The Lost Crown: A Ghost Hunting Adventure

Rating Rating Pending Genre puzzle Publisher Got Game Entertainment External Links Official Got Game Website

Its not quite Cthulhu, its not quite Myst, and it’s not quite entertaining. What seemed, at first, to be an artistic horror-mystery game only proved to dig up buried memories of poorly designed puzzle games of the 1990s. In The Lost Crown, Got Game Entertainment resurrects the well tested point and click puzzle genre. The critical flaw in doing this however is that the resurrection was too perfect, essentially dragging the same tired mechanics from ages past.

The game starts out with you on a train, pulling into the station of a small, secluded town. The game is set in black and white, which goes with the mood of the game. There are nice splashes of color on flowers, windows, and other random parts of the scenery. Unfortunately, this may be the only attractive part of the game.

There are two major problems, which I find horribly unforgivable in such a game. The first is that your character walks strangely. Either he sports wheels on the bottom of his shoes, or he is related to Gumby. Anytime you click to move, you cover far greater distance that your stride should carry you. Even so, moving from place to place is still unbearably slow. While the game has a function to let you auto-travel to the next area when you double click, it doesn’t always function.

The second glaring problem is the voice acting. Most of the games dialogue is done as voice. Normally this is something nice and enjoyable. However, voice acting in The Lost Crown is comparable to William Shatner performing the spoken word version of Rocketman. The main character inserts random commas, periods, and ellipses into his deadpan British tone. The NPC dialogue isn’t much better. Nearly every line spoken to you has vague threats and eerie tones that I assume are supposed to creep you out. It is done so poorly, though, that it merely annoys.

For whatever reason, the game even sticks to the old method of plot progression. In order to further the plot at certain points, you are requires to examine everything, even if it is of no importance. I spent quite some time backtracking to make sure I examined every picture, sign, clock, or anything else that gave a little magnifying glass as I moused over it. Didn’t click on that painting of a man in a boat, which will give you no clues, or items, or anything for that matter? Well then, no plot progression or triggered events for you.

The Lost Crown could have been great, it really could have. Ultimately, it is unpolished, slow, and clumsy. Even if the story was amazing instead of mediocre, the flaws are just too much to deal with.