‘Faircroft’s Antiques: The Forbidden Crypt CE’ Review (Nintendo Switch)
Faircroft’s Antiques: The Forbidden Crypt – Collectors Edition is the latest point and click, hidden-object adventure/puzzle game from developer BoomZap and publisher Ocean Media, following both Faircroft’s Antiques: Home For Christmas and Faircroft’s Antiques: The Heir of Glen Kinnoch – taking the gameplay aspects of both previous games and updating both the graphics AND control system for this latest in the franchise.
The game sees you continue the adventures of Mia Faircroft as she packs her bags for the seaside town of Porto Nacosti, Italy, after an old friend requests Mia’s help restoring an old cathedral, Mia soon finds trouble in paradise – a crypt below the church holds a long-lost secret that a powerful family is desperate to keep. Which, on paper, is an intruiging story but – unfortunately – isn’t as compelling as the one in the recently reviewed Ghost: Elisa Cameron. Though to be fair the latter game had an entire comic series to pull its story from!
The gameplay in the Faircroft’s Antiques titles are essentially the same. You’re presented with a scene and you have to navigate your way around, locating objects and solving puzzles, typically by finding items and using those items to unlock other items and/or areas. You can also, like typical RPGs, combine items in your inventory.Here the franchise expands on the mere hidden objects gameplay of similar games, adding more puzzles to the mix – sliding tiles around an image to complete it, flipping cards over to match pairs. You know, the typical, more simple, “puzzle game” mechanics. But mechanics that compliment the point and click hidden-object aspects of this game so, so well.
Of course Switch’s touchscreen is built for games such as these. Yet I’ve always though that the screen size of the Switch hinders your discovery of items. Though in terms of graphics it’s VERY hard to not do these types of static hidden object badly; and to be fair to this release, it looks even better than before, with pin-sharp detail throughout. In fact so pin sharp that this game cleverly uses the higher resolution afforded it to better hide objects!
Oftentimes when playing these Ocean Media distributed titles, I find myself either squinting at the screen or using the “show objects” hint waaaay too many times – again due to the Switch’s smaller screen size and my fading eyesight (I’m getting old folks!). Not really but the items in this game are so well hidden that you need 20/20 vision to see the things! Now I ‘s typically stick with using the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode for these games sue to the control system – it took a LONG time for me to get used to the controller settings in docked mode… However just when I got used to using only one joycon or one half of a controller, they’ve only gone a REALLY improved the control system!
Out is the use of just the right stick to move the cursor and ZR button as a mouse click and in comes cleaner, more accessible, controls that feel more natural to play. Now you can use BOTH sticks to control the cursor and the A button is the “mouse click” now. Plus, as our upcoming review of Ocean Media’s other January release, I Love Finding Cats will atest, there’s now much more to do with the extra buttons available on modern controllers!
I’m a sucker for the hidden-object puzzles that proliferate the Faircroft’s Antiques franchise, and there’s plenty of those here. More than in previosu titles – this is easily the biggest game in the series yet, with more than 30 new levels and 5 extra chapters in this “Collectors Edition” release. Ultimately though, Faircroft’s Antiques: The Forbidden Crypt is still, like games of its ilk, a relaxing gaming for all ages. Being able to sit and merely press the screen to solve these puzzles is a lot of fun. Once again you get a myriad of puzzles, mini games and quests that are easy to jump into which will, if you like this kind of thing, tick all the right boxes. I know these point-and-click puzzlers aren’t for everyone, but they have their audience. Plus with plenty of new and fresh gameplay mechanics to set it apart from the various similar games out there AND move the franchise forward, it’s still familiar enough to appeal to fans who want more of the same.
Faircroft’s Antiques: The Forbidden Crypt – Collectors Edition is available on the Nintendo eShop now from Ocean Media.
