Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily Assessment

Hidden object video games from Artifex Mundi have slowed down of late, and we received’t deny that we miss them. There’s one thing within the assembly of pulpy storylines, easy-as-pie graphic adventuring and hidden object scenes that places us comfy. Who knew that we might be given a psychological therapeutic massage by messy rooms and a buying listing?

Artifex Mundi are inclined to have quite a few ongoing collection at any time. You’ll be able to think about them stroking their chin, wanting on the many storylines that they’ve, questioning the place to position their newest. Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily appears at first prefer it may buck that development: there’s not been one other sport with the Crime Secrets and techniques prefix. However this has the identical protagonist and mechanics because the 9 Clues storyline. Deal with it as a rebrand. 

We received’t lie, we have been a bit dissatisfied to search out out it was one other 9 Clues sport. We’ve had comparatively few Artifex Mundi hidden object video games in 2022, and 9 Clues has been three of them. For the sake of selection, it might have been good to go elsewhere. And, if we’re being trustworthy – the 9 Clues collection has, up to now, been a bland previous affair, with investigation mechanics that veer in direction of duff. 9 Clues may faux that you simply get to be against the law scene investigator, however they make us really feel like we’re as intelligent as a bottle of luminol. 

Nicely, the excellent news is that the CSI stuff has been given a slight glow-up. The dangerous information is that Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily is as painfully generic as what got here earlier than. 

In Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily, you play a non-public investigator getting a spot of R&R at a winter retreat. But when Artifex Mundi have taught us something, it’s that anybody who’s off-duty can count on to be shortly caught up in all kinds of shenanigans. So, you’re pootling alongside on a rustic highway within the snow, when a police automotive hurtles previous. However there’s a mysterious determine within the highway sporting snow goggles, and each you and the police automotive swerve to park in a close-by ditch. We are able to reveal that, if the police automotive had run over the spooky dude, this might have been a a lot shorter sport. 

Because the unnamed non-public investigator, you observe the footprints of the policeman and the thriller man, solely to search out that the poor policeman has been encased in ice. Your suspect both has some magical ice superpowers, or carries a weapon that may kill with a single icy contact. The homicide scene is within the grounds of a mansion which – somewhat inexplicably – has its personal police station, journalist’s workplace and others, making it a form of campus. Logic isn’t Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily robust level. 

There are many suspicious professionals within the mansion, both fainting or twirling their moustaches, and it’s fairly clear that you simply’ve wandered right into a B-rate Agatha Christie novel. You have to discover the killer, all of the whereas figuring out that one of many 4 folks you’ve met goes to be the particular person behind the masks. However the non-public investigator trusts all of them utterly, placing herself in conditions the place she might be captured or killed with utter ease, and so she does (get captured, that’s). You’ll spot the killer effectively earlier than she does, and also you may think about a profession as a non-public investigator in consequence. 

It makes for a reasonably painful story expertise. A homicide thriller is barely enjoyable if the thriller is considerably tough to unravel, and if you happen to respect the skills of the Miss Marple or Poirot fixing it. Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily additionally manages to confuse and convolute a reasonably easy plot. There’s extra backhistory and double-crossing than is required, and the plot began to sound like noise in our ears. 

Fortunately, the puzzling involves Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily’s rescue. It’s all exceptionally straightforward, even in hidden object phrases, and the achievements have been sandpapered right down to such a level that you can see it very arduous to not end with 1000G. However there’s a easy stream by the whole lot of the sport, from the hidden object scenes that are extra sparse and simple to learn than in different titles, and graphic journey stuff that not often offers you various rooms to play in. Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily likes to empty your stock periodically so that you don’t get too confused. It’s essentially the most simplified and fundamental of all hidden object video games, and that doesn’t must be a nasty factor. 

However the crime-scene investigation remains to be there, hanging over from 9 Clues. It begins in the identical approach: you enter a room that’s clearly been the scene of a nefarious occasion. Your first process is to focus on the entire proof of a scuffle. Even with out the assistance that the sport offers you, this might be mind-numbingly straightforward: you’re clicking on overturned chairs, torn curtains, spilled information and the rest that appears messy. However Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily involves your help, like a sidekick arriving after a struggle has occurred, hinting the place every aspect is. It’s all somewhat snore-inducing. 

What occurs subsequent has been improved, and it will get a thumbs up from over right here. The sequence of proof is introduced in a row, and it’s right down to you to place them in chronological order. Within the different 9 Clues video games, this might have been benign and repeated, as a result of every bit of proof has the identical ribbon-like background, and also you simply needed to line up the identical sample of ribbons. I’ve watched sufficient Cracker to know that crime-solving isn’t about tying up ribbons. In Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily there are nonetheless ribbons, however the sample of the ribbons modifications with every scene, so that you’re not counting on piecing collectively the identical jigsaw puzzle each time, which is sweet.

All the things else suits the hidden object method, with one exception. There’s no necromancer kidnapping a damsel to finish a sacred ritual. No less than Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily ignores that one surprisingly frequent trope from different hidden object video games. However the identical minigames flip up that you simply’ve performed umpteen instances earlier than, from the puzzles which can be a bundle of knots that should be untied, to the map of nodes, the place it’s a must to join each node with out re-crossing a path as soon as. It’s like an Artifex Mundi Biggest Hits playlist. 

Having performed just about each hidden object sport, we’ve constructed up an imagined league desk of them. In that regard, Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily could be mid-table, sometimes threatening to drop right into a relegation battle. Whereas Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily will get factors for its absence of sticking factors, and its dedication to enhance the deduction sequences, it retains lacking out due to its creaky storytelling and pervasive blandness that felt like we have been being force-fed dry toast. 

If Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily is the beginning of a brand new Artifex Mundi franchise, we’d like to stay a tentative hand up and ask that we really feel extra like a detective subsequent time. 

You should purchase Crime Secrets and techniques: Crimson Lily from the Xbox Retailer