Puzzles, Paranoia, and Potential Death
If a mildly spooky puzzle game is what you seek, then look no further than the Strange Case series. In Strange Case 2: Asylum Escape, you play as a detective who finds himself hospitalized in an unfamiliar asylum. While the point of the game may be to escape, you are also faced with secrets and puzzles around every corner. In Strange Case you are also faced with quite a few scares if you follow the detective’s intuition.
While he attempts an escape, the detective discovers deeply disturbing secrets hiding in the asylum’s halls. Dr. Death and his orderlies will attempt to prevent the detective from escaping. Not only does the detective need to avoid doctors and manic patients, but his Ghost Vision causes him to see nightmarish visions as he tries to solve puzzles. Helpful, though it may be, his supernatural ability can leave the player with some anxiety.
Adding Some Hints for a Price
When playing puzzle games, you might find yourself stumped if you don’t play often enough. Strange Case has a simple enough solution, but it does involve watching some dreadfully lengthy ads. That is, if you don’t make a small donation to the creator. Paying for hints can be a lucrative way of funding your next project, but I found myself running into far too many dead ends to justify the cost. The alternative was time consuming, but preferably cheaper.
The game has several puzzles that require some deep thought, but the information to solve them is available. However, there are a few troublesome ones that the game doesn’t provide enough clues for you to easily figure out the solution. Luckily, the hint system does occasionally help. This same hint system does neglect to fill in some of the more frustrating details, but with time and much tapping a solution does appear.
Setting the problematic puzzles aside, the design of the game is simple yet effective. The scares are sudden and make you cautious of using the Ghost Vision too often, which makes the game feel a bit longer than the runtime should be. Seeing one of the orderlies with a ghoulish smile had me wishing I played during the daytime.
Keeping players on their toes makes Strange Case 2 a surprisingly entertaining game. Puzzle games can be monotonous, but Strange Case 2: Asylum Escape scrapes by with its scares. The actual puzzles do make the player think, but some of these require some serious out of the box thinking that doesn’t seem to be consistent.
