The Mystery of Neuschwanstein is a puzzle adventure, using the famous, German castle as a backdrop for the story. The game consists of a series of logic puzzles and hidden object games, sprinkled through a mystery adventure.
Sarah Hamilton, an investigative journalist, is given a lead by her editor, which sends her to the historic Castle Neuschwanstein, once home of the reclusive King Ludwig II. There she meets Professor Adler, who is investigating the mysterious death of the king, as renovations at the palace uncover clues and some dark deeds.
The game opens with a comic strip style scene, with a dynamic, loose art style to convey action. This is used at several key points,
but I wish there had been more. The rooms are static, 2-D affairs, but they are rendered in a lovely, illustrative style, rather than going for realism. When there is dialogue, the characters slide in and out of the scene, a bit like paper theatre puppets with speech bubbles, which is a bit distracting.
To its credit, all the scenes are voice-acted, unfortunately, the acting is atrocious. Some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever encountered in a game. It’s stilted, often with the wrong intonation, accents which err on the side of farcical and Professor Adler sounded like he was doing a comedy turn. Only, he wasn’t.
In real life, Castle Neuschwanstein is one of Germany’s top tourist attractions and this mystery adventure uses historical facts as clues, throughout the story. There are diary entries from King Ludwig II and artifacts found around the castle, which become crucial to the puzzles and the plot. This means there is a lot of text to read, but if you can stand the acting, you can just listen. Even the diaries are narrated, but I chose to click through the poor acting.
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Sarah’s adventure operates like a point-and-click at some points. When she accesses a new area, objects are there to be collected and interacted with and some objects can be combined. For instance a broken key can be fixed with glue to open a casket.
She also has a camera at her disposal, to collect evidence, as bodies start appearing at the castle. Her detective partner, Professor Adler, also has a mobile lab and can send things to be analysed by academics, who come back with further information via emails. Later in the game, Sarah gains some night vision goggles and a UV lamp, along with fingerprint powder to reveal more clues.
Each room in the castle has a set of puzzles and they usually follow the same pattern. One cupboard opens to reveal a hidden object screen. All the objects make sense, in the context of the castle and are quite well drawn. To add a little depth, sometimes you have to look in your inventory to find the solution or collect sets of items before you can check them off the list.
The other tests are logic puzzles, such as creating electrical circuits by rotating discs to link the corresponding colour of wire, until the bulb comes on. These are probably the most challenging puzzles. The most simple are the memory test, which ask you to match tiles by turning them over, until you can find all the pairs.
As Sarah collects the clues, more areas of the castle and its grounds open up, as the story comes to a head, with various twists and big character reveals.
Ultimately, The Mystery of Neuschwanstein is the gaming equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle or one of those big book of logic puzzles that people take on coach tours. The story isn’t really that interesting, although, some people may find the historical snippets worth the journey. And even as a puzzler, once you’ve cleared the first couple of rooms, you basically get more of the same, as the game goes on. So, if you don’t like those puzzles, tough because that’s all there is.
The voice acting is so bad that they could have saved themselves some cash and just left it out, although, it’s almost so bad, it’s good – almost. Added to that, I hit a bug that meant I couldn’t access the final puzzle, on the final level, which just added to my frustration.
However, bugs and acting aside, if you like these kinds of logic puzzles, then you can skip through the dialogue and get to them fairly quickly. There is also a bonus chapter of puzzles, after the main plot is finished, so it’s quite good value for a good few hours of mind-benders. For anyone expecting more in-depth gameplay, look elsewhere.