Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily

Developer: One More Level | Publisher: Artifex Mundi | Release Date: 2016 | Genre: Casual / Adventure / Hidden Object | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Like many hidden object games, Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily opens with your character being involved in an accident. However, unlike the norm, she isn’t racing to rescue a friend or relative from some supernatural danger. Instead you play as a private investigator who simply wanted to take a vacation at a secluded hotel in the snowy mountains. Unfortunately her plans are not only disrupted by the car crash, but also the frozen body of a police officer she finds at the gates to her hotel. The paper lily she finds on his body appears to be the calling card of a killer and with a blizzard preventing any help from the outside world it is up to you to apprehend the murderer.

With the myriad of supernatural themed hidden object games on the market it is refreshing to play something every now and then that features something a little different. In the case of this game, it is as the name suggests a crime story. The hotel where the murder took place might be cut off by a blizzard, but there are still a few people present. Any one of them could be the killer, but as the body count rises the list of suspects become shorter. To make things a little more interesting the killer is not only very adept at hiding his identity, but also has a very strange way of slaying his victims.

In addition to the expected hidden object scenes and mini-games, Crimson Lily also features “crime scenes” that must be thoroughly searched for clues. Instead of a list of objects to find you must examine the murder scene and click on anything that looks like it could be relevant to the crime. Everything from blood stains and broken furniture to muddy footprints, broken glass or anything else that looks out of place. Once everything has been marked you must then arrange these pieces of the puzzle in the right order to see a flashback of what took place and where the killer could be headed. It is a nice idea, but a little easy as the “clues” are usually very obvious. The hidden object scenes are also quite straightforward, although they can be substituted for a game of Mahjong if you wish. We noticed one or two unique mini-games, but once again the overall challenge is quite low and most fans of the genre will have played some variation of these puzzles before already. This means that despite the three difficulty settings Crimson Lily is quite a laid-back game and probably better suited to newcomers or players looking for a stress free experience.

Visually Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily looks good, but not spectacular. The scenes are detailed and the wintery setting looks rather nice, but none of the locations really stand out as anything remarkable. This is to be expected due to the more realistic setting of the game, but we would have liked to see a couple of more unique scenes. In total there are about 30 hand painted scenes, which once again feels a little on the low side compared to other hidden object games with almost double that amount of scenes. Some animated effects, such as falling snow help to breathe a little life into the scenes, but all the people you encounter look very stiff as it is typically only their facial expressions that change. The audio is also a bit of a mixed bag with some of the voice acting good while at other times the lines are delivered with very little feeling. While the sound effects are generally decent we have a hard time remembering any of the background tunes.

Crime Secrets has all the helpful hidden object features, such as a map for fast travelling and journal for keeping track of clues or objectives, but these are hardly needed. The story is relatively straightforward and you are never in any doubt about what you should do next. The game also doesn’t feature any type of backtracking, which is nice, but means that it can be completed very quickly. Further putting a damper on the longevity of the game is the fact that there is no “bonus” adventure to complete, which is a feature that we’ve almost come to expect from all titles published by Artifex Mundi. The only replay value comes from finding all the hidden origami and snowflake symbols scattered throughout the game, but even these aren’t that hard to spot.

Some people love supernatural themed hidden object games while others don’t or are tired of mystical menagerie typically found stalking the genre. Anyone who falls into the latter camp will enjoy the more grounded mysteries of Crime Secret. It is obviously not that realistic or convincing in terms of its storyline and puzzles, but does make for a nice change from the norm. The low difficulty level also makes it more suitable for newcomers to the genre and not veterans.