Twisted: A Haunted Carol

Twisted: A Haunted Carol is based off, as the name suggests, the popular story of "A Christmas Carol". You play as Scrooge's business partner Marly, who has just been murdered by Scrooge. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future then come to give you a solid form so that you may journey through time and stop Scrooge from his evil miserly ways which will cause the entire town to go bankrupt. In order to travel through time, you'll have to search for Time Pieces, purple gems that you can insert into a clock to move through the space-time continuum.

The sound is this game is pretty horrible and doesn't make sense. You're in an abandoned poultry shop but you still hear people moving around in the store and dropping lots of coins here and there. Furthermore, a lot of the background noise has the horrible horrible sound of creaking doors. No one wants to hear that. You're better off muting the game while playing. Anything to get rid of those annoying sounds. There aren't even any voiceovers either.

Accuracy is also bad in this game when you have to use one object to interact with another. For example, I try to unlock a door with a key I just found but every time I drag the key over to the door it results in the key returning to the inventory and a message popping up telling me that I need to go find the key. Mind you, the key is the correct one, but the game just has a horrible time of recognizing it.

Hint Button: The Hint button looks just like the Time Pieces you have to find and is located in the bottom right hand corner. It loading time is above average, not as quick as in Awakened: Goblin Kingdom but not painstakingly slow either. Pretty good actually. Though beware when you use it outside of hidden object scenes. Often time the hint will just reshow you something that you just saw (a locked door). It also doesn't tell you where you should use your objects. For example, I need to open a cupboard but I don't know how. I click the Hint button and it only tells me to look at the cupboard again. Back where I started.

Journal: While most games of this type will have a journal somewhere to keep notes on your progress so far, this game doesn't have a journal. Well, technically, there is a journal, but it does none of the functions as in other games. Instead, it only pauses the game and asks if you want to change the options or return to the main menu.

Hidden Object Scenes: You'll have to solve these hidden object scenes in order to find some of the objects that you'll need in your inventory in order to progress in the game. These hidden object scenes will usually be distinguished with sparkles in the current scene, so keep a lookout for them.

People: There are no people to interact with in this game. Makes sense considering that you Marly are a ghost now and can only interact with other ghosts. Speaking of which, the Ghosts of Christmas don't really play any major roles in this game other than for storytelling. They'll appear, introduce themselves, take you to another time period, and then will simply hang out in the upper left hand corner of the window. They're a little creepy, particularly Christmas Past and Christmas Future so beware, particularly when they decide to zoom up on you when it's time to leave. 

Penalties: The penalty for random clicking applies both within hidden object scenes and outside. It also doesn't accept a lot. About five wrong clicks will cause your cursor to spin wildly. This also happens when you click around too much outside of these hidden object scenes. Considering the accuracy problem mentioned before, this presents a problem when your key just refuses to go open the door. Click the Hint button repeatedly because you're impatient for it to load and your cursor will spin around too. Really just annoying.

Clock: To journey through time you'll have to gather the Time Pieces and place them within a clock. Any clock. After that, you'll have to move the discs of the clock until the line up and until the hands point to twelve o'clock. With each time you need to travel, the puzzle will get harder and harder to solve. Moving one disc will no longer simply just move that one disc but will instead also influence the other discs. Fortunately, the Skip button loads pretty fast so if you're ever stuck there's always the Skip button. I actually also believe that these are the only puzzles you'll ever really encounter in this game. The others are extremely easy to solve. 

Conclusion: While this game might be okay to pass the time, it is hardly worthwhile to spend money on to place in your collection. The background music is just absolutely horrible, and the bad accuracy in terms of object interactions will leave you frustrated. The Hint button also fails outside of hidden object scenes. The graphics themselves are okay but hardly as splendid as games like Drawn. You can play the free one hour demo if you want but anything beyond that is just a waste of time.