Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart

 
Developer: Artifex Mundi
Steam Release: Apr 2012
Hours Played: 7.5
Similar To: 9 Clues (Series) / Enigmatis (Series) / Grim Legends (Series) /  The Secret Order (Series)
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is the first in a trilogy of games involving legends of the sea and creepy undead pirates. This first game bears the usual stamp of quality from the Artifex Mundi studio and boasts a fine blend of puzzles, point and click adventure elements and 22 hidden object scenes. As usual with this type of game, you play a female protagonist and, as is often the case, you are the worried mother out to rescue your captured daughter. No prizes for guessing the guilty party here is a pirate ghost. Again, as per usual, the story is cheesy hogwash and total, unparalleled illogical nonsense. To say the plot is far-fetched doesn't even come close to the ridiculousness of it all. It's a good job we play Artifex Mundi games for the puzzles and the problem solving and not for the story. 
 

BALANCE & PACE

The action will take you from a museum exhibition to a haunted ship and then onto the sinister Skull Island as you track down the outwardly fearsome pirate Remington. You'll interact with still pictures in the usual fashion while clicking relevant objects to interact with and to add to your inventory. You zoom into areas within the pictures to grapple with the puzzles and although I like to play on a kinder difficulty setting where important locations are signposted with glitter, I found the actual challenge of the game to be weighted just right. Furthermore, although the game did have its fair share of backtracking, I never felt I was on any sort of time-wasting errand or endless trail and error wild goose chase that is the blight of so many adventure games of this nature.  

PRESENTATION & DESIGN 

Looking beyond the cheesy American accents and the odd cheap jump-scare here and there, The Cursed Heart's main strength lies in the art-work which was particularly impressive once moving on to the haunted ship and the Skull Island sections. What I liked was the fact that the various dark settings of the interior and the mysterious night-time settings of the exterior, although colourful and clear, never appeared overdone and, with predominant use of blues and the added mystique of the moonlight, maintained a sinister and eerie atmosphere throughout. As always, the design of the guide and the accompanying maps and notes were all tastefully done with the sheathing of a sword greeting each click through the menus.

 
  

PROGRESS SYSTEM

The Cursed Heart generally does a very good job in keeping the player well-informed and up-to-date with progress. For a start your in-built guide is conveniently laid out in seven chapters and, should you wish to refer to it, gives clear solutions if you're completely stuck. Secondly, your map is an essential tool in finding your way around the ship and the island. Depending on the mode, areas that need to be visited and where an action needs to occur are helpfully displayed with a green exclamation mark. Your current location is represented by a big yellow cross. Additionally there is a very useful notebook that keeps track of what you have done and objectives that need to be fulfilled. All told, I completed the game in around 7 hours. 

CONCLUSION

The Steam Store is now awash with games classed under the Adventure Game / Hidden Object hybrid. More and more appear by the week and their winning formula and popularity don't seem to be going away any time soon. As they play out in such a similar vein, games like Grim Legend, Nearwood and the 9 Clues series are only shunted out as would-be honourable mentions because of their sugary sweetness. However, what this and Maze: Subject 360 (for example) have in common is that they have a good dose of hidden object scenes, don't suffer from the blight of clueless backtracking nor any bout of hit and hope clicking, and no case of the over-cluttered inventory. All is well and good with The Cursed Heart.