Charon's Staircase Reviews

Enjoyed this well enough, but it has a lot of problems. The story is engaging, and an interesting enough mystery to make me want to reach the end. The environments, atmosphere, sound design, are all good. Some of the puzzles are very fun. Most notably, the game's filled with additional notes and newspapers and pictures, that don't contribute to the story or gameplay directly, but always flesh out the world a little bit more each, or tell a little bit of extra background of the area you're in or the people who were there, which I genuinely really liked and actively searched for. The game also (for me at least) played completely bug-free. However: -On a functional level, right off the bat the game is extremely dark, with no brightness setting, to the point that environmental details were being swallowed up. In some of the areas that's fine for atmosphere, but in others it didn't feel like "horror game" darkness, it just felt like I was having to squint and stumble around just to see what's going on. I even at some points just had to walk into dark parts of the area just to see if I hit a wall or not. Multiple of those notes and papers that I so liked to read I almost missed (and probably did miss plenty) because they were put in places out in the open where I could look straight at them and barely make them out, without straining my eyes. -If you're looking for a more in-depth puzzle horror, this isn't it. It's more of an exploration story game with a few puzzle elements. The puzzles that they do have are satisfying, even if they're straightforward. Most of them are in the mansion chapter, while the rest are more just "observe and look for objects", where you'll walk into various rooms to learn a bit of the story, find an item, and then continue on to the next room where you'll read a note telling you the next piece. -For the most part, the game is very linear, clearly laying out where you should walk next and what the various items are for. Sometimes it even guides you to the next path or room with a jumpscare or sound effect, or displaying the needed external information next to the actual puzzle itself. This works well enough as a story/exploration game, but is a little disappointing if you want a puzzle game. Especially as the mansion built my hopes up for the puzzles to continue, I don't regret buying or playing it, and I can *almost* recommend it. Seeing as how this os only their second release, based on this experience I'll still keep an eye out for what the devs make next.