Blackwell Unbound

The Good
I like point and click adventures and I recently got this game when the bundle was on sale on Steam.

It's a point and click that harks back to the games I played years ago. It's fully voiced with well written dialogue, has decent music and effects and easy to master controls that are the same as the first game in the series. The artwork is very much of the 'LucasArts Pixel' type which in some games can look pretentious but here it fits right in.

The story consists of two cases which the Lauren and Joey have to solve - then there's a third case in which they find and resolve the connection between the first two. The cases can be solved in either order which is a nice touch.

The puzzles in this game are straightforward, by which I mean they are logical and realistic - no weird stuff like 'giving the pineapple to the wombat in exchange for a key'.

The Bad
I didn't dislike anything in the game, I really enjoyed playing it, however I did have a few minor issues.

I did have to resort to using a walkthrough (just the once honest and I hated doing it). I knew what to do, where to do it and why and it turned out I was using an inventory item in the wrong way. Not a big problem but perhaps the game is not as intuitive as the developers thought.

There are places where Joey, the ghost, explores on his own, this is common to this gamer and the previous game in the series I have played so far and typically occurs where there is a locked door. I expected Joey and Lauren to talk about the information Joey uncovered or that it would at least appear in the list of clues but it did not. As a result I spent time replaying some sections trying in case I'd missed some kind of trigger.

There were also some points where the game expects the player to have remembered information picked up in earlier dialogue that never makes it to Lauren's notebook. Again not a big problem but I don't remember that happening in the previous game so I was not prepared.

The Bottom Line
This is a good, not too difficult, little adventure game. It looks, sounds and plays like an old school game and just 'feels right'. I enjoyed it.

I completed the game in just under four hours and that included the usual coffee and comfort breaks, so if you 're familiar with games like this and don't get stuck there's probably three to three and a half hours gentle gameplay in all - more if you go for all the Steam achievements and unlocks.