Stormhill Mystery: Family Shadows

👍

really enjoyed this game - so please it does not have any HOG (hidden objects) - plenty to do and a great way to spent a couple of hours. will go back and play again because i didn't get all the morphing objects as i usually don't worry about them but will do for this game. great work developers.

I have to say, from all aspects, this is a fine game and one it seemed a lot like I would enjoy from the description. The story is Lovecraftian, which I feel like is rare for these games which even when macabre seem to be oriented around predictable ghost or haunting tropes. The art style and animations were good, and there are full-motion video sequences of high-quality animation that transition into the illustrated scenes of the game, like many hidden object games do. The sound and music were mostly fine, the puzzles though not remarkable were serviceable. Perhaps a little infrequent for my liking, but nothing wrong on a quality level. There are collectibles in the game and a bonus adventure as well, so there is a good amount of content too. I think what bothered me the most was that the pacing and the logic of using the items felt off to me. Luckily, the difficulty I was playing on still had indicators on the map of where there was an action available next because I think without it I would have wasted a bunch of time wandering all of the scenes. The objectives weren't always clear to me story-wise, and I feel like I accumulated a lot of items in my inventory quicker than I was using them so every time I found something interactive I would have this collection of items to try on it and usually it was still something I hadn't found yet. This game had some of the nitpicks endemic to these kinds of games of having a scene where you expect to be able to use an object but can't. So those things all kind of combined for me to make progressing feel like a slog. In many of these games as I picked up items I would be able to grab something and then intuit where it should be used, and in this game I would keep picking up objects and have no idea where to go back and use them because no really obvious use came to mind. Other games will also provide some helpful keywords to try to clue you in on what you're looking for and this game also didn't seem to do a good job of that. As an example, you may find a projector and click on it and see the feedback text. Some games might say, "In order to use this projector, I need to find a FILM REEL, a LENS, and a new BULB." And you'd say, "OK, I know I need these specific parts." This game often for objects would just say something like, "I can't use this projector yet." So that is mostly my gripe with the game. It was mostly fine and this may not be the same experience that others have, so you should take my review with a grain of salt. And if you don't mind what bothered me and just want to find collectibles and solve puzzles, you can certainly just use hints and the map to skip around. I did also have one technical issue with the game, often when I started it, the game would start fullscreen but not aligned properly so the upper left corner of the game window would be visible on the desktop. I tried to change some of the video settings in the game but this didn't help. However, if I immediately quit the game and then relaunched it, that would usually fix the issue and the game would display properly fullscreen the second time.

Stormhill is a simple, focused adventure that delivers exactly what it promises. No fluff, no filler, and — bless it — no HOPs. It’s well-made, consistent, and surprisingly polished for its scope. The dev clearly knew what they wanted to create, and they nailed it. I ended up finishing the game as a genuine fan of the developer. If you want a short, solid adventure that respects your time, Stormhill is absolutely worth it.

This is not a hidden object game by most any definition. Nothing is hidden other than those annoying morphing objects that HOGs regularly include to force you to spend 5 mins staring vapidly at the screen with every change in location. There are also almost no puzzles, and the couple that are included are the annoying kind of "move things around until by random chance you stumble on the answer" puzzles. Without any HOPs or puzzles, this is essentially a PnC (pick up objects and move to a new locations to use them), but without the usual PnC engaging story or humor or really any cleverness whatsoever. Oh, and it crashes sometimes. I guess the only positive is that every time it crashed, I didn't lose any progress. I don't think I could have endured redoing any portion of this game. Definitely not recommended - even if it is on a massive sale.

This is essentially a hidden object game without the hidden object scenes, the rest of game plays as most HOGs do. It's a short game 2-3hrs, with a spooky story, the puzzles are simple but fun and the graphics are nice. It's a fun way to tune out, relax and spend a couple hours. I would recommend waiting for a sale due to the short playtime of the game.

enjoyable enough, good choice of difficulties to choose from. art of in game is good, (cut scenes bit lower quality) puzzles are OK.

Pretty fun game, shorter than others but entertaining.

I had a blast playing this. I'm glad I found it and would easily recommend it to others.

Artwork is decent, animations and atmosphere is bad. Voice acting is horrendous and should have just been left out completely, it made me laugh on serveral occasions just by how awful it was. Story is extremely mediocre but could have been a bit better if the ending wasen´t so sloppy and abrupt. Avoid, there are far better games in the genre.