Customer Reviews

Mystery Case Files: Dire Grove [Download]

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Best Hidden Object/Mystery/Puzzle game played so far. Well worth the price of admission! Not everyone that plays these games is twelve years old, this is a great game for anyone of any age that enjoys whiling the hours away, challenging the mind. Let's hope more developers take note. Obviously only a special few can make a "Myst" series or "Siberia" series. This game helped take up some of the slack.

This is a very well developed game. The graphics were great and the 'seek and find' items were not just random, they moved the story line forward. I had a great time playing this game and would purchase more like it. I don't mind paying more if the game is interesting and fun. Many of the other hidden objects games are becoming boring and repetative.

This game is more than a hidden object game.. It is scary and has that eerie feel to it. I love it!! You should definetely buy this game!!

We were on vacation and thinking of new non-board game to play. Somehow landed on Dire Grove and it's been a ride ever since. My girls (8 & 9) always want to play the game now because we did not finish yet. We play as much as we can, hour here, hour there, and the rule is that we must all be together. It's very well done (graphics, music, & logic) and the mind is always going. You can easily see that the developers and artists put some quality time into this bugger. We all freak out here and there to do this, do that, go here and I'm pretty happy doing this with my kids. Not scary at all for my kids and they know it's all fake but love the thrill. Get's them all pumped up when they figure out something. What am I saying, It gets me all pumped up too. Try the free game and strap in for an hour or so. Once we finished the demo, I had my cc out in 1.5 seconds looking for more, more, more. Don't try to find answers on other sites, just walk the walk and eventually you start getting it and building momentum. I'm not a gamer freak and this really is the first time I tried this type of digital game - so you can be rookies like us & dig it just like us. I'm already looking for the next one to grab. Happy gathering. MOOOOOOAAAAAAHHHH!

This is probably the best hidden object/puzzle game I have played to date and sincerely hope that game developers will take notice of the rave reviews it is getting and give us more games like this one. If you enjoy this type of game, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. In a game of this quality I prefer to take the time and patience to play without a walkthrough, but if you want to hurry through it and simply enjoy the story and the gorgeous graphics, there's a complete walkthrough at Bigfish Games. The game downloaded perfectly from Amazon, and I played it on a laptop running Windows 7. The only downside is that I haven't been able to find another game that measures up!!

I just stayed up all night finishing this game (and at my age that is saying something). I made a big mistake downloading it late in the evening and then deciding to "just see what it's like".

Well what it's like is a very strange conglomeration of Highlights for Children, a teen puzzle book and "The Blair Witch Project" toned down to a tolerable level. There are your basic object seek sections that are extremely simple. Then there are some harder puzzles that while not exactly obvious are couched in some pretty intense scenes. The collection and use of objects is not so obvious which was one of the best parts of the game. The last part is the collecting of the BWP-like video tapes and while some commentators here stated that you don't have to watch them in order to complete the game, they do contain some key information.

Prepare to do a lot of back-tracking and make sure you check the whole screen with your cursor as some areas are not at all obvious. The graphics are beautiful, the music suitably creepy and the overall effect is immersive and well-done. With all the walking around took me about eight hours to complete and clearly it was gripping enough to keep me up all night. For the seven bucks, I felt like I got my money's worth.

So if you want a beautifully rendered, medium-level puzzle experience with a mildly horror-oriented motif that won't occupy your every waking moment for the next two weeks, this is the game for you.

Maybe hyperbolic, but I really feel this is the best game I've played so far.

It's a hidden object game where finding objects and gathering an inventory is a lesser aspect of the game. More interesting and challenging is what you have to do with the inventory you collect. There are several locations to explore and you have to go back a few times to most of them. You really need to think what inventory object to use and how to use it when you encounter a situation or problem in a location, and inventory picked up much earlier in the game may not come into play until well into the game.

The inventory objects are not just located in the hidden scenes, but in some of the locations; for example, all the VHS tapes are outside the HO scenes. I admit to checking a blog walk through after playing for a length of time just to make sure I had found everything and performed all the tasks.

The mini games are also top notch and include a maze-like alphabet game that I thought was especially clever.

The storyline involves four grad students searching for the truth about a Celtic legend in the town of Dire Grove. As others have mentioned, you collect about 18 VHS tapes that tell the story in snippets of what has happened to the students. I didn't find the short films as scary as four scenes involving each student that occur within the game itself. But no spoilers on that! The whole game takes place in a snowy environment that I found particularly immersive for some reason.

My only regret is that I didn't know there was a deluxe version of this game before I got the standard version. Although I usually have no desire to replay a game that I know the conclusion of, I have to say I would consider buying the deluxe game after some time passes. That's how much I liked this game.

One last thing. There is a text "guide" that comments on your actions in the game. There are three modes, one of them being "sarcastic". I set it to that, but had to change it because it was so insulting!

What a refreshing game, so different from anything else I've played. It is a little creepy at first, but then I realized that you don't have to watch the video tapes you collect that have actual people acting out the parts. The rest is animated and more "non-reality" and not so creepy. I will admit that I had to find a walkthrough online, but after I'd find out what to do next, it made sense and I should have gotten it ! It was hard to stop, you just want to see what happened next, hope more games come out like this one.

This game is extremely well put together. I loved roaming through different settings inside and outside. Objects found in one site are used in other sites. It keeps you totally involved. Sound effects are outstanding. You feel like you are interacting in a movie. It is obvious a lot of time and effort went into making this game.
Will be looking for more like this.

I have been playing a lot of these types of games lately, but after playing "Dire Grove", there is nothing that I can find that can compare ! Is there any other games out there this good ? If so, I would like to find one ! This was the most real,involved game of it's type ! The hidden items certainly did not over whelm this game ! It was all about the story, and so many creapy surprises. I LOVED every moment of it ! More.. More.....