Recent reviews by Dancovich

Like others I've found memories of the NES port of Shadowgate. The music, the atmosphere, everything on that game smelled like adventure.

This game is a reimagining of the original NES version. I say reimagine insteado of remake because it's obvious to me that while they have strong roots on the NES version, this version isn't held by those roots.

Many rooms are similar but almost all puzzles are completely different and even the ones that look like a puzzle found on the NES version will have twists to them.

The visuals are gourgeous. They use a handpainted style with very few animations and the whole experience is like playing a painting. They also vastly improved the delivery of puzzles in the sense that this game isn't a pixel hunt at all. Everything you can interact with will glow when you just click it to indicate that. That doesn't mean you SHOULD interact to everything but there is never a moment where you have to interact with some hidden object that you'll only discover by clicking everything on the screen.

Some flaws that I did find are for example the interface. Many times you have to use an item you have on the inventory and use it on the scene. The inventory screen takes the whole screen so you have to open the inventory screen, go to the page the item is at, click the item, click "use", close the inventory screen and click where you want to use the item. This becomes a little tedious when you're trying some combinations to solve a puzzle. The NES version kept the inventory open at all times at your side so you could quickly try many items. They could fix this by having a closeable inventory panel that doesn't obstruct the screen so you could keep it open while you try using items.

I'm having a blast. The game have three dificulty settings that actually change the puzzles. I went and selected the Master dificulty directly because that's how the NES version where - ruthless. I recomend you do the same.