[u]Recommendation[/u]: A nice hidden-object game break from the Artifex Mundi games without really straying too far from that mold of gameplay.
[u]Critique[/u]: I've been playing a lot of Artifex Mundi games lately, and this was a refreshing break from a lot of the tropes that are present in a lot of those hidden object games: there wasn't a single crow in this game, there was nothing supernatural, I never had to use a coin as a screwdriver, and nobody got kidnapped. In general, though, "Entwined" has a lot of the elements that make those others so enjoyable: a pleasant mix of hidden object scenes and visual/spatial puzzles (at one point there's even a Memory/Concentration game). I had a good time with this.
That said, it is a fun game, but not a great one. There are a number of ways that this game could have been better. The game is from eight years ago (as I write this), so a lot of the graphics are clunky and awkward. In some places, there is an attempt to animate the use of objects, while in others the object would just disappear from the inventory as the picture of the current location would change in the blink of an eye. That inconsistency is really jarring as you play.
The English language voice acting is possibly worse than the Artifex Mundi games, and when the dialogue is spoken, a static image of the speaker is displayed, making the vocal performance somehow feel even more wooden. There are translation issues with the English version; it's not clear what language the game was in originally, but it feels like the English translation was done by someone whose second language was British English. This was occasionally confusing, as most of the hidden object scenes display the names of items you are to find, and those names can be wrong enough to baffle me. For example, in the US we have something called a "can opener," which is an object for opening cans of food. In British English, cans with food inside are referred to as "tins," so someone speaking British English would say a "tin opener." Neither of those is what this game uses; instead, it labels it as a "tin cutter," which is actually the name of a sort of scissor tool that machinists use, also called "tin snips." I don't mind when the objects are tough to find - there are a few puzzles in this game which I found delightfully tough to complete because one object was hidden so well - but I do mind when I'm looking for the wrong object because I was told the wrong name.
This game is pretty standard in hidden object games for having completely ridiculous puzzles that only have one solution. Why do I have to find a glass cutter to cut the window instead of smashing it? Either way, the window is destroyed. But as I wrote, that's par for the course in hidden object games. What was a little different in this game was how esoteric the specific solutions to some puzzles were. For most of the game, there's a tall, narrow glass vase containing a needed item. Every second item you acquire is something you could use to retrieve that in real life, and probably have used for similar puzzles in other adventure or hidden object games. But the first half dozen things you find that would absolutely retrieve that item from the vase in real life don't work.
One thing I've grown accustomed to while playing many other hidden object games is how the areas that have something of interest (either now or later) are usually easy to spot. Coming in to the laundry room, I know I'm going to interact with the washing machine, the chest of drawers, and the basket of laundry at some point. But "Entwined" is much more like a classic adventure game in that you have to pixel hunt a bit to find stuff to manipulate. The location images are often flat, with only one or two obvious items to interact with; you have to pass your mouse cursor slowly over everything else to make sure you haven't missed anything. I'm torn about this; on the one hand, I think it's pretty cool that you have to work a bit harder to figure out what to do - this makes particular sense in a game about a crime scene investigation looking for hidden evidence - but on the other hand, there are a lot of screens, and if you miss interacting with some small area of the screen, you can end up stuck for a long time, wandering through every location in the game with no clue what you're supposed to do.
The case files interface is an interesting mechanism and a fun idea, but it's not really well-realized here. There are seven suspects in the murder, but this isn't really a murder mystery. We see all seven suspects from the very beginning of the game, in many cases before we even know that they have any connection to the victim. After collecting the initial statements, we never return to four of them. It would have been better if the suspect list was blank, and then suspects would be added to the list when the story revealed a connection. It also would have been great if we could have asked our assistant to bring any of the suspects back for questions. As it is, each suspect only appears at a set place in the story, and you can't choose to ask them questions. It's more than just the list of suspects; there's a lot of information that gets captured in the case files, but all that information is almost never used in the game. There's only one point in the game where you have to refer to the files ([spoiler]to find a phone number[/spoiler]), and at that point you may be so used to not using the files for anything that it will take you a long time to think of looking there.
It's a fun game, it's a quick game, and it could have been better. I'm looking forward to trying some other games of theirs to see how and whether they improve over time.
