Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is a point-and-click adventure with a mix of puzzle and hidden object mechanics. Oh, and it has Mahjong.
The game’s story follows a mother’s quest to get her daughter back, who was kidnapped by a ghost pirate and taken aboard a haunted pirate ship. The story doesn’t sound too exciting, but the gameplay can make up for its fault. Being a point-and-click game, you’re tasked with moving about the various environments searching for anything that could potentially progress the game’s story.
Oftentimes, you’ll run into a hidden object minigame (where a series of objects need to be found amidst a crows of random objects), which net you an item upon completion. Each of the game’s items serves some kind of purpose, usually in one of the various puzzles scattered throughout the game, which makes these minigames essential if you want to make any progress in the game.
Usually I avoid games from the point-and-click genre, but I actually enjoyed myself whilst playing this one. Perhaps I suddenly like point-and-click games because of my experience in Broken Age (awesome game, by the way), who knows? The game is good and plays a lot differently than what I’m used to in the genre, far different from recent titles (Gomo, Violett, Broken Age). The game’s art is also top-notch. Fantastic artwork, one of the game’s strong points (like it already doesn’t have enough).
I highly recommend the game. It is very fun and I look forward to future titles from Artifex Mundi!
cublikefoot 