The Mystery of Blackthorn Castle is an adventure puzzle game that self explains itself in the title. The game creators, Syntaxity, have made other similar games with the same playstyle, and I may review another game of theirs in the future.
The premise of the game is to explore the Blackthorn Castle, and discover the mysteries that lie within. To progress through each portion of the map, there are arrows to guide the player, with lots of items and objects to interact with. When interacting, some items will be added straight into the inventory, while others are simple levers or switches that activate other sections of the map.
As the story progresses, so does the complexity of the game. While clues are scattered throughout the game and a plethora of them do not make sense until it is needed, the game rarely puzzles the player with red herrings. There are a lot (and I do mean a lot) of things to interact with, so the puzzles can have mini-puzzles within them to create a larger challenge for some players.
Much of this game is hard to go into detail, solely because of the amount of spoilers to puzzles that occur, but overall the game is great to pick up and play very quickly. There are no Ads to worry about, just a lot of backtracking, which feels like it would be easier to just watch an Ad to get past a section. Things can be a little bit linear, but the linear pattern only follows to a certain degree because of “colored” path that usually pushes the player along until it is “completed”.
IMO: Indeed a wonderful adventure puzzle. Mystery of Blackthorn Castle does have an ending to it, so it is very much complete-able. Personally, I enjoyed playing it and would love to play their other games in the future. If you are into a small bit of logic/complexity in puzzling, I would encourage you to get Mystery of Blackthorn Castle as a refreshing completable puzzle to go along with the other games you play. Although, it can be a little bit tough if you are away from it too long, as the puzzles can be a bit vexing if you forget where you left off.
