Mystery Mania

Do you have what it takes to unlock the secrets hidden and forgotten in the old mansion?

The inventor, your creator, is missing and you must help the dutiful robot F8 to try and find the answers as to his whereabouts by accomplishing all the tasks you discover as you roam around the various rooms of the mansion. The game tests your logic solving abilities and uses a variety of equipment from cannon balls and dynamite to steaks and plants. The best way to describe the game is that you have various bits of equipment laying around the room, seemingly disconnected. However, taking a battery and putting it into a remote control car will then make it work or putting a log in the fireplace, turning on the gas and then igniting it with a candle will get the fire started.

Ultimately what you must do is combine the bits of the puzzle that are connected together in sequence in order to complete a task. Some rooms will require you solving two or three inter-connected puzzles to unlock the challenge.

Your mission is to go, room by room throughout the mansion and solving a variety of logical and inventive problems. For those of you familiar with Monkey Island series games, this will feel like familiar ground.

What sets this game apart from other sorts of logical games is the interwoven plot which appears as an old film in flashback. For your reward of retrieving the missing pieces, you will get to see more and more of the mystery. The graphics themselves are quite similar to Cartoon Networks’ Dexter’s Laboratory.

Another enjoyable element that was put in the game was the quirky fun things that happen whenever you have an accident. For example, you have three colourful potions which you must put in sequence to either grow or shrink. However, if you mix the cocktail of these chemicals incorrectly, you’ll see F8 pull some funny faces as he grows and then shrinks and collapses. Fortunately whenever you do make a mistake, it’s not the end of a game and you get to pick up where you left off, and hopefully learn from the mistakes you’ve made.

If I was going to say anything bad about this game (and to be fair there’s not much bad at all), I found the puzzles pretty self explanatory in earlier stages and quite easy, but they do get more challenging as you progress.

Overall then, this game’s a really enjoyable puzzle game which will keep you entertained for several hours, if not longer. The increments of difficulty as you progress through the game are gradual and make it challenging but not impossible. The nice touches in the animation and the interesting plot all add to a great game.

Rating 91%

Positives

Plenty of puzzles to unlock and keep you active

Entertaining and challenging which keeps you addicted

The graphics are very stylised and remind me of quite a few cartoons on TV

No puzzles are exactly the same

Negatives

A little frustrating at times – particularly at the end stages

The first few puzzles are very simple and almost self explanatory

No mini-games to break it up a bit