Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows
Game Review

Castle of Shadows follows on the heels of Royal House of Stone, the first game in the Echoes of the Past hidden object adventure game series. The first game was a hit and famous for fantastic graphics and gameplay, and Castle of Shadows continues the same great tradition. Superb medieval artwork, intricate puzzles and a good story combine to deliver a great entertainment package.

Castle of Shadows starts with you visiting a museum to view historical artifacts. As you are looking at an amulet stand, the picture of a noblewoman nearby comes to life! The apparition tells you that the amulet once belonged to a royal family and protected the family and their land from harm. However, a powerful witch was able to destroy the amulet, scattering its pieces across the land. With the amulet gone, the witch defeated the royal family and placed a curse over their land.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to travel back to the time the amulet was destroyed and try to reassemble its pieces. Actually, you have no choice in the matter, since the ghost immediately teleports you right into a medieval chapel without even asking (How rude!). With your path laid out before you, you set out to find all the amulet pieces and use them to defeat the witch and lift the curse.

The gameplay in Castle of Shadows is primarily a scene-by-scene adventure format. You travel from location to location, solving puzzles and finding items to complete quests. You are able to select a game mode that affects the style of the game quite substantially. If you choose the casual mode, the game will act like a standard interactive hidden object game where you are provided with ample hints and highlighted areas on screen to let you know what your next action should be. If you choose the difficult mode, you don't get those highlighted areas to tell you what to do next. The entire game becomes one big puzzle where you need to figure out how to solve the current quest you are on. This is like the hugely popular game Myst from the 90's.

The game is not linear in that you are shepherded from one scene to the next. You are able to access many connected locations from the start, and will need to move back and forth between locations in order to find the right items to solve puzzles in the correct order. For example, you might be trying to gain access to the tavern, but you might not find the keys until you explore the town a bit more and find them by the river.

The puzzles in the game are pretty seamless and well-integrated into the adventure. You don't get transported to a minigame screen and given a set of instructions on how to play the game. Instead, you will just happen onto a puzzle area and must figure out what you need to do in order to solve it. Sometimes the clues are visible on the puzzle screen itself, but other clues can only be found 4 or 5 locations away. And if you are playing in difficult mode, you might not even realize that what you are looking at is actually a puzzle clue. As you can conclude from this, the difficulty in this game is higher than in other similar hidden object games.

However, good game mechanics and puzzles alone aren't sufficient to create a great game. Thankfully, this game also has a great story that will suck you in. You get to explore the dark and gritty streets of a medieval town and meet mysterious characters. In addition, the artwork in the game is gorgeous and captures the medieval atmosphere perfectly. Everything in the game looks crisp and detailed, and hidden objects are blended seamless into the scenes. The soundtrack and voice-acting are also pretty good.

The first Echoes of the Past game was famous for having great art and gameplay, and Castle of Shadows improves on an already-impressive standard. Definitely a game bound to entertain for hours and worth playing. You can get the basic version of the PC game, or you can get the Collector's Edition which includes exclusive extras such as a bonus adventure, an integrated strategy guide, concept art and more! Get the basic version and the Collector's Edition of the Mac version here.

Check out the other games in this series!

Related PC Games at Big Fish Games:

Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows Collector's Edition

Treasure Seekers: Follow the Ghosts

Princess Isabella: A Witch's Curse

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