The House of Da Vinci Reviews

Game looks and sounds amazing. And for the most part, the puzzles are very fun and you get just enough clues to figure out what to do. But as the game goes on, the puzzles make less and less sense in each chapter. Most of the chapter puzzles you can get, but then you are wandering around clicking everything looking for something that is very hidden and not explained at all. Made some of the later chapters difficult to figure out. As for the achievements, there are only 6. And you really have to look around to find a couple of them and not every chapter has one which can have you looking everywhere for something that is not there. And they have nothing to do with solving puzzles. Overall, I reallt liked the game but it can definitely test your patience.

Great 3D puzzle game with medieval like atmosphere and Da Vinci story. Although I found myself stuck too many times for my taste.

It was an excellent game for those that enjoy puzzles. Only drawback that I encountered was the lack of free movement.

A very nice puzzle game with a good theme and lovely soundtracks, not to the level of "the room" but a solide contender ^^

A pretty fun puzzle/escape room-type game. Opening doors, panels, etc. is a bit annoying, but other than that I have no complaints.

While I did play this game for just under 3 hours, that was plenty of time for me to dislike this game. - Clunky controlls. If you misclicked, be prepared to wait 5 seconds while your charater moves to a different location, and then another 5 seconds to move back - A lot of "puzzles" rely on you finding subtle visual clues, which feels like point & click adventure game to me, rather than puzzle game. - Hints are often unhelpful. That especially sucked for me since a lot of times i just couldn't find the tiny scratches on a brick and I had to wait for the new hints to unlock, because they either gave the information I already knew or bewildered me even more. - Puzzles are repetative and there's basically no novelty in here. Find a piece of environment that looks odd -> get an item out of there -> inspect item in inventory -> use said item on a different piece of environment -> repeat. Yeah occasionally you get some real puzzles that break up the mundane "find-craft-use item" cycle, but there'sWAY too little of that. - The final straw for me was a specific puzzle that required outside knowledge. I just kinda had to guess the solution since the hint just told one of the 4 number of the code instead of guiding me to the solution. I had to google that puzzle and it was facking [spoiler]Fibonacci sequence[/spoiler]. While I am aware of [spoiler]Fibonacci sequence[/spoiler] and how it works, there was absolutely nothing to hint at it. TLDR: not enough puzzles, too much 'point and click', also clucky controls. 4/10, you'll probably enjoy this if you like point & click games, otherwise, I wouldn't recommend

I love puzzle games, but not this one. It is beautiful, yes. But the controls are bad. To be able to move some levers in different positions you need to move the camera around a lot, so the moving of things is more difficult than the puzzle itself. Often I was trying to move or open something and it didn't work because I had to focus/move in to the object one or 2 more times. There is no indicator how often and where you are able/needed to "zoom in" on something. A lot of the puzzles consist of finding a tiny button somewhere in a big room. Some of the actual real puzzles are very unintuitive and you are often wondering what to do now and where to do it. The hints are completely unhelpful, always only stating the obvious. Sometimes they at least tell you which machine to consider now, but often they even just they "the table" in a room with 3 tables. Additionally you are supposed to search every room 3 times with different "lenses" to spot hidden markings. It's not all bad, but I spend far too much time being angry at the game. Rather go play The Room or Doors: Paradox. Also, if half of your screen is black change the resolution once, after that it works normally.

Edit: Was looking for a solution on reddit, got a post titled like "I have the solution and need explanation", this pretty much sums up 1/3 of the late game puzzles. I'm out. --- It's like a knockoff version of The Room, the differences are: 1. Puzzles and overall flow of solving make no narrative sense and not smooth at all 2. Extremely repetitive puzzles and mechanisms with no wow factor, too many redundant interactive elements like unscrewing this flipping that, it's not puzzle at all, more like a screwdriver simulator 3. Confusing solutions that require external knowledge ([spoiler]Fibonacci/horoscopes...[/spoiler]), a huge no for puzzle game design 4. Hints are extremely unhelpful for those who need it, like "look for this puzzle and solve it" when the problem is exactly "I can't solve this puzzle" 5. Bad controls and guiding, for example I dropped the game once at the [spoiler]catapult where you have to aim at a hidden symbol, it's a three step process of aiming-loading-firing but despite you know the fact that you have to aim at the symbol, there is no way to tell how to calibrate your aim until you clicked fire and oops you missed the shot again, making it an extremely frustrating trial and error game[/spoiler]. There are also "puzzles" like "here's a keyhole that looks exactly like the key you are holding [spoiler]but fun fact this door can't be opened with a key" - and you wouldn't know until you click on the hints[/spoiler]. I believe if there were any gameplay QAs they would have told the devs how frustrating this is, but here we are. If you really need to scratch that The Room itch, pick it up at a steep discount, be warned that you may miss The Room even more after play this.

[h3]A rough start to a series with potential.[/h3] I had high hopes for [i]The House of Da Vinci[/i]. From the videos and screenshots, it looked like a solid alternative to [i]The Room[/i] series, which I really enjoyed. Unfortunately, this feels more like a budget version of that experience. The atmosphere is there, but the controls are clunky, and some puzzles feel more frustrating than clever. It lacks the polish and intuitive design that made [i]The Room[/i] so satisfying. That said, I’ve noticed the sequels in the series have better reviews, so I haven’t lost hope. I'm still curious to see if the next games improve on the formula. At its current price of 20€, though, I can't really recommend this one. Maybe worth picking up on a deep discount if you're curious - but otherwise, I'd suggest starting with something else.

I picked up the first House of Da Vinci to try because it looked a lot like The Room, the lens mechanic, inventory system, and storytelling. I really wanted to enjoy it, but man... it just didn’t work for me. The controls feel clunky. Interacting with objects or solving puzzles often feels more frustrating than fun. A lot of the puzzles rely on subtle visual cues, so I kept relying on hints. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it just made me more confused. I spent more time randomly clicking or moving the camera around hoping to find a hidden button or panel than actually solving things in a satisfying way. I still love puzzle games like Machinarium, The Room, Doors: Paradox, and Boxes: Lost Fragments, but this series just didn’t click with me, same goes for Tesla after it got released.