Customer Reviews

Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor [Download]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first in the Mortimer Beckett series, this hidden object game has Mortimer, a delightfully bespectacled young man, searching through his family's creepy old house, looking for pieces of the ghost machine. Along the way he encounters a variety of amusing spirits. Gameplay consists of finding the pieces of hidden objects (which have been broken up) until one has a complete object that then must be either put back in its place, or used to complete a task. Artwork on this game is fantastic, and finding pieces of objects, rather than the objects themselves, adds to the challenge, and makes the game a bit more unusual. My one complaint is the length of the game, which is rather short- I finished in less than two hours.

I didn't get my copy of the game from Amazon as a download; I bought the hard copy from a local store. I'm assuming it's the same, but I can't swear to it.

I really enjoyed this game for a lot of reasons:

1) The graphics are very detailed and enjoyable to look at it. You can tell the creators spent a lot of time on this area of the game.

2) The music is also really good and effectively spooky! Some games play the same tune over and over, which grates, but in this game each level had a different tune. I actually looked forward to see what music would play next.

3) The puzzles are honestly challenging. There is a limited number of "Hints" you can get for each level, and I thought at the beginning, "Pshaw, I'm not going to need the hints!" I was so wrong. Even though I pride myself on being observant, I still had to ask for a hint more than once in the game. Being an adult, I don't know how a young child could complete this easily, so I would say this game is more for older children.

4) The story is well-written and the different puzzles fit well into it. I liked that some of the items you find have to perform "actions" and you use them to unlock further pieces.

My only complaint about this game is that it is so short. I completed it in about 2 - 3 hours, and I was sad to see it end. The shortness of the game is the only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5. For a lazy weekend afternoon, though, it was great entertainment!

Very fun game, but I beat it in about 2 hours. It would make a good "starter" hidden object game, or a good game for kids. It's not quite challenging enough for those with more experience with these types of games. But it's still fun, though, and a way to pass a couple of hours. The second Mortimer Beckett game is longer and more challenging (I played it first).

In my opinion this is a very fun game. I finished the whole game and played it again. I bought the sequel Mortimer Beckett: Time Paradox. Have not finished but am enjoying it also.

I love this kind of game. While it is not very long and only takes a few hours to complete, it is very fun. My 6 year old son and I play these together, so it does take him a bit longer than 2 hours, but still could be longer. Can't wait for more Mortimer!

I'm just a casual game player, but I finished this in less than two hours. You might want to pick something else if you're looking for more time for your money.

I made the mistake of playing Time Paradox first. This game is entertaining but the series is vastly improved in the sequels. Spooky Manor is fun-ish but I would call it fairly typical for a hidden object game.

You start in the basement of a haunted house and find objects to unlock new levels of the house and eventually solve the game. Different object types either need to be put away (e.g. a found bird may need to be put into a nest in a different area) or used to interact with other objects (e.g. a found bird may eat a bowl of seed and uncover part of a key you were looking for).

If you randomly click too many times you "anger the ghosts" and a ghost flies around the room for a minute or two. Since this isn't a timed game it's really just an annoyance.

Overall I guess I'd recommend this game, but if it were a book I would say to insert the sentence "Mortimer Beckett dealt with his uncle's haunted house" at the beginning of Time Paradox. The qualitative difference is astonishing.

This game was much too short for the price I paid for it. It didn't take any time at all to go through the whole game.

There are a great deal of hidden object games out there on the market, Spooky Manor is the first in a trilogy (as of this writing) of games featuring our hero Mortimer Beckett. It's a very simple I-Spy sort of game with a hint button, a few puzzles, and a very simple map system. It isn't a bad game, but it isn't great either, and it's very short. Mortimer is on a "quest" to find out what has happened to his missing relative, which is a common theme throughout the games. In this he is left in a very messy house overrun by spooks of all sorts. I wondered while playing how anyone could have handled living in such a pigsty.

It's the method of crowding so much on screen that we're left searching high and low for the one object we need, like an advanced and digital Where's Waldo? picture. The next two games deal with this much better, and it's clear that it becomes more sophisticated but that is neither here nor there in addressing this particular and first installment in Mortimer Beckett.

The largest problem with this game is not that it is short because it is entertaining; it's that the game is exactly the same over and over again. The objects never move, so if you have a good memory you have very little to no replay value. Once you've found the piece of cup, candle, or green gem, you know where it is. This is sad, because it is a fun little time waster.

The game is worth it because it isn't terribly expensive, it prepares you for the other games (though if you've played one you've sort of played them all) and it's supporting indie developers. For innovation to the genre, replay value, and graphics being of very low quality (think stacks of clip art images) I'm downgrading this to a three. If you did enjoy the game, the other two are far better made and really entertaining with a slightly higher replay value.

I liked this game but it took about 60 minutes to go completely through the game. If you do the free trial, you pretty much have played the entire game.