Aaaaah, a vacation! I would probably kill for one especially during the holidays. Maybe travel somewhere far, visit some exotic locations or simply to find myself surrounded with family and friends in a small but pleasant place. Hannah was thinking just that when she was traveling with her fiancé to a place where only just the two of them could be together without anyone to interfere with them. But traveling on a motorcycle isn’t always the most brilliant idea for a vacation, and both of them felt the consequences of such accidence. Hannah woke up in a strange castle with little or no memory at all. At first she didn’t know it was a castle but after trying to leave the room she discovers she was being kept there and suddenly she got a very strange visit. That person, or better yet a ghost, informed her about what was happening. The ghost was Isabella and she too went through all of the things through which Hannah is now going through, and she was separated from her beloved, but Hannah has no recollection of her beloved. While Isabella tells Hannah her story they start their search through the castle so Hannah can discover what kind of place is this and why is she kept there. She will need to look for different items that will tell her the story of the castle but also about Dr. Frankenstein, of whom Isabella is warning her about. There is a dark and very frightening secret lying behind him, which can even be life threatening. The story is told in several different ways, including cut scenes and dialog between different characters. But you’ll also be able to gain extra bits of information about the evil doctor by locating several books hidden around the castle, which detail his history. The games audio is something strange, as it is there but not. You will experience some dialogues between characters where they talk normally between themselves, while on the other hand a lot of conversations will be text only based. As for the games core and the gameplay itself, I have come up with very interesting game behavior, not commonly seen in HOG games, however this isn’t a pure HOG game as it has some features of a point-and-click adventure genre. Normally you would be given a list of items you need to search for, and that is the mostly used system in HOG’s, but here you have been given a list of tasks you need to fulfill. These tasks differ in difficulty and the way the need to be solved. Some of them show you and tell which items you need to find and either they describe them completely or a picture is shown. On the other hand other tasks are completely opposite as they only give you the goal of the task, but the way of getting there is up to you to find it. Every object that you find in the game is used in some way, as every one of them has its purpose in the game. The game doesn’t provide a hint system, well not the one that we are used to. Through the game if you get stuck somewhere you will receive hints or directions from Isabella to what you need to do, like if you have found yourself in a room but don’t know what kind of item should you use, and then she helps you by telling you what item is the right one. This is because you will have multiple items in your inventory, mostly in the form of collections however there shouldn’t be a lot of this cases, only a few for that matter when you could really need some help. The place that you are located in is full of different and large rooms (we are talking about a castle) and the searching for items can spread far across several rooms. Items that are located in one room are not accessible to the player at the beginning, well not all of them, as you will be doing some backtracking in the game and returning to the places you have already visited. You’ll be looking for different items from the last time you did, and there will be quite a number of scenes. This would normally lead to player’s frustration, because knowing myself, backtracking and looking all over the castle for one single item, is one of those most despicable things to do. A solution to this problem was easy for the developers, because when your cursor lands on the edge of the screen, an arrow will appear telling you exactly where it leads. And it’s a good thing that the navigation is so quick and easy for the reason mentioned above. A really interesting feature of Escape from Frankenstein's Castle is the ghost, Isabella, and her memory ability. Certain rooms in the castle are familiar to her and will trigger a quick 3D refocus, replacing current items with what she remembers from the past. This one is a knockout as most of the game is done in 2D graphics, very solid one, but the scenes in 3D are just stunning. The general ides of this feature is to help you with the items you need to find in the game, which are currently missing. All in all the game has a few flaw, that is out of the question, but the other advantages of the game that can lead you through the game literally and still have a couple of hours of gameplay should be enough for any HOG or adventure game fan. Demo is there, try it.
