Created: February 21, 2018

Committed: Mystery At Shady Pines [Premium Edition]

This somewhat short casual point-and-click adventure is quite satisfying, though it's not without problems.

The gameplay is good: the hidden-object scenes are excellent, and the puzzle mini-games offer significant yet fair challenges. The graphics have an original style that is effective, and the voice acting is far better than what we usually get in this genre. The story, while not very original or deep, is solid enough.

The problem is the somewhat clunky game engine. It's impossible to travel using the map, so you will have to do a lot of slow backtracking. The click zones for moving around are far too big, so that you will often move to another room by mistake. Also annoying is that sometimes your actions will unlock items in areas that you have already visited: it's not obvious that you have to revisit them, and it seems unfair that you could not have picked up the items during your first visit.

Still, the good outweighs the bad. This is a good little HOG.