I have to admit, I’ve never really been much of a fan of hidden object games, mainly because they are the type of games my mother plays on Facebook, the type of games my friends’ mothers play on Facebook and they are the type of games my friends would mock because their mothers play it. But Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek manages to take what I consider to be a fairly boring genre and turn it upside down.
The game follows a woman looking for a missing person in a town called Maple Creek, but a storm has happened and the woman wakes up with little to no recollection of how she got there. With blood on her hands and her partially torn notebook, she attempts to find her rented hotel room where the rest of her notes are located to try and remember events.
The first date in her notebook is October 14, 2011, but the page is torn and we can only see small parts of what was written. Upon closing the notebook I find a piece of paper on the ground and wrapped up in the paper is a key to my hotel room and a photograph of the missing girl. This is how the game starts. You must work your way through the town trying to find new items to help guide you through certain areas.
After you find the clues on the ground, you move on further through the town where you get to experience your first attempt at finding objects. As I said before, I’m usually not too interested in hidden object games, but I have to admit, I found this very entertaining. Searching for several items in a huge heap of them is strangely relaxing. The game gives you the option of using a hint with a recharge system meaning you can’t exploit it by overusing it on every item and items are very well hidden. Sometimes you have to spend several minutes trying to find an apple hidden in the trunk of a crashed car, and it is surprisingly fun. The user interface is very nice and very easy to use, one of the options being the ability to organise the evidence you collected. Another is opening up the journal which is very helpful if you are stuck or unsure where to go next or you just want to go over the story.
As well as using the hint feature I mentioned earlier, the game also implements a map that allows you to see the whole town and areas you have already visited. A red exclamation mark will appear when there is a new event for you to find. From the outside the story may seem very cliché as it’s about a person searching for someone in a town that isn’t quite what it seems, but it blasts that cliché into a million pieces and what’s left is an interestingly dark talk about sacrifice and murder with small elements of the supernatural. Needless to say that I was blown away by the twists.
The cutscenes are what you would typically expect from a game like this but the story isn’t. The story is not your typical hidden object story, that’s not to say it is completely original or without cliché, but it is interesting. As the player you are not directly involved with the story, instead, you are investigating the events of the story and trying to piece together just what happened. I like the darkness the story contains, it isn’t exceptional but it is interesting enough to keep you invested in the game.
The sound design is rather nice as well. The music oozes out intrigue and mystery while also managing to be soothing and calm and the background sound complements the art style. Owls hoot in the forest, church bells ring, and birds sing really making you feel like you are inside this small town where a church is a stone’s throw away from a forest. Speaking of the art style, the game is rather beautiful compared to others in the genre. The town has recently gone through a storm and buildings are damaged from high winds, the roads are covered in leaves and rubbish and debris, trees have blown over into roads and the interior of buildings are deteriorating. Additionally, wooden planks are falling in some places giving you the sense that the house is falling apart. Dust falls from the ceiling making you think the roof may just collapse at any minute.
Those are just some of the things that make Enigmatis a great game, but there are also a few negatives. For instance, there is no fast travel system meaning you will have to backtrack from one end of the map to another later in the game, and a fair amount of backtracking is required as you progress further into the game. The voice acting leaves much to be desired with the main protagonist’s voice seemingly monotone throughout the game.
I also encountered a fairly large bug with the voice acting as it didn’t work most of the time. At several points throughout the game your character would speak when you found an item or witnessed an event, but only the subtitles would appear. There was no audio. As this is such a minor annoyance I have full confidence the developers will patch the title soon.
Summary
Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek in an incredibly enjoyable game with a few minor problems that can easily be overlooked. The game redeems itself with its beautiful art style, nice sound design and an easy-to-use interface. Enigmatis managed to turn a hidden object skeptic into a newly eager fan of the genre.
Reece contributed 13 articles to ICXM between 2016–2017, covering game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.