Rusty Lake: Paradise

Since this builds on the first two I will be comparing them throughout this. In these we go from the claustrophobia of being trapped in a gilded cage of a hotel, the cramped but brief trips through various homes through generations, to here, the deceptively open island where the illusion of freedom as a theme is directly integrated thusly. We're back to levels taking place over the course of multiple days in a row rather than substantially longer. And because each one has you in the same areas interacting with a recurring cast you really see just how different things look depending on certain circumstances. At the very start you don't have complete access to everywhere but you get more quite early on. This builds on some of the mysteries and we get even more answers. We're back to controlling a singular player character who in this case is actually related by blood to some of the ones you deal with. Like before he himself does not have any overt reactions and only minimal narration so we can fill in the blank. Essentially it is fair to theorize that he is feeling what we are. There is a Grecian tragedy vibe; you will see the ending coming but are powerless to do anything about it. It doesn't bring in new mechanics the way that the second one introduced the drag. It does however feature by far the most complex puzzles of these so far. If you try to brute force them you will be at it for quite a few hours; there are several different things that have to be manipulated individually of one another by the end of this one. It genuinely reminded me of some of the last parts of what has been developed by Frictional Games, in particular Penumbra: Black Plague and that is high praise coming from me; those are some of my absolute favorites of the genre.

The fact that you spend all of your time in and around living areas and such is used well. In part in how the mundane daily activities are contrasted with something disturbing; for example there is an element that pops up every so often of food first going in then coming out. This one also features humans which really underlines the fact that it was only the first of these so far that consistently had anthropomorphized animals. That wasn't something that they just thought might be fun and then changed their minds on afterwards. There is a specific reason for this choice and you may just learn it before the end of playing through this one. Some of the brain teasers do have an addition that helps keep things fresh. At one point there are verbal clues as to the solution where they so far have tended towards visuals. There's also one part where something moves across the screen in a perfect loop so if you don't realize what you're supposed to do before it has looped you can still do it. These continue to have no failstate and autosave every time you've accomplished one entire goal. The pacing continues to be improved in part on account of there being a higher number of individual levels albeit nowhere near as many as the second entry.

They are improving when it comes to avoiding some of the things you can affect too close to each other to where you end up messing with something you had completed because you're trying to deal with something very close to it, as well as simply keeping you from screwing up something that had been solved. They do still have a little ways to go but then there are a bunch more of these so maybe they do get to it in one of them. Beyond that this is indeed quite similar to the ones that came before it; a hidden object game where you go from one screen to another, find something important, move on to another, figure out where to use the items you gather. Sometimes they are used in more places rather than only one as was more the case before this one. By this point they have pretty much abandoned (and I think it's for the best) this whole thing of sometimes you just gotta click on a thing and there will have been something hidden. By now you can tell where you're supposed to do something, no pixel hunting.

The ways in which it gets under your skin include the grotesque, morbid, blood, body horror, psychological thrills, etc. The graphics are the same with some slight upgrades which is really all that was needed. I think there's more voice acting in this one than the prior ones and you do genuinely get the feeling of being the prodigal son returning with varying reactions from family members, servants and the like, so I quite appreciate that choice. If you are stuck at some point in this, very likely you can find something that will tell you not necessarily the solution but some major hint as to what it is, albeit sometimes you do definitely have to think outside the box. I don't think it ever gets to moon logic though.

While I would definitely suggest going for the first two rather than going directly to this one, it remains the case that you can go into these knowing nothing at all about video games. All you need is to be able to work a mouse and honestly you could learn that on these since there isn't anything you can do wrong that will have any kind of consequence. And of course you must be able to think of how to solve the challenges and be willing to carry that out. But I know people who these would be the only things that I would suggest they play on account of them not being used to computers. Recommended to anyone that finds what I've described here to sound appealing. 8/10.