Nothing ventured…

Sur­prise is a rare feel­ing for me to get from most games nowa­days, but The Lost Crown is a rare breed of game—the kind that draws you in slowly, peel­ing away each rich layer of story, slow and method­i­cal.  You are Nigel Dan­vers, trea­sure hunter and para­nor­mal inves­ti­ga­tor, sent to seek your fortune—the ancient Anglo-Saxon crown—like many before you.  Atmos­pheric and steeped in mys­tery, the quaint Eng­lish sea­side town of Sax­ton and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side awaits your adventure…

Although “a ghost-hunting adven­ture” is indeed an appro­pri­ate sub­ti­tle for this game, I believe it’s also the thing that orig­i­nally turned me off, and the rea­son why I have not played this game until now.  I finally decided to give it a go after see­ing it so highly rec­om­mended here and here.  I remem­ber a few years back, see­ing The Lost Crown on the store shelves, and quickly dis­miss­ing it as some kind of cliche hor­ror title with vague, sim­plis­tic goals of cap­tur­ing proof of the after­life.  And while it’s true that you will spend a good por­tion of your play­time doing exactly that, The Lost Crown offers much, much more.

For starters, the game fea­tures a large cast of extremely well-developed characters—both liv­ing and dead—all with dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, back­grounds, & (often tragic) his­to­ries.  The quirky towns­peo­ple of Sax­ton are gen­er­ally a sim­ple and kind­hearted folk, but the small town’s more sin­is­ter res­i­dents (and past res­i­dents) are the kind you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, or say, in an ancient grave­yard in the mid­dle of the night! Every sin­gle line of dia­log in this game is superbly voice acted.  The sound­track is richly lay­ered with Celtic music, ghostly voices, nature sounds, and a cacoph­ony of eerie effects.  It never felt repet­i­tive or unin­ter­est­ing, and each loca­tion seemed to have its own audi­tory iden­tity.  The starkly-contrasted black and white visu­als are also highly effec­tive in cre­at­ing the over­all mood.  Every scene fea­tures one small burst of color—such as the bright red of the phone booth, or the pale pink hues of the flowers—similar to those old hand-dyed pho­tographs.  But whether its min­i­mal­ist approach to graph­ics was a bold styl­is­tic choice, or a result of bud­getary restraints, The Lost Crown’s unique style oozes charm.

And I haven’t even men­tioned how good the story is yet!  Sax­ton can best be described as a mys­tery wrapped in an enigma.  As its super­sti­tious res­i­dents might say, “Not all is as it seems.”  Your adven­ture into the spirit world will uncover many grisly, ter­ri­ble secrets, but it will also help some of the poor souls who are still lost and wan­der­ing.  The Lost Crown is equal parts scary and sen­ti­men­tal, and this, I feel, is one of its strong points.  There are plenty of scares, but plenty of ten­der moments too.  The game is also sur­pris­ingly long, but I say that to its credit.  There are far too many adven­ture games out there that are big on gim­micks and short on game­play (cough, Still Life, cough).  The Lost Crown takes its time to tell its many related sto­ries, and wraps them all up in an ele­gant pack­age.  The game also boasts a good vari­ety of cre­ative puz­zles, and although chal­leng­ing, not once did I ever feel frus­trated by them.

The Lost Crown is not flaw­less, how­ever.  There were a few (minor) annoyances:

• Inabil­ity to skip through dia­log quickly
• Too wide of a range on click­able “hot spots”, which can be cause for confusion
• Nigel walks very slooooooooooowly…
• Cum­ber­some inven­tory; you will walk around car­ry­ing 20+ things at any given time

But these things are all for­giv­able, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the small size of the devel­op­ment team, led by the insanely tal­ented game designer, Jonathan Boakes.  I loved this game so much that, before even fin­ish­ing it, I felt com­pelled to buy the Lim­ited “Pins & Nee­dles” Edi­tion of Dark Fall, Jonathan’s pre­vi­ous series of games.  Each edi­tion is hand num­bered & signed by the designer himself—I can’t wait to get my mits on this one!  And as for The Lost Crown, well…I will never judge another game by its cover again!