Delaware St. John - VOL1: The Curse of Midnight Manor Demo

Finding the perfect blend of story and gameplay is never easy for video game developers, especially when dealing with a more sensible genre, such as point-and-click adventure. However, if one chooses to concentrate on a single aspect, great things can happen, even if the rest of the game is not exactly up to standards and it may fail to engage some of the audience.

Delaware St. John - VOL1: The Curse of Midnight Manor was quite keen on putting all the effort into the story part and trying to minimize the risk of messing with the classic gameplay elements. There are some interesting concepts thrown into the mix, however, some of which are quite intriguing and thought-provoking, but nothing sticks on the long run and the experience turns sour quite quickly.

The story talks about a young man named Delaware, who happens to possess the ability to sense the spirits from the other world. One night, he gets tormented by a recurring nightmare until he breaks and sets on to find the mystery behind it, by exploring a local mansion, which is obviously haunted and obviously dubbed Midnight Manor by the locals. Here, a great deal of supernatural and paranormal events transpire, which only push Delaware to unravel its secrets.

The developers wanted to introduce a companion into the game, but given the old technology used to render the environments, a static model wouldn’t have helped at all. By appealing to the mother of all deus ex machinae, they manage to introduce a device that allows you to communicate with Kelly - your partner - whenever you want, as well as send her pictures and audio recordings.

On the other hand, this kind of ruins the entire horror premise and it is pretty difficult to get scared when everything is static, except for a few scripted and pre-rendered events featuring moving objects and a couple of spirits. The fact that there is always someone with you doesn’t help either, even if Kelly is not exactly present and you can only hear her voice. Speaking of which, the dialogue is riddled with bad sarcasm and poor joke attempts, which only serve to bring down the atmosphere even more.

When it comes down to it, Delaware St. John - VOL1: The Curse of Midnight Manor fails at pretty much every chapter, although you might argue that the puzzles are not that bad overall. Other than that, the game is nothing but a pile of bad decisions, regardless of how much potential there was in the beginning.