Halloween Stories 8: Mystery

Truthfully, I did not love the storyline in the main game as much as the one in the bonus adventure. I was never a fan of Poe’s work. The graphics lacked clarity, and there were exclamation marks on the map when there was no available task. Do not put them in the map for an eventual objective to accomplish; use them only when tasks are available or else the player must wander about looking for tasks to complete! In addition, do not place collectible items behind icons, such as the menu button or strategy guide. How do you expect us to retrieve them? I will say that general gameplay was wonderful, with interesting tasks and innovative inventory tools. I enjoyed the HO scenes. They had quite a good variety. I cannot say the same for the mini-games, as there were too many rotational types for my taste and some were very difficult to complete due to a marked lack of touchscreen sensitivity on the gameplay interface. This game was very brief, considering that it was a holiday adventure. My final rating is 3.5 stars. Add zoom back to the HO puzzles, and put map marks only where tasks can be completed, and it would have been 4.5 stars.

Very enjoyable macabre story involving Poe. Very ambitious - please, more with this tone that keeps you off kilter. There are some places where transitions glitched and slices of the story were lost, but not terribly; just stumbles. Am sure they’ll get fixed in an update. Very happily surprised and pleased with this Halloween Story edition. Have collected them all and they all stand up to replay.

UPDATE; just a heads up that Living Legends: The Red Trace is now available in the App Store. It is difficult to find unless you are aware it is there as the search function does not work properly (and has not for some time, despite repeated attempts to get it corrected). This game reminded me of how Elephant used to be. Much more enjoyable and appropriate for Halloween but not gruesome. It involves solving a mystery related to three Poe stories and then the bonus chapter has an additional story of Death helping a lonesome soul. Not bad.