over and over in the late-game. There is mercifully a fast-travel system, but navigating without it can be unintuitive and cumbersome. This is also a very dialogue-heavy game, with over 70 characters to talk to. The game's background and location art is a little utilitarian, but I think the character art is quite nice. When you encounter a puzzle, you can ask lots of people about it, which leads to situations like you running around asking literally everybody in France about what they like to eat with their bread for lunch. It feels very Gabriel Knight, hence the title of the review. Speaking of bread, the game does not shy away from ridiculous puzzles. There's these two painters who just refuse to take their break, and getting them to do so is one of the longest and wackiest puzzle chains I have seen in ages. In what other game do I need to [spoiler] fix a truck and electrical issues in a retail store, and trick kids into thinking I am a cop, to deliver a big crate to an old lady, to counterfeit a historical item, to trade for a guitar, to give to a singer, to distract a SECOND old lady, to steal a her clothespin, to hold my nose shut, to approach stinky cheese, to give to the painters, because the bread I already gave them wasn't good enough? This does not spoil the whole puzzle, either, because even after that they still don't leave[/spoiler]. Depending on your preferences, the puzzles may be a positive or a negative. It is a somewhat challenging game. The music in Trouble Hunter Chronicles does a pretty good job of setting the tone. Unfortunately, quality of the other audio is very uneven. The game is partially voiced, with about half of the game's 70 characters speaking, while the other half has no recoded dialogue. Among the voiced characters, some of them sound as though they were recorded by professionals with a professional setup, but many other characters definitely feel like amateur efforts due to poor quality microphones, questionable accents, strange line readings, etc. I can cut the designers some slack because it cant have been easy recording a game like this in a global pandemic, but if this is the type of thing that bothers you it can be pretty jarring. Right now, I am about 5 hours into the game, which I think must be about halfway through, and I am a little stuck on some of the puzzles. This is not a perfect game, and the current asking price of $20 definitely feels a little high compared to similar games, but I am overall enjoying my time with the game. I would say it is worth checking out.

I wish they made more games like this. Takes me back to the 90's point and click adventure games. Have been waiting for the full game since I played the demo through. Love the artwork and the soundtrack. Very chill. Looking forward to spending my Sunday playing through.

Partially voice-acted. A lot of artwork to set the scenes. Enjoyable story with old-school vibes and mechanics. I would probably wait for a discount, but if this is your genre, you will probably find it worth the cost.

Recommendations! Loved it! The game has everything what a core quest fan is looking for: an interesting story with a noir novel vibe, logical and challanging puzzles, a smart and sarcastic main character (love the comments, when you try something stupid) and various kinds of locations and items to explore. I liked the characters troughout the game: some nice, some drunk, some sleasy, some helpful - but all of them realistic. I played with no walktrough this time (well, yes, I admit I sometimes allow me a little peek when stuck in games), only with some hints in the community chatroom and it took me appr. 20 hours. 20 hours of pure unspoiled entertainment and fun! Thanks to Iskonsko Studio for that! As a core fan of the genre since .... there is this genre :) .... Kudos!

Finishing this game today. I am fan of point 'n' click adventures and was enjoying the game so far. The problem was with the safe as a puzzle until I asked how it actually worked and then it went. What I say is some of art of characters are good only the background need much more work of it. Some puzzles can be hard, but you read much more for journal, from your inventory and read what MC say. Voice acting was average. If I'll had time I make a walkthrough video for those who are stuck in this game. This game is done in program Ren'py so much inspiration for [strike]me[/strike] those who want make games like this. I was really enjoying the game so much.

It's a little bit on the janky side, but for the most part it's very straightforward and easy to follow what you're supposed to do. I got stuck in one place but that was entirely my own fault, so I can't complain there. [strike]There were a few bugs, you can update your journal infinitely in one place and the game will crash if you do a certain action in one area.[/strike] The bugs have been patched out! Other than that there were only a few spelling errors, but those happen. Overall it's a game I'd recommend if you enjoy adventure games and don't mind some jankiness and odd choices. 7/10 Edit: Forgot to mention, voice acting volumes are all over the place. Some people are really loud, some either don't have any voices or are so quiet that I couldn't hear them. It got to the point that I decided to just read all the dialogue and not listen to it instead.

A look back at the golden age of point and click adventure games, Trouble Hunter has it all: moody main character, interesting locations, dialogue which borders between film noire and stand up comedy and plenty of puzzles. It’s indie but it does not mean easy. I estimate it would take you 2 hours to finish if you knew exactly what to do, and when you are actually solving puzzles it can be 5 times that. And puzzles are of the best kind: logical when you look at them over your shoulder but hard as nails when they stare you in the face. Journal which your character keeps contains some golden hints and is an aspect of the game slightly borrowed from Discworld Noir, but great nevertheless. The same can be said for the slowly uncovering map, which starts with just a few locations and later opens to a wealth of options. In short, it’s a very nice game aimed at 30-or40-something p-n-c fans, while the younger crowd might label it as too hard or too slow for their taste.