The first game for the monthly theme has fallen to this assassin.
Dark Arcana: The Carnival
2-3 hours of playtime, 19 of 19 achievements
Positive reviews: 88%
Dark Arcana: The Carnival is an unassuming entry from DevPubs Artifex Mundi. The story is interesting enough, with the usual setup: we play a detective whose expertise is required in solving a mysterious case. Artifex do campy creepy horror very well, and an amusing love story unfolds around you while you travel through an eerie carnival. Still a better love story than Twilight.
As it is one of Artifex’s earlier entries it does suffer from what I think are the two biggest faux pas in the HOG world; these being; 1) Having to play the game twice to unlock all achievements as the replayability for games like these are limited at best, and 2) Having a map that doesn’t let you quick travel.
As for the game, its a very simple entry, the puzzles and hidden object sections are substantially easier and less detailed than their other games. As the game has a “mirror world” section, several of the hidden object sections are mirror duplicates and offer no differences which is a shame.
The art and settings are always a delight from this DevPub, the music I’m not sure about as I was blasting Unleash The Archers new album over the top of everything. All in all, if you love the Artifex Mundi games (as I do), you won’t hate this one, but you will be dissapointed when compared to the others.
Game 1/7 for this month’s theme.
Great job SuperFluffyPet! I was going to add this game to my to-play games this month, but you need two playthroughs to 100%? I really don’t like those >.>.
Need a 2nd playthrough to play all of the minigame they tack onto the hidden object games, in this one its a strange matching card game, I think it’s easier to finish than mahjong in some of the other games. You can of course take the route of finding all but one hidden objects, and swapping to the mini game to finish it in super speed.