Puzzling (Mis)adventures: Volume 12: Wayward Manor, Phantom PI

The Phantom PI Mission Apparition

Stephen Brown

Marshall Staxx (deceased), famous rock star, has a most vexing problem. The fat demon Baublebelly has decided to haunt his after-life, stealing and swallowing the most precious items from his illustrious music career. Fortunately help is at hand, in the form of Cecil Sparks, the Phantom PI. This expert in dealing with paranormal interlopers should be able to track the miscreant and retrieve the purloined items. But with other ghosts, suspect wiring, and Marshall’s most obsessive fan in the way, Cecil might find his work cut out for him.

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In The Phantom PI Mission Apparition, Rocket 5 Studios have created a lightly humorous tale of the spirit world.  With the thief known from the outset, this is not a mystery to be solved by tracking down clues. Instead, the redoubtable sleuth simply pursues the villain through a series of puzzle-filled levels. The game is presented in four acts, each split into five episodes, with most of the action taking place in Marshall’s other-worldly house.

The action is viewed as if in a living dollhouse, with players looking in an open side at the rooms within. The map of each level is effectively 2D in nature, though small items of furniture are occasionally layered to give a 3D feel. The house is old and slightly run-down, with warped staircases and creaking floorboards. It’s rendered in a fair amount of detail, including a large number of furnishings. Shelves line the walls, old suitcases sit on floors, and the house’s electrical supply winds visibly around the furnishings, implying it was put in well after the fact. There is also more disturbing décor, such as animated paintings and giant spiders swinging from the ceilings. The heroic PI appears as a Victorian gentleman adventurer, with a handlebar moustache and a smart waistcoat. Both he and the other characters you meet around the house are well-animated and move in a realistic fashion.

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The audio is equally well designed. A simple, slightly spooky background musical track plays throughout to set the mood, and you also have the opportunity to play some of Marshall’s records in-game, with a rousing rock number resulting. It’s the sound effects that really bring the game to life, though. As you move around the house, various supernatural events occur: leaves are suddenly lifted by an unexplained gust of wind and items of furniture move of their own accord. Whilst most of these have no direct effect on gameplay, they add to the overall creepy tone. The effects are also directional, so that with headphones on you can tell which way something like a haunted typewriter is situated compared to your current location.

In each of the first four episodes of an act, you have to work your way to the portal that exits the current section of the house. This is not simply a maze challenge, as various obstacles impede your progress, including locked doors and streams of scalding steam from broken pipes. You will also meet Marshall’s superfan, Famke, whose looting of her idol’s home is not to be disturbed. Most obstacles can be passed with a specific item, such as a valve to turn off the steam-operated machinery. For Famke, a variety of tactics are available, from disguising yourself to sneak past to distracting her with Marshall’s music. You can only carry one item at a time, and can only drop your current item by replacing it with another. This can result in some frustrating backtracking to retrieve an item you dropped in a remote location. Sometimes direct backtracking is not even possible, such as when entering an area by sliding pole, making getting items to where you need them a puzzle in itself. The fifth episode of each act is an arcade machine that puts you in a retro-style platformer where you simply use ladders, poles and switches to reach Baublebelly and retrieve the next stolen item.

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As well as escaping each level, there are side quests you can complete to earn stars. These seem to exist solely for completists, as the stars do not appear to unlock any extra content. In the arcade sequences, these involve simply collecting all diamonds and beating a set time. In the house-based episodes there are four quests. Two involve tracking down two different types of spirits that hide in containers or possess items in the house. Whilst they give themselves away by moving the objects in which they’re concealed, the movement is often subtle, requiring a sharp eye to pick up. A third quest involves collecting diamonds as part of the capture of one of the spirit types. The fourth involves collecting various messages, from tapes to handwritten notes. These are saved in a scrapbook, accessible from the pause menu, and provide background to the characters and setting. There is also an overarching story about the haunted manor and the troubles of its various residents over the years, but it implies the house has been haunted by a spirit much more suited to a full-on horror film then the bumbling jerk of a demon that you actually have to tackle. Whilst decently written, this backstory feels out of keeping with the otherwise humorous tone.

With its bite-sized levels, which can mostly be finished in a quarter of an hour or so, this game is good for a quick mental challenge on the go. The game has a light tone and gentle sense of humour, and a lot of work has clearly gone into the spooky but unthreatening atmosphere. Whilst the gameplay could largely be described as “take item A to point B”, a lot of thought has been put into the level designs to make that trickier than it sounds. This makes the game easy to get into, whilst still providing a moderately difficult task. The side quests provide a pleasant optional challenge, with the wide variety of scrapbook collectibles being especially worthwhile. Overall, I very much enjoyed my time playing Mission Apparition, and hope to see more of the Phantom PI in the future, though hopefully with a little more depth to the gameplay.

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Available for both iPhone and iPad, The Phantom PI Mission Apparition can be downloaded from the App store for less than a dollar.