I really wanted to like Escape from Crimson Manor (EfCM). Puzzle games are better with friends, and I'm a great fan of games whose focus is on communication and teamwork more so than execution or twitch reflexes. Having enjoyed games like the We Were Here series and Escape Simulator, I was looking forward to another game of this genre. Unfortunately, more often than I had fun, EfCM left me frustrated or bored.
This review is from the perspective of the second player, as that was my perspective during our playthrough.
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[b] Puzzle Quality[/b]
Most puzzles were simply not engaging because player communication was under utilized. A lot of 'find a word or number your partner can enter somewhere.' A couple of times the code we had to enter used symbols which we had to describe, which was kind of fun. The most memorable puzzle had my partner navigating a maze that I could see from above -- I had to give them directions. There were significantly more guess-and-check puzzles than were interesting.
The boiler room puzzle has you flipping levers on a boiler to stop it from shooting steam. Your partner finds the rules -- pushing levers up adds pressure, pushing them down releases it, if you go above 750 pressure or below 0 the puzzle resets. The four levers aren't labeled, and once you push them in either direction you can't return them to neutral; you have to wait until the puzzle resets, so learning their values takes time. The whole puzzle is 'can [a single player] sum four numbers to 750?' with a layer of guess-and-check added so you don't solve it immediately. So what's the point? Most puzzles in the game end up like this; you find some single piece of information which is enough for your partner to do something on their own. There is little to work out or 'solve,' and you rarely have to go back and forth.
The boiler room could’ve been set up more like 'Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.' The boiler has some state (pressure on a dial, temperature of certain pipes, lever state, maybe a colored light) which you tell your partner, and they have to go through a book of rules to find the most fitting next step. You go through this a couple times until the boiler is in the right state. Instead, your partner gets to wait while you work it out.
[b] Downtime / Waiting [/b]
One of the biggest problems games like this have to contend with is: how do you minimize downtime? Well, one solution is that players can work together; you can design puzzles that require both players to communicate. But when your puzzles require only one person to be solving them, what does the other player do? Worse yet, what happens when the players get stuck -- when you're not looking at a puzzle and don't know where to find one? During our playthrough, we got stuck several times -- once for almost an hour. It was not obvious to either of us where the puzzle was that we were missing, meaning we both had to run around searching every room to find it. Was it stubborn of us to not look for a guide? Maybe, but the game could've done a better job of communicating where to make progress.
From what I remember of the We Were Here series, they solve this issue by keeping puzzles confined. You and your partner would each be trapped in a smallish room where there was usually a single, over-arching puzzle that you worked on together. The first room of EfCM ch. 1 kind of worked this way -- my partner and I worked together to get a code that unlocked my cell door (though again, the puzzle is shallow). In the We Were Here series, this door would lock behind you or something and you would each move to the next section. In EfCM that room is still enterable, and more importantly, still necessary for future puzzles. This means that exploring all that you have access to in EfCM takes significant time, and it is not as immediately obvious which player controls the next stage of the escape, nor as easy to visually distinguish necessary puzzle elements from background noise. This has the benefit of rewarding exploration and engagement with the world, but it comes at your partner's expense. What does my partner do while I back track? This issue is compounded by the sheer amount of visual clutter.
[b] Visual Clutter [/b]
Towards the beginning of Act 1 you work together to solve a puzzle using tickets you find inside the drawers of a trunk. Instantly the lesson is instilled: search everything; there may be hidden information to find. Well, after solving the boiler room puzzle you enter a small room containing another trunk. Opening it, you find about ten drawers. The hitbox for each drawer is... not great, and if you're like me, you tend to search containers top-to-bottom, left-to-right, meaning you will have to close the upper drawers in order to get line of sight to the lower ones. There is absolutely nothing inside this trunk save for a pair of shoes with spats. There was no need for this container to be in this room, nor for it to be unlocked and interactable, nor for it to have so many drawers. Fair enough, well, later on in the same room you receive a lens which the game hints can reveal hidden information. Suddenly the trunk in the room made sense -- it looks pointless at first but will show... something. So of course I re-opened every drawer and looked at them with the lens. Absolutely nothing. The trunk is a complete red herring.
This is just the start of SO MANY empty compartments. The stove in the kitchen has about ten. The island has 4-5 on each side. The pantry has several, as do all the other bits of furniture. And that's just in the kitchen. So many dressers, desks, highboys, closets, cabinets, vanities, boxes, etc. which only rarely contain anything interactable. Rarely you'll get lore or an Easter egg. Sometimes you'll find items that are interactable, but serve no purpose (things like: a cake recipe, a compass, etc.). Sometimes a magnifying glass icon will appear for an object that isn’t actually interactable. I truly cannot stress how much time I spent opening drawers, because I was taught that drawers sometimes contain necessary items.
[b] Minor Nitpicks [/b]
Every time you boot up the sound resets to max volume so it always opens loud. You can adjust the volume output of your own voice, but not your partner's, so manual sound balancing is its own communication game. The settings menu says 'quit' instead of 'close' which made me think I was about to quit the whole game. Some sounds are loudly audible through the walls, meaning you will hear your partner's actions as though they were directly in your ear, while other times puzzle feedback will be so quiet that it is unclear what is being communicated. There is a detailed UI explaining how you may interact with objects, except when there isn't -- in ch. 3 there is a pocket watch that does not have 'rotate' indicators, despite other puzzles having them. Objects occasionally clipped out of existence as I rotated the camera. A lot of visual clipping. The walkie-talkie isn't actually a walkie-talkie; you and your partner can speak at the same time, but you can't disable push-to-talk. For some puzzles your push-to-talk button interacts with the puzzle. Why is my character following the established rules when I’m here against my will? Why can’t I be more destructive?
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I cannot stress enough, I really want to like this game; this review is borne out of love for the genre, not for hate for this game specifically. If the more minor issues of this game are fixed, and the puzzles improved somewhat, I will be gleefully recommending this game.
