Mystery Case Files: Huntsville Demo

Puzzle games have the power to relax the players and immerse them into a different world, even if the actual experience is not that intriguing. The fact that you have to think in order to solve the riddles and advance through the levels is the most important factor, because otherwise people would get bored with the simplistic gameplay mechanics.

Mystery Case Files: Huntsville is a hidden object game with many other different puzzles as well, in which your main goal is to solve a series of case files. Most of them require you to find hidden objects around a particularly crowded room, but there are also a few other types of puzzles you have to tackle on a regular basis. In fact, actual puzzles are present as well, which require you to arrange the pieces in order to reveal the picture below.

The story is not at all intriguing, and it’s not even worth listening to in most cases, although you can if you want to. Each case has a short description about what you are about to investigate, although the events always seem to happen in very much the same manner. Hence, burglars break into certain buildings around the map, and it is your job to uncover their identity.

Unlike most hidden object games, you also have to keep in mind the fact that there is a clock ticking every time you start a new case. Hence, you’ve only got so much time to solve everything, which although increases the challenge significantly, it also makes the game more frustrating, and thus more difficult to ignore its less-than-good parts. However, you can probably work with that as well.

Visually, there’s nothing to be excited about, because everything is hand-drawn and static, with barely any animations or particle effects to spice up the atmosphere. To occasional sparkle and firework have no impact on the gameplay, not to mention the lack of three-dimensional objects. The music gets repetitive in a hurry, and you are left trying to keep the boredom at bay.

Even if Mystery Case Files: Huntsville is indeed difficult and frustrating, that is only because it takes a long time to observe and spot some hidden objects, not to mention the annoying time limit. Other than that, the puzzles pose no real conundrums, which is why not everyone is going to enjoy the adventure.