Pointing and clicking our way to the treasure.
Trotting around isolated locales hunting for spectral figures and uncovering new truths and treasures is certainly an appealing prospect. Developer Darkling Room provides just such an opportunity with The Lost Crown: A Ghost-hunting Adventure, letting players investigate the hushed English town of Saxton and its surrounding countryside in pursuit of long-lost riches. Since this is a traditional adventure game, don't expect much in terms of action. The focus here is on puzzle-solving, character interaction, and atmosphere, which for the most part are done fairly well.
The game's strongest feature is the actual ghost hunting, as the protagonist, unwitting sleuth Nigel Danvers, eventually gains access to a set of equipment for recording events paranormal. Frequently, the game lets you systematically test parts of the environment with a digital video recorder, voice recorder, camera, and electromagnetic field meter. Combine that with sequences utilizing a more elaborate spirit-finding device in Nigel's ghost-infested apartment and it makes for some interesting and genuinely spooky experiences.
For instance, after several hours of playing you might be given the opportunity to examine a wooden ceiling beam you'd never given a second thought to before. Yet after seeing it under the green blur of the video recorder's night vision view-panel, under the flash of the camera, or amidst the gravelly crackles of the voice recorder tapes, you might find there's been something lurking there all along. Nothing deadly, mind you--you can't actually die in this game--but unsettling for sure. It's enjoyable throughout the game as you slowly become aware of this parallel plane of existence bubbling just beneath your own.
Things begin as Nigel somewhat inadvertently enters Saxton, a secluded community in England's Anglia area. Encircled by fenlands, dark woods and consisting of crumbling stone cottages, the township emits a distinct air of stagnation, something linked to the community's obsession with the Anglican kings of its past. Initially fleeing from a mysterious figure named Hadden, Nigel soon gets folded into the town's affairs, including, among other things, a strange epidemic of missing cats.
Though the atmosphere can be immersive at times, The Lost Crown stumbles in several areas. First off, and likely the first thing you'll notice when you load up the game, there's the issue of how horribly the character models look and animate. That can be overlooked by some, particularly the hardcore adventure fans, but then there's still the problem of the game forcing you to wait as Nigel performs painfully slow turns and body movements as he reaches to interact with something or looks down to inspect an object on the ground. I can accept and understand that the game had little in the way of production budget, but don't force me to watch Nigel skate across terrain and turn his head with the speed of an partially anesthetized turtle. In some instances you can fast-forward Nigel through terrain by double-clicking on an exit, but it doesn't entirely alleviate the problem.
Obvious production restraints aside, that doesn't mean you're free from tired point-and-click pixel hunting conventions. You will, for instance, restore power to elevators by fixing a fuse box, manipulate security camera systems, memorize lock combinations to open safes, procure ancient objects from hidden ruins for use in highly improbable puzzle devices, and use information gleaned books to align stones in ancient tombs. If you've played these kinds of adventure games in the past, you've probably done these puzzles before. The good news is, despite the fairly long list of conventional challenges, they mostly make sense, and better yet are limited in scope.
What I mean by this is puzzle solutions can generally be found within the area you're actively searching. If you try to leave without finding the right thing, Nigel will frequently pipe up and say he hasn't finished investigating, letting you know there's still something to do. The game also provides a wide activation area on the screen for spots that can either be examined, used, or otherwise interacted with, meaning if you just do a quick sweep of the screen with your cursor, you'll usually find everything you're meant to. Ultimately, this means the game is less of a headache to play since you're not scouring the entire game world at every roadblock encountered.
Along with this, the game does provide a good deal of enjoyable, generally sensible puzzles. Most often they utilize a discernible logic, requiring you use to some extent a few items recently added to your inventory. As is usually the case, solutions get more complicated as you advance through the story, eventually requiring you to cross-reference passages from books, audio files from your voice recorder, pictures, and other items to proceed. There's also quite a bit of reading to be done in the game which I found to be quite interesting as it gives the overall plot a greater richness and depth. It isn't required, though, so if you hate reading virtual books you can pass some of them right on by.
The game's timeline runs for a few days in Saxton, which gives things a unique feel as you'll be observing the same territory day and night, yet consistently discover new aspects of it. In part this is due to the ghost-hunting tools, but also through the game's effective use of presenting a mystery early on, using it as a tease for a little while, then finally revealing its nature just as a few new oddities are unveiled. Once the explorable setting expands beyond the scope of the town, you'll find there's quite a bit to do. To get all the way to the end will require a significant commitment of time--this isn't a game that can really be beaten in a weekend. Because of the generally even pacing as to how it introduces and teases unknowns with regards to the environment and the layered plotline, I stayed hooked on the story, even if the presentation and characters did their best to throw me off. And if you need to take a break while playing, Nigel keeps notes in a diary that point to the major areas of interest for that day or night.
While the actual story is interesting, I wasn't particularly drawn to any character throughout this entire adventure. Nigel is the stereotypical adventure game protagonist, with one chief characteristic: he's curious. Lucy Reubens, who occasionally helps Nigel along, is supposed to be a major character, yet throughout the adventure she's proves to have little depth beyond her curiosity and skepticism. As for the townsfolk, they're predictably creepy and standoffish, distrustful of outsiders. You'll find some who're willing to talk, others who clearly have something to hide, and one who talks through a hand puppet. Alright so the hand puppet guy is kind of funny, but the rest fit snugly into the standard mold of staple adventure game character development, where the protagonist's chief personality trait is a desire to unravel the plotline.
The conversation system doesn't help much either. You'll often hear dialogue snippets repeated ("they're great pics!") in different conversation trees, likely notice the surprising amount of typographical errors in the game, and frequently be forced to repeat entire conversations, as there doesn't seem to be an option to get the characters to just rapidly scroll through dialogue options. Combine this with Nigel's irritatingly slow turns and walking speed, and you'll find noticeably large chunks of time with The Lost Crown are wasted either waiting for Nigel's animations to play out or listening to conversations you've already heard.
Despite mediocre characters, flat and uninteresting conversations, and bottom of the barrel 3D character models and animations, the game still manages to drum up a distinct sense of environmental personality with its often striking backgrounds and chilling sound palette. Much of the game is simply black-and-white versions of actual photographs that Nigel is free to walk through and interact with. Touches of color have been added here and there for emphasis as it relates to gameplay or thematic presentations, and it's generally effective. Particularly affecting are the night-vision video recorder sections that take place from a first-person perspective. Instead of using a torch, Nigel just puts the recorders fold-out panel up to his eyes and proceeds forward, blanketing the previously colorless environments with an ominous greenish pallor. Sound effects, like ghostly moans wafting amongst breaths of wind and some solid music, play a prominent role, and work with the black and white visuals to create a distinct, often powerful atmosphere.
Voice acting, on the other hand, isn't as strong. While a few of the characters perform adequately, Nigel sounds almost bored throughout the course of the game, almost as if he's consciously made the decision to be as one-dimensional as possible. He wanders around wondering about blatantly obvious issues, as opposed to conveying ideas with insightful, intelligent, or, at the very least, entertaining qualities.
Closing Comments
The Lost Crown is a game of wildly varying inconsistencies. It's got an interesting, lengthy plot, conventional but ultimately well-designed puzzles, and a great atmosphere thanks to its black-and-white art style, use of real world photos as backdrops, and solid, often unearthly sound effects and tracks. Yet on the other end, the game is crammed full of stereotypical personalities, presentation issues, and atrocious 3D character models and animations. The good does outweigh the bad in this game's case, however, though such a statement is directed mostly toward those who already enjoy point-and-click adventure titles. For anyone who got sick of this kind of game a long time ago or never enjoyed it to begin with, there's little here you're likely to appreciate.
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