When I was a kid, I constantly played games like these, point and click, hidden object games. Just endlessly. That was Alawar’s specialty, and I was always playing games published by them. Sacra Terra was both my first and my favorite game in this subgenre. After this game, I just played everything I could get my hands on, the Drawn series, the House of 1000 Doors series, various lesser known titles like Children of Silence, Tormentum, and many others whose names I can’t remember. This company was really a game factory of this genre. Some of them were questionable in quality, while others were absolute masterpieces like Sacra Terra.
Seriously, this sounds ridiculous, but as a kid I would even play it in marathon sessions. After finishing it, I would simply start a new playthrough.
It’s honestly amazing how a game with such simple gameplay can have so much soul. It has an incredible gothic, creepy, and slightly surreal atmosphere, excellent hand drawn backgrounds, fantastic art direction, and simply wonderful music. Seriously, this is a very strong project purely because of its presentation. It feels like an interactive painting.
But of course, it has its downsides too. The gameplay is very straightforward and easy to understand, which is pretty much the gold standard for the genre. What annoyed me both as a kid and now, though, are the hidden object sections themselves. These are the moments where the game stops you and forces you to search for objects hidden in a scene.
Again, I have to emphasize that the scenes themselves are absolutely gorgeous. Gothic, moody, and atmospheric, exactly what you would want. But these sections interrupt your progress, especially when you have one of those eureka moments where you know exactly where to go and what to do, only to walk into one of these sections and have to stop and find some random object. Maybe it would have been better if you could skip them, or if they contained fewer objects. I understand that this is a common and natural element of games like this, but I feel that if this game had simply been a pure point and click adventure, it would have been almost perfect.
Sacra Terra is simply a wonderful game. Of course, like the entire subgenre, it is on the more meditative and slower side of gameplay. But if you are a fan of the genre, or you are interested in gothic settings and relaxing games that do not demand too much from you, Sacra Terra: Angelic Night is the game for you.
