Recent reviews by WidescreenJohn

This is one of the most adorable ways to spend a few hours. The basic graphics, the light jazz soundtrack, the fun dialog, the relatively short run time, and the cutest video game cat ever make this game a fantastic stress reliever or just a beautifully casual game to play when you don't want the high-energy games like Elden Ring, Warframe, or Destiny.

Is it a bug-free experience? No. Once I had to exit the game completely and go back in to have an action work. Sometimes Kitty will scream and hiss as though she stepped in water when there is none there.

Finally, the people who complain about the cost vs. the time put into it need to stop. They'll pay more for a 2 hour action movie at the theater with a consession purchase. I paid full price for this and casually got six hours out of this by enjoying the environment and not rushing to get everything finished. People who constantly equate play time with value do such a disservice to games like this.

The gameplay is simple; the environment is bright and colorful; the humor is light while the charm is huge; 100% achievement completion isn't very difficult (although one hidden one in particular is easier if you look it up when you start); and as far as I'm concerned the price is fine where it is. Support small developers who are trying to do something new.

Old Man's Journey is a storytelling puzzler (although the puzzles are very light) that has you (as you would expect) lead an old man on a journey.

The gameplay is very simple. Puzzles involve setting a path to lead the old man from one screen to the next by modifying the layers of the background to connect with each other. That might seem to be a bit boring, but some of the puzzles will have you thinking for a while.

The story itself is told in flashbacks as your character has to deal with the ramifications of a choice that he made long ago. Perhaps I've played too many of these games before; but as the letter that started his journey arrived, I knew exactly what the main plot was, and I was proven correct by the end although I didn't know the exact details of that choice. As to what his choice was, I found myself getting angry and unsympathetic at the character for that particular choice, but I suppose they needed a plot device. I would have preferred a life choice that was more circumstantial and less selfish.

The art design is gorgeous. It has a hand-painted look and feel to it that gives it a unique visual appeal. I absolutely love it!

The music is similarly fitting and very enjoyable. It's relatively minimalistic with only a few instruments playing at a time to match the lightweight feel of the game itself.

If you have a 21:9 monitor, you will see moments where the screen is not complete on the extreme edges. This is VERY obvious during the end credits; however, these moment do not deter from the main game.

You can easily get through the game in less than two hours, so it doesn't demand much of your time. That said, if you are a Steam card hunter, it's very possible to finish this game before all of your cards are awarded.

So if you want to support indie games, you're looking for an enjoyable way to spend and hour or two, and you appreciate a unique look and feel to your games, you need to travel on an Old Man's Journey.

This is yet another example of why Valve needs to put a "Meh" category here, but overall I say to stay away from this one unless you really need the cards or you get it at a steep sale.

It's standard HO fare, to be honest. The story relies heavily on fantasy and magic (because that seems to be the only way HO games can have a story.). Beautifully hand-drawn graphics, ambient music, good quantity of HO puzzles, the minigames aren't too bad, etc. etc. But the game becomes annoying for the many reasons why a lot of HO games become annoying.

The voice acting is dreadful. Unfortunately, it falls into the many shortcomings that HO games have. The people are NOT professional voice actors (which is not utterly surprising), but the accents are just .... bad. Really, REALLY bad. ♥♥♥♥ van ♥♥♥♥ did a better Cockney in "Mary Poppins" than whoever played the French woman did a French accent. When your accent is upstaged by ♥♥♥♥ van ♥♥♥♥'s Bert, that's saying something ... something really bad. And of course they have to have a woman try to play a child's voice, which is one of the most frustrating things that these HO games will do.

Unfortunately, the designers decided to do something that I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE, which is have some of the items that you're looking for *during the HO games* fade in and out, sometimes in very dark areas of the screen - and this happens on *every* HO game. KNOCK. THIS. OFF. Put the items on the screen. None of this fade-in-fade-out crap!!

Plus every HO game has hidden items where you have to move things out of the way, but ANY misclick on an item to move means that you lose out on the "No Mistakes Allowed" achievement for that game.

Then there are the glitches where you are very obviously clicking on an object but it doesn't take. Go back a little while later to that object and it registers!

And of course we have the multiple instances of improper English translations where items might be called something by definition, but their commonly-used term is not what is used, although that could also be my Yankee version of English. A "pipette"? You mean an "eyedropper"? That's not a "divider"! It's a "drafting compass" (for drawing circles)! A divider is something that ...you know ... SEPARATES items! There is a distinct difference between a "gem" and a "shard". OY!!

I was on the fence about this game, but because of the fade-in-fade-out and hidden-under-something on every single HO game, I'm knocking this down to a negative vote because it's really frustrating. Play this if you must, but keep your expectations really low and expect to get frustrated at times.

This is yet another case of why I wish Valve would include a "Meh" option for games. If you've played any number of hidden object games, then this review is pretty much commonplace.

The art design is exactly what you'd comes to expect: bright, colorful, nicely detailed. I found the music to be a bit above par in that its well orchestrated and isn't made of 10-second audio clips repeated ad nauseum.

One strength to this game is that some of the hidden object designs were actually really clever and were more than simply "here's the word, find the item". Although this has the hokey alchemy setup of the previous game, I really liked the match-three-or-more mini-puzzles to complete each alchemical action. I have never seen this in an HO game before and I found it to be quite refreshing and enjoyable.

Then we get to the other side.

That acting overall is "meh" but the lead actress is bad ... really bad. She's an absolute bore to listen to. It's obvious that the "child" in the beginning of the game is a woman's voice pretending to be a child, which is a trick that I find very annoying, especially when it's this obvious.

The stained-glass coloring minigames are infuriatring because the tints are different on the pattern and than they are in the actual part that needss to be colored. For example, the pattern might show a rose or pink color ... except that there is no stain color that matched! And because I have mild color-blindness (difficulty with certain hues), the imperfect matching in the stained-glass minigames is infuriating. So much for that "not skipping any minigames" achievement.

Two VERY frustrating parts are at the end when you need to navigate the crystal equivalent of iceburgs and you need to counter-act the spells of the antagonist. Those two sections are full of the EXACT SAME voice segment over and over and over and over and over and over again. How did the developers think that this was not annoying?

And I know that this is typical with HO games; but when it comes to real-world items, I would like at least some bit of realism. Feeding a cannon from the back instead of the front with the components reversed? Really? The gunpowder is supposed to go to the REAR of the cannonball, not the front! Apparently, the designers want the cannonball to blow themselves up when it's lit. Okay, that might be a lame dig, but my brain short-circuited at that one.

I can recommend this but it's with a big shrug and "meh" because there's nothing spectacular here. The story isn't awful, the puzzles are standard HO fare as are the graphics, the match-three is a nice addition; but the two parts with repeated phrases are HIGHLY annoying, for the most part the voice acting is not good, and that stained-glass puzzles were infuriating for me. This is a game that deserves a solid "meh". There are far worse HO games out there. (Look at my reviews for a number of them.) There are however far better HO games out there. If you're going to buy this, make sure it's at a steep discount.

This is one of those HO reviews that are pretty easy to do. If you've played any decent Artifex Mundi games, then you know what you're getting here as it's basically what you'd expect from AM.

It has evrything that you normallty get in modern HO games: beautiful, colorful, handdrawn backgrounds; plenty of HO puzzles; the standard kind of music that goes with most HO games, etc. Seriously, this game is pretty much the standard across-the-board game you'd expect.

Compared with a lot of these kinds of games, I thought the voice acting was actually quite good with a few exceptions, but those were minor instances. The HO games aren't particularly difficult, but I found it interesting that everything was in a much smaller section of the screen than I'm used to. In fact the lower fourth (maybe fifth) is not used at all because that's the "go back" area of the screen, and only once did I have to look to the far edges left or right to find an item. Some might argue that it makes the HO games less challenging, but I consider that instead to be less frustrating.

The spell creation was a bit hokey, even for an HO game. For example, "cosmic essense" in a globe as an alchemy ingredient? "Cosmic essense"? As an alchemy ingredient? Stored in a wooden globe? That's ... no. Just, no. And the puzzles needed to mix the ingredients was fun the first few times but got tedious and difficult by the end to the point that I didn't care about the achievement for not skipping minigames and skipped those bad boys to spare me the tedium and frustration.

I get tired of the achievements that force you to watch through the cutscenes, though. This has one of those, too. It's almost like a "HEY! Our people out time into these things and you WILL appreciate them if you want that achievement!" Yes, I get that the artists put time into the game, but is that really necessary? At least the cutscenes here aren't nearly as bad as I've seen in other games.

So, I do recommend this if you like HO games. It's what you might have come to expect from AM. It's not a great game; the story is meh; the acting is actually pretty good; the puzzles aren't awful; music and art design are pretty standard. If you like HO games, you can do a *LOT* worse than this.

The premise of a point-and-click game that used nothing but classical paintings with an animation style identical to that of "Monty Python" was immediately intriguing to me, and I was not disappointed. This is one of the silliest point-and-click games I've played in a long time, and it was worth it, especially for the price.

The tone of the game is set right at the start when you control Adam at the Garden of Eden with Eve telling you that you have no choice and God telling you not to eat the apple but in ways much closer to the ways that "Monty Python" would deliver it. Eventually, you wake up from the dream (uh.... spoiler??) and go to the local church to atone for your sins only to be told .... well, I'll let you find out the reason, but it's utterly ridiculous and fits perfectly with the story's tone. In fact, this wacky sense of humor is present throughout the entire game. I ended up unintentionally snorting from some of the one-liners in this game.

(The "Four Last Things" refer to four last things of man as per Christian belief: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. They comprise the four last stages of the soul in life and the afterlife.)

The parts of the various classical paintings are beautifully brought together. One scene is an art gallery where you can see the paintings from which the art was used. I was very impressed with how often one scene can seamlessly contain elements from several paintings, yet they're all perfectly blended together. And the animation that's presented when you engage in one of the Seven Deadly Sins(TM) is wonderfully silly. (And, yes, guys, you get to see nudity in the paintings, okay?)

The game only lasts a few hours, but that's good because it doesn't overstay its welcome. This is a game that you can pick up with a few hours of free time without worrying about a 10 or 12 hour committment to finish the game. And don't complain that the price to still too much for a two-hour game. Unless you're nothing but a Grumpy Gus who gets no joy out of anything, the humor and the incedible presentation of so many classical elements are worth it.

My only gripes with this game are very minor and don't really detrect from the game. One is that you encounter a few things in the game that get no explanation or resolution. Granted, they're not needed to complete the game anyway, but I really wanted to know what was up with that dog that followed me. (uh... spoiler again?)

Another gripe is that you eventually reach a point of no return with no warning at all. So if you don't get all of the optional achievements by the time you reach that point, you *must* play the game again to get all of them. That's not a huge deal because you can finish the game in less than an hour with a walkthrough, but it's still a bit of an annoyance.

Regardless, if you love goofy point-and-clicks akin to "Sam & Max" and "Money Island", this game completely deserves your attention. If you also appreciate classical music and art, then you need to play this game. Period. Buy it. It's worth it.

I'll put this out there right from the start: this game is awful. I've played a lot of HO games because they don't require a long commitment and they're often a nice change of pace from the shooters and action games that I normally play. This game belongs on the left edge of the bell curve.

(Yes, I know that this game is five years old, but when Steam asks if I recommend it, I don't care about its age. I do NOT recommend this!)

The voice acting is atrocious. It's ridiculously bad. The main narrator isn't too bad, to be honest. The little girl really *is* a little girl, not an adult putting on a fake kid's voice, and she's actually pretty good, too. The rest -- holy sweet jumping Jesus. They're AWFUL! One of the first characters you meet pauses every other word. No, I'm not kidding. "Pathetic" doesn't come close to the voice actor. The one character is supposed to be older yet her voice actress made her sound quite young. Another character is a young guy but his voice actor must have been in his 50s or more. There is a disconnect between the characters and their voice actors unlike any HO game I've ever played.

And then to top it all off, the game takes place in sub-Saharan Africa yet only one of the native characters you meet will have any semblance of an accent. With my US locale, all but that one spoke with American English. In sub-Saharan Africa? Are you f-ing kidding me?

The puzzles aren't difficult, but I ran into one issue where a number 3 was supposed to be shaded on a book cover -- except it wasn't there. The game glitched and made the 3 invisible. I had no choice but to use a hint. So much for the no hint achievement, but I had no other choice.

The story is bad. Really bad. And things happen in the game that seem to have no connection with the previous scene. The reason for the main baddie isn't given until near the end, but her presence is still barely explained, and it's never explained why she's a threat nor was any history given. She's there; she's evil; and that's about it. The story is so disjointed that any semblance of a plot is superficial at best.

I never skipped any of the cutscenes; yet scenes seemed to jump from one scenario to another -- and I never got the achievement to watch all cutscenes. So apparently that's glitched, too.

The only good thing about this is that you get Steam cards. But if they're of no interest to you, skip this game all together. There are so many other HO games out there that are superior, but this game is so awful that "superior" is not a high bar to jump.

Again, I know this game is five years old but I couldn't possibly recommend this except for those who want easy Steam cards, those who are masochists, or both. Seriously. F**k this game.

This game is NOT good. In fact, it's pretty awful. The story is ridiculous even for HO standards; the voice acting is poor; things happen and you have no idea why or how they link; environmental sounds are awful and not appropriate for most scenes; the aspect ratio is stretched more horizontally than it should be. The only thing that was not as annoying as the rest of the game was the music.

That said, you can breeze through this piece of dreck in less than two hours; the HO games can be quite challenging; and it's a fairly non-offensive way to get some cards and some achievements as long as you keep your expectations low and I mean *really* low. Get this on a really, REALLY steep discount. If you can, get this through a Fanatical or Humble Bundle. Don't you dare pay more that $1 for this trash.

If you really, really want some Steam cards and some easy achievements, buy this game when it's ridiculsouly cheap and keep your expectations low -- really freaking low.

If you want a quality HO game, then stay as far away from this piece of sh*t as possible.

I'm not quite sure why this game gets so much hate. I didn't have that much of a problem with it, and if you've read my reviews you'll know that I play plenty of HO games and I'll slam those that need to be slammed. But the hatred for this one is very puzzling ... no pun intended.

The art design is on par with most HO games, so there's not much to say there.

There are plenty of HO games throughout. I did run into a bizarre situation where I did a second HO game in the same place where I just ended one, but that isn't a big deal. The HO games are *very* challenging without being annoying. Some of the items are hidden a bit *too* well, but they aren't like some moronic HO games that have half of the item off the screen.

The minigames aren't all that difficult. The more annoying ones are in the bonus section which, if you've already gotten all of the achievements in the main game, don't hurt to skip.

The story is not all that bad, and the voice acting was actually well above par. Although the actor for the Brothers Grimm wasn't fantastic, he wasn't awful either. But the main actor was superb! I was very impressed with his performance.

This game also does NOT include those f**king annoying "hidden items that fade in an out that you need to wait to collect for some dumb-a*s achievement". That is a HUGE positive.

If anything is annoying it's that each section in a map represents an area and not a specific screen. So when you jump to a spot that has an action to take, it might not be on the specific screen where you start at after the fast travel. So you might have to do some hunting.

All in all, this was NOT a bad game. I really don't understand the hatred for it. There was plenty to do; it was a bit of a mind-bender, but not frustratingly so; there were no fade-in/fade-out stupid collectibles to find; and the voice acting was superb.

Sorry, but I cannot recommend this game unless you really want the Steam cards. The negatives to this game outweigh the positives. Although on the surface, this game offers traditional HO fare, once you start to play it, your frustration levels might start to rise. I finally hit a breaking point where I no longer cared enough to finish and uninstalled the game before I completed it.

(EDIT: Yes, I know this game is several years old, but this is all about whether I recommend it or not, and obviously I don't.)

The art is what you'd expect from most HO games - colorful, hand-painted, and so forth. The music while nothing extraordinary also was not annoying. The story itself actually wasn't all that bad either, which is saying something considering how bad some HO stories can be.

Sadly, that's about it with the positves. Now let's talk about the negatives.

With the exepction of the main baddie (Lilith), the voice acting is awful. The "actors" read their lines. That's it. There is no thought to the character or the context of the situation. Nope, just read the lines as though there's no emotion and everyone is happy. The voice actress for Lilith is the exception. She did quite a good job with that character and understood why the lines were being spoken. Kudos to her and only her.

If you have a 21:9 monitor, the game switches to a 21:9 aspect ratio even in windowed mode. What it *SHOULD* be doing is forcing itself for a 16:9 mode so that 21:9 monitors will center it on the screen. Nope. Not here. No matter what, if you have a 21:9 monitor, you will end up playing this game in 21:9 Stretch-O-Vision (TM) regardless of whether it's windowed or fullscreen.

Mouse positioning is bugged. In the HO games I found that I needed to click just to the left of the item for it to register. In one section of the "bonus" game, I had to pick up an item on a bridge. If I clicked on the item, I crossed the bridge! Wait, what? That's not what I wanted! I actually had to click just to the right of the item to pick it up! Supposedly, the devs are aware of this but can't figure it out.

One of the required mini-games where you have to rotate a platform in order to postition a metal ball is bugged. I got it to where the ball was only a step or two from the end and it reset and locked. It didn't actually finish because nothing came of it. It reset the platform as though I failed and then locked. I could no longer turn the platform. This is a game-breaking bug.

In what can only be labeled as a cheap shot, if you want all of the achievements, the bonus content is NOT bonus content. To me, "bonus" means "extra" that's there of you want it. You HAVE to play the bonus content in order to get all of the achievements. If that's the case, it should have been part of the main story, not labeled as "bonus" content.

AND FINALLY if you make the mistake of clicking "Play" from the main menu while you're working on the bonus content, you just wiped out your bonus game. Fortunately, the bonus game stays unlocked, but you have to start from the beginning again.

This was my breaking point. Between the bugs, the horrible voice acting, and the non-bonus "bonus" content, I couldn't take any more. At this point I said "F**K IT!" and uninstalled the game. For all I know the achievement settings got reset as well -- you know, because if you want the achievements the bonus content isn't really bonus content. So it's possible that you would have to play everything - main and bonus - again to get all of the achievements.

Nope, I'm done. I got my trading cards. F**k this game.