Howlville: The Dark Past

This quite difficult and rough-around-the-edges casual point-and-click adventure has many challenging hidden-object scenes and puzzle mini-games.

For the most part, the hidden-object scenes are very good and actually quite innovative in that they require you to combine elements. Unfortunately, the combinations are often illogical, so that solving them involves frustrating trial and error. Also: the abominable pixel-perfect problem. I swear I clicked on the right hidden objects and nothing happened, only to try again later and succeed.

Some of the puzzles are quite challenging, and in fact I had to skip one—I rarely do that in any game. (Note that you can still get all achievements even if you skip puzzles.)

Though the graphics are good, the story is utterly forgettable. Sometimes you get bad voice acting, and sometimes you get bad written dialog. The opening screen was not even translated to English.

Pacing isn't well though out. Sometimes you get a series of hidden-object scenes one after another. I enjoy them, but this genre should be about pleasant variety.

In conclusion: not an especially polished game, bad story, and has some frustrating elements. I insist on giving this a thumbs down if only to encourage the developer to spend more time on quality assurance.

But, I also want to commend the developer on innovation in the hidden-object scenes. Die-hard fans of the genre might want to play this in spite of my thumbs down.