Spirit of Revenge: A Test of Fire Collector's Edition

Most ghost stories usually start and end the same way, given the fact that the spirits eventually get banished and the people they haunt get back to their lives. However, it’s the journey that matters, and you can get a different experience out of the same concept if the writers do their jobs. Hence, there are thousands of ghost stories out there, and many of them have what it takes to keep you engaged.

Spirit of Revenge: A Test of Fire is an adventure game with hidden object mechanics and a few puzzles to enrich the experience. It doesn’t differ too much from the rest of the HOPAs out there, but then again this allows you to get right down to business and not worry about getting to terms with new gameplay mechanics. On the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to have some originality thrown into the mix.

The story revolves around a girl-only school that appears to be haunted by some kind of malevolent spirit. The students there are quite traumatized by the events, and they all require your help to get back to normal and get rid of the ghosts. Thankfully, you have all the right tools to achieve that, so it’s only a matter of catching the spirits and sending them back to their world.

Although most of your time is spent trying to spot the useful items hidden in the scenery, there are also puzzles that need to be solved in order to unlock the way forward. Some of these puzzles are actually mini-games like match-3 and jigsaw, but other require a bit of tinkering before you find the solution. In any case, none of them are particularly tough, especially if you are a long-time fan of the genre.

Lastly, the graphics are about as simple as you would expect from a HOPA, which means that the artwork is the strongest element. There are no three-dimensional environments to explore and not many animations, but at least the cutscenes are pretty decent, at least if you lower your expectations a little bit. The dialog is fully voice-acted, so that helps with the atmosphere.

Spirit of Revenge: A Test of Fire can easily keep you engaged until the end, especially if you like puzzles and a mystery. However, it lacks any kind of originality in the gameplay department, so you have to make peace with that from the start.

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