I have to admit, when I read up on this game, I was under the clearly mistaken impression that it was so short as to not make it worth paying for. I also had my doubts about the back story of the game; in fact, I still somewhat do if for no other reason than some of the rather haphazard telling of the story, but all in all I walked away satisfied.
Enigmatis is what is referred to as a "hidden object" game. This genre is somewhat of an evolution of the old point-and-click and text style games of years past, where you'll play out the role of the main character and experience the world through their eyes. You'll be presented with scenes that have a bunch of irrelevant objects and a select number of key ones that you have to identify. Depending on the difficulty setting of the game, there may be a time limit, or some sort of punishment for tapping/clicking on the wrong item. Often, the bulk of what you need to find is not used, but there will be one or two items that are used to advance the story.
In Enigmatis, you wake up in a pool of blood, dazed and confused, having lost your memory. As the story advances, you will observe items that slowly restore your memory of what has transpired: a young girl has gone missing in the city of Maple Creek, and you've been dispatched to find out what happened to her and bring her home. Strangely, the town appears mostly abandoned, but you will see various characters reveal themselves at points. There are twists and turns that will have you wondering where the story is going to go next. If for nothing else it was a great premise when it started.
My primary issues with Enigmatis were:
- Not Enough "Creepy". It started out excellently, dark and mysterious, using ambiance and audio to really bring you into the scene. There's a part with a dead body and some footprints that will likely make your skin crawl, if for only a brief moment. Shadows move in the background, catching your eye and tempting you to chase after them. But then, about midway through the story, you'll trigger a key event involving a bell...and all of a sudden the creep factor is gone. Shadows show up less, and then it just becomes a point-and-shoot exercise. It's still a decent story told, but it would have helped a lot to keep up the "creep" factor more than it was.
- Plot Drop Offs. This is more about character development than anything. While the story was pretty straightforward a lot of the story elements were simply abandoned with no further probing. There's a character who tries to give you all of the collected materials; he then disappears and is never seen or heard from again. You never find out what happened to him. There is a church full of cultists (as far as you know) - after triggering the aforementioned bell event, they all run out of the church, never seen or heard from again. There's a person who rips a photo off of a wall and runs off - you never find out who that person exactly is (their face is shown briefly, but it's difficult to make out who they are). The ending, which I won't spoil, simply makes no sense whatsoever.
- Backtrack, backtrack, backtrack. I actually don't mind a tiny bit of backtracking but this game takes the cake. It's not even the amount, but how far you have to go and the way you navigate. For example, you'll find an obscure object in a boathouse that you have to use at the graveyard; the problem is that the path to navigate back to that graveyard is long and tedious. Once you get there, you'll find an object that needs to be used at a farm; again though, long and tedious to get there since you have to navigate through another building's backyard to get there. No shortcuts whatsoever to help with any of this journey and there were times I thought of quitting. Compare this to a game like Adera, where the items you find are used for a future location, with backtracking every now and again, but not all the time.
- Hidden Object overload. There are specific places where these minigames occur and they're always the same. The problem is, when you pass certain key points in the game, you'll have to backtrack (there's that word again) to each of these to see if there's a minigame, and then complete it. So you'll be visiting each at least 3 times. They're a bit challenging to find certain objects, so if this is your bag then you'll be right at home, but going back to the exact same layouts over and over is not my idea of fun.
- Pointless highlights. Things that the game will encourage you to look at that have no useful purpose in the game. There's a sign near some woods as well as what seems to be an exposed pipe at the top of a toilet. They draw your eye and distract you needlessly. You might spend minutes examining these in case they unlock something else, to no avail.
- Too much dependence on evidence. To the point that at times, you can't advance the story at all without going to the evidence wall to drag some photos into circles. I get it; they want you to see things through the eyes of the detective, but to force the user to manually drag things into circles feels like game padding. Should easily and definitely have just been some cutscenes where you watch the detective do this activity.
All that said, it's a fairly lengthy game. I was playing in brief spurts for at least a week, so I figure I got roughly 7-8 hours out of the game, which comes in at just under a dollar an hour. That's of course with me analyzing every corner of the town and not rushing to finish it. Compared to some first person shooters with a 8 hour campaign at $60 ( over $7 per hour of gameplay!!) I found it to be a decent deal. That said, this kind of game is a time passer. It's not something that will go down as a legendary epic or anything. It'll do, especially if you're on a plane or something passing time.
