Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart Review

It’s been some time since I last played a game like Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart. Thinking back, it was probably the point and click puzzler Ceville in 2009, so it’s nice to be donning this cap again. It’s a nice change of pace from the explosions and car flipping I’m usually facing off against.

On launching the game, it’s clear that there’s plenty of talent in the artwork department over at Artifex Mundi, as it has a vibrant and pleasing aesthetic, which continues throughout. Characters are well designed and the backdrops are nicely detailed. However, animations can look a little skewed at times due to what looks like the sprites being morphed to make some of their movements.

Musically, things tend to get a little bland after a while, especially whilst playing the hidden item / mahjong sections as the music loop that’s in place for these feels short - you can hear the point where it returns to the start and plays over. It’s not overly annoying as it’s quite the pleasant melody, however, it’s a shame that it wasn’t a longer loop. The voice acting of the characters is quite good also, and left me pleasantly surprised; I’d anticipated some truly terrible voice acting as tends to be prevalent in these kinds of games. The main gripe is that the voices sounded like they’d been recorded badly - a slight hint of distortion is apparent throughout, and most noticeable on the female characters.

The meat of the game is in the puzzles it presents you, with the core of them being the hidden item games, with a few others mixed in for good measure. The hidden item games aren’t that difficult, with only very few of the items being really difficult to spot. A couple of the items require you to perform other actions first before you can ‘grab’ that item, which is a nice addition to an otherwise straight-forward game. If you’re no good at those, you can opt to play a game of mahJong instead where golden tile pairs act as if you’d found one of the items in the hidden item screen instead. Controls for these sections work well enough, using the analog sticks as the “mouse”. Switching to mahjong changes the controls to have a tile highlighted which you then move tile by tile. I’d found myself on a couple of occasions having an unreachable tile, meaning I had to shuffle the board to complete it. Personally, I’d have liked the ability to use the previous control method of the on-screen mouse - but I can understand the decision to use the tile-by-tile approach for gamers that may be less accurate. There’s some miniature versions of the hidden item games which are quick and easy. Thankfully though, the puzzles and items you pick up are pretty sensible in their usage. There’s no over the top complexities like you’d see in The Secret of Monkey Island, which ensures that this can be played by any level of gamer; not just those with overactive eidetic memories. Those wanting a challenge should play on the expert difficulty, which removes a lot of the hand-holding mechanisms allowing for a lengthier experience from the game.

As the first Artifex Mundi title on the Xbox One, and the first of their titles that I’ve played, I can happily say that it was an enjoyable experience. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing more from Artifex Mundi on the Xbox One, along with some added polish to the control schemes for the puzzles. Right, where did I leave that doubloon...