Phantasmat: The Endless Night

Most puzzle games are not particularly tough when it comes to mechanics, but they do require a fair amount of tinkering in order to come up with answers. There are many popular series out there, and Phantasmat is a very well-regarded one. Most of the episodes are very dramatic and well-designed, especially since you get to solve intriguing mysteries while you are at it.

Phantasmat: The Endless Night is a hidden object adventure game that allows you to slip into a different world for a few hours, as well as put your brain through a workout as you try to solve various puzzles. Everything is as classic as it gets for the genre in terms of gameplay mechanics, but the developers managed to mask this using some clever presentation gimmicks.

In short, the story starts with a mother and daughter going to prom, but things go wrong when they are involved in a car crash. When the mother wakes up, it turns out that the daughter is missing, and there are supernatural powers at play too. Hence, the goal is to find the girl and solve a very old mystery at the same time, one that has you dealing with strange forces and weird events.

As mentioned before, most puzzles feature simple mechanics that do not really impress, but they are usually very well-designed to hide this fact. Hence, it always feels like you are tackling different challenges, even if the underlying mechanics are almost the same. The hidden object scenes seem to have a purpose as well, so they are not just there to drag the action out.

Lastly, the graphics are very important in a HOPA, but all is well in the title at hand. Every scene is very detailed and nicely designed to inspire the proper atmosphere, and you can tell that most objects have been hand-drawn to fit into the environments. The soundtrack is not bad either, especially since it stays in the background most of the time, as it should.

Although it may lack originality, Phantasmat: The Endless Night is more than capable to keep you busy for a few hours, especially if you are familiar with the other episodes as well. Hence, it’s a great HOPA with a neat set of gameplay mechanics. NOTE: This is a downloader for the game. Once run, the application will automatically download and install the game on your computer.

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