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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: MDNA Games Released: January 1, 2025 Requirements: OS: Windows 7 or newer; MacOS 10.12 or newer Memory: 4 GB RAM Storage: 1.7 GB available space
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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: MDNA Games Released: January 1, 2025 Requirements: OS: Windows 7 or newer; MacOS 10.12 or newer Memory: 4 GB RAM Storage: 1.7 GB available space
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By flotsam
MDNA Games Here we are again, a new year and a new Carol Reed game. As I have said before, if you are a Carol fan I doubt you need this review. By and large, all of Carol’s endeavours look and feel the same, and this outing is no different. Which means if you like what Carol gets up to and the way she goes about things, I can’t imagine you won’t like this. For those unfamiliar and/or wanting a few specific insights (and borrowing heavily from earlier reviews) Murder Malady is first person point and click, utilising photos of real people and places in and around Norrkoping in Sweden to create the game world. Click your way through the static ‘snapshots,’ moving point to point looking for items and clues in order to move on. At each point you can turn left and right, and perhaps also move forward or occasionally look/move in another direction. It's a static environment, explored with the mouse. Explore carefully to find hotspots, or use the spacebar to reveal them. Each hotspot will generate a relevant icon indicating what you can do there. Often it will be to examine the item or area more closely, which might lead to you collecting the item or needing to do something else at that place. The directions you can turn/move will also be indicated by arrow icons. The game begins with a tutorial should you want it, then it's off to Carol’s apartment, where a message inevitably sets things in train. In short, a woman with a difficult personal history wants Carol to unravel the enigma that is her familial past. As always, finding things, some brain power and a bit of lateral thinking, along with a fair bit of back and forthing is involved. I did think that last aspect was more pronounced than in other games (at least the ones I can remember), which might be a product of this being the largest of all the games in terms of the number of images, or might just be me missing more things in the screens the first and subsequent times through. Whichever, the game will deliberately send you hither and yon and back again, so be prepared to go back over some of the same ground more than a few times. Inventory conundrums play a big part, and my advice is to search each location meticulously in order to try and find the various items. Things you need (and don’t know you need) can be lying around almost anywhere (e.g., under a bush, on a bench, in a garbage bin) and if you want to avoid the ‘hints’ you need to be thorough. To make matters more difficult, some items can be picked up as soon as you find them, others can be looked at but not taken until you have a reason to do so, and there are some that just look like any other piece of background detail until something triggers the capacity to interact with them further. This is common to these games, so fans won’t mind, but whilst I have tended to ebb and flow about what I think, some more consistent behaviour wouldn’t hurt. Meticulous searching will also yield various notes, journals, letters etc., which will contain information about the unfolding story but also information necessary to solve various conundrums and/or know where to perhaps go next. So too, you will find visual clues to various puzzles (provided you make the necessary connections) and piecing together all the little bits and pieces is part of the strengths of Carol’s adventures. There is a lot to do and a lot to find, and knowing where things not done can be found will help. I take notes when e.g., there is a puzzle box there or a lock to be opened there or something to be dug up there. I can recommend it. Speaking of finding stuff, the items you collect will be in the ribbon which will appear top of screen in response to the mouse. Right click to examine more closely, left click to use in the game world or to use with other items in the ribbon. Your phone, as well as a notebook and chalkboard are there also. The chalkboard records pertinent information about the events, and I confess I looked at it only sporadically. More useful (to me) was the notebook, which will show your immediate next objective, as well as an associated hint or two. The hints tend to be outright solutions (e.g., this is where you find the next thing you need) so I used it sparingly whereas the objective will often (but not always) tell you where you need to go next. I tended to use this element regularly, as the game can be a little directionless at times (I say that acknowledging I might have missed said direction) and I don’t like aimlessly wandering and searching, so knowing where to go next was welcomed. The objective might be less directly helpful if it says something like “get the audio tape to work,” but I found it still helped to focus my attention; what might I need, what might I have etc., and the hints can always fill in the gaps. How you use the notebook is up to you. You can ignore it completely if you want, and rely on your own capacity to search meticulously, or dip into it as required to provide appropriate direction. That it is there is a definite plus. When you exit a location you activate the map, and can then choose where to go next. New locations appear all the time (a large icon top left of screen will appear in the game world when one is added) and old ones get dropped, but you will generally have multiple locations available to you. Choosing one might take you there, or it might elicit a comment from Carol along the lines of “not now” or “I don’t have time.” Carol rides a bike, which is left at the exit point of the particular location. You have to get back to that point to access the map, so pay attention as you explore a location. You will need to backtrack in order to go somewhere else. You can save at will (the number of saves seem unlimited), tweak various settings, and highlight hotspots with the space bar. The mouse does everything else. It is in English, you can play with subtitles or without, and tweak the volume settings for speech, music, and effects. Speech and sound effects are limited but perfectly fine, and as I usually do in games, I turned the music down and so can’t really tell you much about it. When conversing with another character you don’t hear Carol speak, rather you read her side of the conversation but hear the other character’s response. You do hear Carol in voiceovers from time to time, as well as hearing her in-game feedback. There is no swearing, no graphic violence, and you can’t die. The end surprised me, as it came rather abruptly but it ended on a positive note for Carol. Her fans keep her coming back, and if you become one as well, there is an extensive back catalogue awaiting your attention. No doubt we will see her again next year. I played on: OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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