Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily Reviews

One of the worst HOGs I've played.

[h1]A funny but very simple and linear hidden object game from one of the better publishers of the genre.[/h1] Straight from the start you will notice the protagonist's great accent, bringing you into the heart of America's wacky loud way of talking. Like getting transported into a Jessica Fletcher story in [i]Murder, She Wrote.[/i] Because of the overly simplistic gameplay, you might find the game not worth the investment as even on Expert difficulty you will struggle to get good value out of it. Likely it is more suited to a younger audience, which is odd as there are murders and crime scenes, so maybe late primary school, early secondary is the target audience? Who knows. The plot is a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas - you've got this group that have decided to print money out of a small-town printing press, making squillions of dollars and filling vaults with loads of fake money, then there is always one guy that thinks he needs all of it (how much do you need, duh? just print more? lol?), and somehow alchemy is involved as everyone and their auntie is running around throwing ice grenades at each other, but APPARENTLY you need to INVENT FIRE alchemy later on to cure the ice alchemy. So as you can see it's a barrel of laughs. Best part of the gameplay is the scene reconstructions though. It isn't all about hidden object scenes you see. Scene reconstruction a bit like the old CSI shows - you look at anything that was disturbed, until you find it all, then the game lets you order a series of photos with squiggly lines on them to help you get the sequence right. _______ If you love HOGs you'll probably get it anyway, but if the crime scene game sounds like fun that might also tempt you. Frankly I can't get over having to figure out fire alchemy though, when paper and matches have already been invented... ;)

Hidden object/ simple puzzle game. This one is... OK. The puzzles are the usual mix - find the objects, put the pieces together, escape the room to get to the next one, repeat until finished. This time, you're a PI trying to take a holiday but there are murders and such like and you have to solve the crimes. Although, there's not actually all that much solving. The closest to investigation is putting the crime scene elements together in the right order, but that plays more as a jigsaw than actual deduction. The story is as nonsensical as most of the ones I've played. The murderer has a chemical that freezes everything that it touches instantly, unless the plot requires it to take longer of course. The entire town is secured with a series of locks that no manufacturer would ever create, because they're just nuts. Secret doors that are unlocked with chess pieces that have to be glued back together, or where you have to obtain dice to use as keys (any old dice it seems, not special ones made to be keys. Also, those dice only seem to have 5 faces!). In short, it's not very realistic, and you'll spot the twists coming. But if you accept it for what it is - a series of fairly easy puzzles, with a basic plot written around them, set in a world where everyone uses overly complicated but easily opened locks - this one is pretty much par for the course. Definitely not worth full price, but get it in a bundle on sale, and you may entertain yourself for a bit. Most of the puzzles are fair, if insane. My biggest gripe is that several times you have to explicitly use some items - for example, once you've unlocked a door, you then have to use the door handle to open it, or you put a key in the keyhole and then have to click it again to turn it. Those just slowed me down a bit. Then there are the usual niggles about how you use an item and then it disappears from your inventory, no matter how much you think it might come in handy again later. So you use a penknife once and lose it - then five minutes later, you have to resort to using a poker chip to loosen a screw. Why didn't I just keep the stupid penknife! But that's how a lot of these games go. I enjoyed this one more than several others, but it is very linear and silly.

I enjoyed this hidden object-mystery game. It is likely an early version of this genre and so it's a bit longer than newer ones (yay!). Great story and art. The voice actors were really good too.