Forgotten Books: The Enchanted Crown Review – A Masterful Mix of Genres

A dark mage Eldor has taken over the kingdom, demanding immediate delivery of the Enchanted Crown. If he gets it, the realm is doomed. If he doesn’t, it sounds like it’s doomed, anyway. Good thing all of this takes place …

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A dark mage Eldor has taken over the kingdom, demanding immediate delivery of the Enchanted Crown. If he gets it, the realm is doomed. If he doesn’t, it sounds like it’s doomed, anyway. Good thing all of this takes place inside of a book at the library! As soon as you start reading the pages, however, you get sucked inside to live the tale as it’s told. Time to take this fairy tale a little more seriously, it seems.

Forgotten Books: The Enchanted Crown is a casual adventure game through a world of magic and mixed story genres. It’s filled with characters to interact with, items to find, puzzles to solve, and mini-games to work your way through. While you’re doing all of this, the book you’re living in is being rewritten, creating obstacles everywhere you turn. Think that forest meadow looks safe? Go ahead, take a step forward. See if that giant pencil in the sky comes down and draws something to eat you.

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Most of The Enchanted Crown takes place in a series of closely connected rooms packed with handfuls of items. Move back and forth between these areas, filling your inventory and using those items to eventually open paths to new rooms. Hidden object scenes are surprisingly rare, but when they do show up, they’re an honest treat. Expect a few different varieties of scene styles, all of which feature copious amounts of interactions and on the fly item assembly. If hunting for items doesn’t do anything for you, you can always switch over and solve a puzzle game instead, no harm done!

The mini-games far outshine the hidden object puzzles in Forgotten Books: The Enchanted Crown. They appear more frequently and almost always bring a smile to your face when they show up. Many of these diversions come in the form of simple pattern-based puzzles you can figure out in a few moments. Swap a tile here, decipher a code there, pick up a caterpillar with tweezers somewhere else, that sort of thing. Occasionally you’ll run across crazy, complex mini-games that will leave you stumped for a minute. No matter how quickly you figure them out, there’s always this sense of playfulness that keeps you from getting frustrated. Oh, and a skip button, of course!

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Forgotten Books: The Enchanted Crown mixes genres well. Most of the time you’ll feel like you’re in a classic fantasy story complete with talking animals and legendary artifacts. Then you’ll encounter a piece of clockwork machinery and suddenly feel an air of steampunk has descend. Then you’ll find a note scrawled in red ink promising that everyone will die, making you wonder when the horror genre crept in and how loudly you’ll scream when something jumps out at you. All of these elements coexist in complete harmony, lending a strong sense of variety to every scene and interaction.

The Enchanted Crown is a solid hidden object game from beginning to end. High production values dole out plenty of great visuals and sound, while the puzzle and mini-game construction leaves nothing to be desired. Once you get sucked into this particular book, you won’t want to leave.

The good

  • Superb mixing of fantasy and steampunk genres.
  • Excellent mini-games.
  • Great visuals with a lot of variety.

The bad

  • Some menu elements are tough to find due to intricate artwork.
95 out of 100
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