Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily

Great game, really enjoyed it :)

[u]Recommendation[/u]: [u]Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily[/u] is a simple hidden object game with easy puzzles, making it a good game for beginners to the genre. It has a complicated plot reminiscent of Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," which is a little hard to follow. [u]Critique[/u]: This game is very, very easy. Playing it on the highest difficulty level, it still felt like the easiest hidden object game I've played, and I don't think that had much to do with the fact that I've played dozens of them with the same kinds of puzzles. I would say that it would be a good game for children, except that the subject matter is very mature: you're basically playing the plot of a Coen Brothers film, with murders, double-crosses, and criminal plans gone disastrously awry. It's NOT for kids. But the puzzles could be solved by kids. As such, it was a fun diversion for a short amount of time. I played through it over the course of two days, in part because I was playing only in short stretches and in part because the game kept crashing my system, requiring a reboot. This is apparently a known problem with this game; using the Steam tools to Verify the installed files solved the issue. All the hallmarks of Artifex Mundi games are present here: the horrible deepfake animation, the broken language (a pair of pliers are listed repeatedly as "PILERS"), the same kinds of puzzles, and big Artifex Mundi tropes like using a coin as a screwdriver. At this point, to me, these concepts feel like old friends rather than tired cliches. I had some difficulty keeping all the characters straight; in particular, two of the models (John and David) look similar enough that I got them confused, and the complicated plot didn't help. You should play the game yourself and see if you can keep the story straight. [u]Summary[/u]: That said, I'm going to follow my tradition and attempt to summarize what happens in the game. You play the part of a city detective who is taking vacation in a remote alpine resort in the snowy season. [spoiler]Just before you can arrive, however, you are run off the road by the local Sheriff, Hoyt, who is in such a hurry that you both crash. Rather than check on you, Hoyt runs up to the resort. You follow after him and find that he has been flash frozen to death by a mysterious masked figure who runs off as you approach. You convince a young man in the resort, David, to come out and guard the body while you find a landline inside to report the murder. Inside the lobby, you meet Susan and John. On hearing that Hoyt has been murdered, Susan faints. After calling the cops, you decide to investigate a little yourself. You find that Hoyt had a room at the resort; inside there is evidence that he had a lot of cash hidden inside. But someone has ransacked the room, except for the safe. You manage to open the safe, and the masked intruder returns, threatening you at gunpoint. You disarm the intruder, but he leaps out the window. Now it's personal: you want to stop the murderer even more because he's threatened you. As you use snowmobiles to get around during your investigation into the resort, you discover that Hoyt was not the first person killed here. A reporter, Kitty, has been killed, as well as the owner of the resort, Susan's husband. Kitty was investigating a crime ring that was counterfeiting money. This ring was composed of Susan, Susan's husband, Sheriff Hoyt, John Weekly (editor of the newspaper), AND David - they were all in on it! Kitty got too close to the truth, so David killed her (John would have done it, except he was in love with her). Susan's husband tried to cut the others out, and he was killed. Hoyt came to take charge of the situation, and John used his secret flash-freeze chemical mixture to freeze him to death. As you unravel all the threads of this cabal, you are repeatedly stopped by John's use of the flash-freeze liquid, which is dispensed in little breakable vials. Susan is frozen to death, then David, but you are able to fight off John and then, after creating an "antidote," you are able to spare his life and put a stop to his insane plan to freeze the water supply of the whole region. [/spoiler]