9 Clues 2: The Ward Reviews

An enjoyable 2nd installment, but much creepier than its predecessor, "9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek"; in this game, the context is an asylum where some people get murdered. So it's a darker subject matter. The mechanics of the game work smoothly and the mini-games are diverse. I took my time and did not skip any of the minigames, so those more adept than me can probably finish the game in 3 hours: I like to take in the graphics and find the extras (morphing objects, asylum pieces, question mark prints). Worthy if discounted at 50% or more.

Although this game is the sequel to 9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek, I don't think it's a direct sequel. The voice actress for the main character sounds different to me, and while they are both investigators, in the first game the character seemed like a private investigator versus in this game where the main character seems more like an official police officer. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. The style of gameplay is incredibly similar with the first game's signature "reconstruction" scenes where you have to pick out parts of a scene to piece together what happened, as well as the usual finding and using items and looking through hidden object scene to find key items to progress. The story was fine, it's more geared towards a mystery just like the first one with strange events happening and you trying to determine what is happening and only really getting the final answer at the end of the game. One thing I did appreciate too is that even though this is at an asylum, the game doesn't just depict all of the inmates as violent and dangerous, which is an old "insane person" trope I don't really care for. And most of the game is spent moving through different areas of the asylum and getting access to more and more of it as you play. The puzzles were fine, not the most challenging ones I've seen in a game like this, but they were fine enough and intuitive to figure out. The hidden object scene were also fine without a lot of egregiously hard to find items, just an even pace all the way through. There are collectibles in the game, and they were fun to find and probably the thing I felt was the most challenging at times since there are multiple types of collectibles to be on the look out for. I missed [i]one[/i] item in my first playthrough and had to do another to mop it up, which was fine because you have to play through twice because there is once achievement for completing all of the hidden object puzzles and one for completing all of the Mahjong games. This game offers Mahjong instead of hidden object games you can play instead of doing the hidden object puzzles. And I like both, so I had no issues with this, but I have to mention that when I was playing this game I saw a note in the community section about a bug where the game would have a bug that would prevent you from selecting Mahjong games if you switch back and play the first game as a hidden object puzzle or something. I took the advice of that post and played the first game as Mahjong and then the rest as hidden object puzzles. Then for my second playthrough I played a hidden object game as the first one and the rest as Mahjong to finish the achievements. This worked for me, though I have no idea if it was necessary. But if you're having trouble with those I would advise trying this method. Even though other people reported the Mahjong game issue, I didn't have any technical issues with the game. There are collectibles in the game, but there is no bonus adventure.