Not gonna beat around the bush here… well, I can’t cause I already spoiled my opinion of the game. It seems Ravenhearst is calling to you one final time and secrets long buried will be unearthed… That is until an orderly is killed right in front of you by someone who should be dead. Although no-one believes you about what happened, it seems at least it’s finally over. You barely got out with your life intact. You were at Ravenhearst and bad things were afoot. Little by little your memories return to you. How did you get here? Why are you in here? And why is there a raven skull-shaped scar on your wrist. So, let me be perfectly unambiguous when I say that Ravenhearst Unlocked is straight up, without a single shred of doubt, no hesitation… utter and complete garbage. But this has long been the studio of uneven quality. The genuine shock I felt when an Eipix game wasn’t mediocre or straight up bad.

I wish I had been considering reviewing Key to Ravenhearst when I played it cause it would have been so much fun to talk about. This is a very long introduction to my review of Ravenhearst Unlocked but I’m only setting the stage so you understand my true feelings about this game. Anyone who had to wait for this game to be released must’ve been in so much agony. I was drawn in fully and could not even contemplate not continuing. In fact, I had such a good feeling and the game ended on such a cliffhanger I just HAD to get the next game immediately. I doubt we’ll ever go back to how dark HOPA once were but damn if it wasn’t close and made me nostalgic. I still remember just how genuinely taken I was with the teaser they uploaded to announce they were working on a new Ravenhearst game. It felt like a slightly watered down Ravenhearst game. It wasn’t perfect, God no, it was still an Eipix game and they come with drawbacks built in, but I was genuinely surprised by how good it was. The darkness was back, lives were in peril and there was very little effort to pull their punches. And to put it in a single word, their first entry in the franchise, Key to Ravenhearst, was bloody fantastic.ĭidn’t think I’d say that, did you? Well, it was great. It was a good end.īut it was obvious that the success of MCF was being directly contributed to Ravenhearst so milk it they did. The trilogy went out swinging and that was good. They decided to revisit games in the MCF franchise that honestly didn’t need revisiting and to add salt, made sure they tied both games to the Ravenhearst trilogy.ĭon’t get me wrong, I love Ravenhearst but I thought the whole thing pretty neatly tied up with a bow after Escape from Ravenhearst. Fate’s Carnival and Dire Grove, Sacred Grove are, to put it mildly, at best bland and uninspired and at worst, just downright bad games. The problems started already in 2013 when Elephant Games took over the franchise and began producing games. Not only is it one of the granddaddies of HOPA, it was one of the first times the genre gained mainstream success.Īnd I’ll be fair, Eipix did not ruin the franchise alone. If it seems like I’m writing a lot about the history of Mystery Case Files and making a big deal about it, it’s because it is a very big deal in the community. As for 13th Skull and Shadow Lake… well, I remember liking them at the time but it does indeed feel like it might be time for me to revisit the whole series.įun fact: Cassandra Williams was played by none other than Hollywood-actor Lea Thompson, making Shadow Lake one of the few instances of a hidden object game having star power. They’re still very much playable to this day.

Although the first two games ( Huntstville and Prime Suspects) are, by today’s standards, horrifically dated, Dire Grove and Madame Fate are just as memorable. It’s just that great.Īnd the Mystery Case Files-series is no slouch otherwise. Personally, I consider Escape from Ravenhearst one of the finest games of all times. What is often referred to as the Ravenhearst trilogy is probably some of the most fondly remembered games in the community. Since then, we’ve not only returned to Ravenhearst but also escaped from it. Following what can only be described as the massive success of Ravenhearst, everybody wanted in on that lucrative, horror-inspired HOG market. Released in 2006, it not only changed the face of the Mystery Case Files-franchise but also set the hidden object games industry in a new direction. Ravenhearst has long been the holy grail of hidden object games. What have you done, Eipix? What did you do?

Mystery case files ravenhearst series