You are a lowly stagehand who is part of a travelling opera troupe. The company has been called to an abandoned town to put on a show for theYou are a lowly stagehand who is part of a travelling opera troupe. The company has been called to an abandoned town to put on a show for the reclusive Count Vladd Vansig III. Trouble begins to happen when each member of the troupe is slowly killed; their body located one minute but gone the next. There is a killer among you and there isn’t any way to escape the town. It’s up to you to find out who the killer is and stop him/her before you’re next! One thing is certain: someone is out for revenge and they don’t’ care about casualties…
One of the very first hidden object games by Canadian developer Vast Studios ended up being a haunting crime thriller called Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera (2010). This HOPA became the first part of an ongoing series exploring a couple of mysterious people who as of this game are part of the opera. The double title here specifically Nightfall Mysteries is unnecessary as the subtitle explains what the game is about more concisely. In my opinion the game isn’t quite there. The graphics are good for the time and the supplied music by studio SomaTone understands the mood. On the service it all looks fairly competent even if the methods to keep the player escaping soon become contrived. The story as it slowly kills characters off leaves the player guessing as to the identity of the murderer or should that be murderers? It’s unfortunate none of the supporting characters are given much development in order to be anything but two-dimensional. One of the main issues apart from the lack of character development among the troupe is the ending which is extremely expositional and confusing. It’s an ending that isn’t given any logical lead up to its revelations. The ending’s revelations are not only unexpected but feel left field so I’m still torn on it, leaving more questions for the player than answers. I’m also still none the wiser what happened to the entire town’s people and why the Count operates from an abandoned town. The other major issue I have with Curse of the Opera is the high difficulty. Sure there’s a hint system and you have the ability to skip puzzles but the game gets way too difficult way too quickly. Some of the puzzles don’t even make sense as the clues left for them (placed in your player journal) don’t add up. I did appreciate the last puzzle which is completely trial and error because it’s not only fair but allows the player to show some real ingenuity. It’s just a shame the rest of the puzzles put the player off wanting to continue. The difficulty extends to the hidden object item hunting where some objects in a room prove far too invisible to the human eye to find. When a random dot on a screen is a hidden item we have a problem.
Curse of the Opera would not end up reaching the heights of quality of Written Legends: Nightmare at Sea (2011) (or considering it’s set on the seabed should that be lows?) but what you have here is nevertheless an interesting story about deception, greed and revenge wrapped up in the usual HOPA gameplay. The game however never manages to quite get where it needs to due to both in its confusing exposition and high difficulty gameplay. There is certainly room for improvement and you won’t need the game to be over due to a fat, annoying lady singing opera to tell you that.… Expand
