Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came is a casual hidden object game themed as a detective investigating strange happenings in a city. The story has a bit of Alan Wake in it mixed with a random Netflix style show with elves and portals to fantasy worlds. BtI:DC features three modes; the typical beginner, intermediate, and advanced modes. These modes control how quickly the player can get a hint or completely skip a puzzle. The only control for the game is the mouse, it is all point and click.
BtI:DC appears to be set in about 1980, the vehicles and other objects point to that era. The location looks like a European style town, but the vehicles and a few characters, like the sheriff, don’t fit in that theme. The artwork is a bit rough, ranging from photorealistic to hand drawn; some scenes have obviously photoshopped images cropped in. There is quite a bit of voice-over work and the voices all sound American, but they were reading a script that obviously didn’t make sense to some of them as some of the subtitles don’t match what is actually said. Most of what is said sounds like an American speaking broken English.
As far as the puzzling goes, these are very typical: Click all over the screen to find areas of interest, find items in one area, then return and clear or open a location in another area. There are also some small logic puzzles, match pairs, and finding a list of objects in a scene. The “find a list in a scene” puzzles all give some needed item when cleared. The logic puzzles usually open or clear the way for something to reveal a needed object. Some of the logic used in the game is pretty convoluted, for example, there are multiple screw removals and sometimes a screwdriver is needed, other times a coin is used. Some items require a real stretch of the imagination to be used in this game.
This is a game for players that enjoy puzzles, even if “nobody would ever think of that” doesn’t bother the player. It doesn’t seem possible that anyone could play through the first time without ever using a hint and solve it. Some objects found will immediately become clear what to do with them, others never make any sense, even when used. Recommended on sale for players that enjoy hidden object games, otherwise skip it.
Purchase Beyond the Invisible: Darkness Came on Steam!
Jacmac is an ancient gamer that loves open world, strategy, FPS, and tactical sims, but will play almost anything.
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