I've been revisiting the older games of this series recently; haven't played them in quite a while. Cursed House 4 is quite a pleasant surprise to rediscover. It's a very long game, 100 M3-puzzle levels in the base game, and 40 bonus levels which are extra challenging. Several extra widgets were added as compared to Cursed House 3, and most of the "toolbox" used for the series was present by this installment. Care was taken with the design of the playing tiles, so everything is now easily distinguishable.
There isn't a plethora of minigames here...just 10 or so spot the difference scenes, most of which appear early on in the game. I'm not sure why this is, because there are only 1 or 2 spot the difference minigames appearing in the entire second half of the game and a long period of just playing M3-puzzle levels without any minigames at all. The bonus M3-puzzle levels unlock gradually as you go along and it will take until nearly the end of the base game before all the bonus levels are available to play. Despite the dreaded black coins not having been invented yet at this point of the series, the bonus levels are quite difficult and will require thinking in advance to solve, unless maybe you want to spend 10 or more minutes wrangling with a level.
The base game is pretty easy in most levels for Cursed House, as the puzzles hadn't gotten to the level of complexity the most modern Cursed House games (CH13 and CH15 come to mind as being extra hard). The powerup mechanic was changed from CH3's frustrating "make bomb tiles and then match them" to receiving powerups for larger matches. There is a morphing powerup and a moving small bomb, both of which make the game a lot more accessible. Along with the omnipresent help book in the top left corner, you now get automatic hints flashed at you in the puzzles, at least in the first few levels. While this is useful for those who aren't experienced with the Cursed House series in general, I wish the hints could have been shut off in the game options. A handful of levels are a little trickier, and there isn't a difficulty gradient, so there's no telling when a harder level is going to crop up.
The cursed house scene is unusual, as you start with a completely destroyed house, and then rebuilding a rather creepy looking domicile with your trusty Amulet. But never fear, the demons do get evicted from the house to break the curse on it eventually!
My opinion only, but I miss the red fire bugs, which I don't think made it past this installment. Or maybe they were only in a few levels of CH5 after this game. Guess the "trap and kill" objective which originally appeared in CH2 and then reworked to fit into CH4's puzzles was something many couldn't quite get the hang of, but this was a different and fun challenge for me.
