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Review for Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials

Midnight Mysteries 2
Midnight Mysteries 2

Combining one-part ghost story, one-part historical intrigue, and one-part literary backdrop, Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials whisks you back in time to unravel the mystery of the murder of Nathaniel Hawthorne, famed American author of such classics as The House Of The Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter. Sin, guilt, and atonement, which are familiar characters in Hawthorne’s stories, take up residence in this casual adventure as you determine whether Hawthorne’s spirit can escape the sins of his ancestors. As you gather clues to his murder, you’ll encounter no shortage of sinners and sinfulness, including domineering Puritans, blood curses, stolen land, ghosts, and of course witch hunts in this spooky game. While you may find yourself a bit lost in a maze of characters and stories, the terrific atmosphere, logical inventory puzzles, plenty of fun animations, and well-integrated hidden object episodes round out this lite but entertaining game.

In the Midnight Mysteries series, you play a writer who has a connection to the spirit world. But not just any old spirits – your character is a magnet for the ghosts of classic novelists. These ghosts ask you to use your powers of observation to explore the scenes not only of their deaths, but also of their most famous stories to find clues to their murders. Salem Witch Trials takes this formula, which began as a pretty straightforward hidden object game in The Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy, and turns it up several notches by increasing your interaction with your environment, expanding the scope of exploration, and giving you plenty of inventory puzzles to solve for a better, more balanced adventure-like experience.

While loosely based on real-life relationships and events, the premise centers on an entirely fictional murder. When the ghost of Nathaniel Hawthorne visits your study to request help in solving the mystery of his demise, he asks you to start by finding his grave. Once you agree to take his case, you’re mystically transported to a foreboding graveyard. Under the shadow of a large, stern-looking statue, you discover a headstone that shows you’ve travelled back in time to 1692 to the Puritan village of Salem, Massachusetts. From there, you begin to explore the settlement to find out what this time and place have to do with the deceased author’s death nearly two centuries later.

The artwork in the game is suitably dark and ghostly, with a color palette that draws from indigos, browns, grays, and winter whites. You’ll explore the small village and roam the dirt roads between simple clapboard houses. As you wander through the desolate paths, trees gnarled and bereft of leaves hover over you; everything appears cold, dark, and barren. You’ll also explore the wintery New Hampshire setting of Hawthorne’s death, wandering a variety of areas from presidential studies to wolf-haunted woods. The stark color scheme reflects the puritanical themes of the story, with cold shadows only occasionally broken up by iridescent shades of moonlight and the only inhabitants in town, the ghosts.

Against this beautiful 2D background, a variety of animations spruce up the experience. Not only do ravens swoop over rooftops and clouds roll across the sky, but when you rap a simple door knocker, a demon face emerges from the brass. Elsewhere, papers flung about by a petulant poltergeist fly across an empty room just before wooden chairs eerily stack themselves precariously one atop another to the ceiling, and lightning strikes a wooden bridge, resulting in a burst of flame and an explosion of wood. The opening cutscene is also well done, painting a picture of a town gone witch hunt crazy against a backdrop of flames. It can be hard to distinguish between the many different characters in the game, however, as most of them appear as wavering translucent ghosts. The point of view is a typical first-person slideshow perspective, but the developers have inserted some clever variations, like having your character look out from behind a hooded robe or peek through the openings of a bag as you follow someone’s footsteps in hiding.

There is a minimal amount of music in the game, but the designers use it to good effect. The fluttery sound of a harpsichord precedes an episode of malfeasance, and tribal drums thump in the background as you travel through sacred lands. There is no voice acting at all, so prepare yourself for a lot of reading through dialogue boxes, journals, notes, and various official documents to get the full picture of what is going on. There is some interactive dialogue with the characters in the game, though the interactivity is fairly limited. You’ll be presented with what seem to be a series of dialogue choices, but you have to click through them all to advance the story.

The hidden object searches take you through graveyards, old sheds, and deserted campsites, as well as the fabled house of seven gables. There aren’t a large number of these episodes, yet you’ll repeat visits to some locations, and I would have appreciated a few more scenes for variety. While there may not be many in the main game, however, there is an opportunity to unlock an unlimited mode. Gather enough four-leaf clovers scattered throughout your adventure and you open up this bonus mode, which provides several hidden object sets for you to play through separately. Unfortunately, while there are some new sets, most are ones that you’ve already played through in the regular story mode.

Many of the objects discovered in your hidden object hunts tie the game thematically together and reveal insights into individual characters. The drink coaster you find on a Secretary of War’s dresser isn’t just some random item; its sacred tribal image clearly reveals that this man doesn’t have much regard for native Americans. The handkerchief you find at Hawthorne’s final campsite in New Hampshire isn’t just difficult to find, it’s covered in speckles of blood, indicating that he was suffering from some grave illness.

Providing an additional level of difficulty, the designers also occasionally use crossword-type clues. For example, you’ll have to search for something listed only as a "cider fruit" or something labeled as “up a creek.” If you’re having difficulty determining what you should be looking for, you can click on the clue and a silhouette of the object will appear. You’ll also need to search for ravens everywhere you go. If you’re completely stuck on a hidden object screen, you can click the raven icon, and it will outline the item you need to find. If you can’t find an object, however, it may just be that it isn’t visible yet. You’ll have to sweep each screen carefully, as some of the objects are hidden in areas you’ll need to interact with first.

Outside of the hidden object scenes, the inventory puzzles are logical and make sense within the context of the story: you’ll use shovels to dig holes, combine ingredients to create potions, and build objects out of wood. If you’re searching for game pieces, it’s not to make a lock puzzle unnecessarily complicated, it’s because a character in the game is fond of card games and puzzles. Green sparkles highlight inventory objects that you can pick up, but the sparkles only last for a short while, and it’s not always easy to see which object you need to obtain, as scenes can be jam-packed with other items you can’t interact with. You’ll carry objects that you pick up from scene to scene, and you’ll need to combine some objects with others before you can use them.

You’ll also encounter a variety of pattern puzzles, locking puzzles, and a few sliders, among other standalone challenges. Should you hit a wall trying to solve these puzzles, your hint raven will turn into a skip raven, which you can click on after a certain length of time to bypass the puzzle. It would have been nice to get layered hints or even an explanation of the puzzle instead – there were several puzzles where I wasn’t just stymied trying to complete a challenge, I truly had no idea how to even start. For inventory puzzles, the raven hint only shows where you may need to use an item, not how. If you pick up an object very early in the game that won’t be used until much later, or if you haven’t yet picked up something you need, this isn’t very helpful.

All of this varied gameplay serves to propel you through a very complex and convoluted story. Not only are you trying to solve Nathaniel Hawthorne’s murder in pre-Civil War New England (you’ll interact with not one but two Presidents and try to make sense of tribal treaties and curses), you’re also trying to follow the story of The House Of The Seven Gables (a tale involving two families and their internecine squabbles throughout the generations), as events unfolding in that feud may provide insight into Nathaniel’s murder. Complicating all of this is Hawthorne’s preoccupation with the sins of his own ancestors, so you’ll also explore the scene of witch hunts from 200 years earlier (a story involving Jonathan Hathorn, a notorious Puritan judge who burned with a desire for rooting out and prosecuting witches). Confused yet? I definitely was. You almost need to map out two separate sets of family trees to make sense of how they’ve intertwined across hundreds of years. After a while, I just gave up trying to keep track of which story thread I was following at a given moment, and just went with the flow of the game. While I did find this confusing, it didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment, and it made me want to check out Hawthorne’s novels as well as his fascinating life story.

Despite the convoluted story, Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials is an entertaining game from start to finish, offering about 3 to 4 hours of gameplay in story mode. The atmosphere is dark, and while not full of dread and unease, it’s fun and spooky, full of animations and things to do and explore. Imagine wandering through an autumn carnival late at night making your way through the midway, with the sounds of screams and bells and whistles in the background and a sea of people swirling all around you, faces and features a blur. You’ll pick up threads of conversations here and there and maybe, as you get to the exit, you’ll get some idea of the full story. But even if you don’t, the journey itself is still a thrill. If you’re looking for a fun and ghostly casual adventure game that will make Puritan history a romp through a haunted house rather than a dry history lesson, definitely check this game out.

Our Verdict:

If you’re looking for a haunted tour through one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic stories, this lite adventure through 17th and 19th century New England proves to be a fun, spooky time.

GAME INFO Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials is an adventure game by MumboJumbo released in 20102010 for iPad, Mac and PC. It has a Illustrated realism style and is played in a First-Person perspective.

The Good:

  • Gorgeous art creates an eerie atmosphere with nice animation
  • Much to do and explore, with a variety of puzzles, logical inventory challenges and well-integrated hidden object sequences

The Bad:

  • Convoluted story has too many characters, plot details, and timelines to follow
  • Hidden object screens are few and far between but still repeat several times

The Good:

  • Gorgeous art creates an eerie atmosphere with nice animation
  • Much to do and explore, with a variety of puzzles, logical inventory challenges and well-integrated hidden object sequences

The Bad:

  • Convoluted story has too many characters, plot details, and timelines to follow
  • Hidden object screens are few and far between but still repeat several times
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