Strange Cases - The Lighthouse Mystery

Strange Cases: The Lighthouse Mystery is a fresh hidden object game from Sulus Games that proves you that some bad dreams can come true. This time around, you will step into stylish shoes of a young female detective Claire Ellery to clear up the strange death of her colleague Tom.

The game is about fifty/fifty adventure and straight hidden object title with lots of scenery to search. The scenes are pretty varied, from city formalism to gloomy night countryside. Your main goal is to find the tarot cards. Depending on the room and what card you click on, you either get a list of what you need to find, silhouettes of the items, or find the fragments for the items. The mini-games seem a bit annoying and are not very challenging for a die-hard hidden object fans. However, all puzzles are inventive and logically lead form on location to the next.

Tiny objects are always a big problem in this sort of games, but tiny objects hidden in the dark are even worse. There are many vague backgrounds that are hard to polish, although this fact does not disappoint the players. In Strange Cases: The Lighthouse Mystery, it is really cool that you have to figure out what to do and where to go. Sometimes it is quite obvious, other times it is not so much. Anyway, you have to use your brain and keenness of wit.

The artwork and cutscenes are marvelous, music and sound effects perfectly fit the theme, the voice acting is surprisingly better than average and gameplay is smooth and creative. The story is well-organized, as it has a real interesting beginning, culmination and nice, satisfying denouement. Strange Cases: The Lighthouse Mystery proceeds very logically, right up to the end which is breathtaking - no jerky ending.

7, June 2010