The Institute – A Becky Brogan Adventure is the second installment of this game that came out to the market. In the first part of the game The Mystery of the Meane Manor Becky was still in high school when she was investigating this case and all the sinister secrets lying behind it. Now Becky is a college student and studies investigative journalism and criminal science. In The Institute you have found out about a missing person case, with a doctor and a nurse missing, but which were quite odd and didn’t think straight. The institute was full of patients that were probably one of the worst ones in their category and finding a cure was practically impossible. The extravagant doctor was using methods almost inhuman, and the nurse that was helping him was considered a reincarnation of the devil himself. These facts were enough for any player to get interested in this kind of story and to be drawn by its seemingly very attractive horror story. But as this is a case that happened long time ago, you are left only partial pieces of that event in the Institute and it is up to you to find all the pieces and put them together to put some light on that mysterious case. Everything you discover about the case will only drive you into a more horrific and more mysterious story revealing the truth to what really happened in that place. As the search starts you will notice multiple levels of different searched found by different patterns. There are the standard, laundry list sort, spot the difference sequences that are cleverly laid out as the patients' ink blots, and levels where you have to find all of the items that are "wrong." The ink blots are divided down the middle, so finding what's different from one side to the next is not only a question of spotting something obviously out of place, but even items that simply aren't the mirrored versions of each other. As for the ‘wrong’ items to find, it’s not that innovative, but it is intriguing because of the items you are searching for. This approach works on the principle that you search for items that just aren’t everyday items you can find anywhere, for example finding a pencil which is not a pencil because it has two rubber peaks or some other item which just doesn’t belong on that place. The Institute is a pure hidden object game with rare puzzles between the HOG scenes. There is however a couple of puzzles that appear now and then, the jigsaw puzzle. Even if this puzzle has become often used by this HOG manufactures and by other ones too, the game developer gave it a nice twist so you don’t feel any boredom while playing it. You’ll be assembling pictures that are given to you in the right way, but those who want a real challenge there is the option of matching jigsaw without looking at the picture. Because of the games couple of layers of searching you will be caught in the situation when you simply can’t find items you are searching for, whether it is too small or just kind find, you will have to resort to using hints. The hint system here is ordinary, and in the same it is not. You can use the hints through rechargeable system, waiting it to recover or using the ‘bears’ you have found in different levels. Besides the standard HOG search which is not a great challenge, finding bears is. There is a bear hidden in every level in different forms and sizes and finding it is a challenge for itself. After you have used your recharging hint, you can use your bear for an immediate hint, not to wait for it to be recharged. You can try the old-fashioned way, whether it is pixel hunting, or just clicking around the screen like a maniac, because the game doesn’t give penalty for too much clicking. As for the graphics of the game, nothing that needs plenty of describing, as it is standard HOG production, however the music of the game has its ups and downs. What I really got fond of is that during the loading screen the developers inserted the sound of a beating heart, trying to increase the player’s tension while waiting the game to start. The rest of the music is something that you have heard in other spooky games, or somewhere where the horrors are the main theme. As for the story, as said on the beginning the twist will get you very interested, but unfortunately the rest of the games story doesn’t do as well. The plot of the game will start revealing somewhere in the middle of the game, hiding the truth until the very end, but if only the story had a bit more life in it, it could give the game a boost that it needed.
