9 Clues 2: The Ward

I went in expecting a polished Artifex Mundi crowd-pleaser and came out with genuinely mixed feelings, which is at least more interesting than feeling nothing at all. The Ward casts you as a female private investigator who arrives at the rain-lashed, island-bound Mnemosyne Asylum just in time to watch a therapist named Doctor Crow exit through a window, the hard way. From that opening hook the game locks you into a 1950s murder mystery with eight suspicious characters, roughly 42 locations, and about four hours of play time from start to finish. Three difficulty modes - Casual, Advanced, and Expert - let you tune how aggressively the game holds your hand, and a hint system means newcomers to the genre are never truly stuck. The mechanical highlight is the Detective Mode. Rather than the usual hidden-object approach of combing a scene for a laundry list of random junk, you scan a crime scene for nine specific out-of-place clues, then sequence them into a reconstruction of events. It is a smarter loop than most of the genre bothers with, and it gives the game a genuine point-and-click detective feel rather than a pure seek-and-find rhythm. Standard hidden-object scenes are still here in number, and each one gives you the option to swap to a Mahjong mini-game if clicking for named objects is not your style. Minigames are used sparingly enough that they break the pace rather than bury it, and the puzzles themselves tend toward the straightforward end, which is probably fine for the audience the game is chasing. Collectibles are spread across the asylum in three categories, and the Steam achievement list is forgiving, with most of the missable content front-loaded into the first half-hour. What holds The Ward back is the stuff that surrounds the mechanics. The story swings hard at a dark, grim-asylum tone, and some players find the attempt genuinely unsettling while others find it melodramatic to the point of parody. The voice acting lands closer to a rushed table read than a finished production, and the protagonist makes a series of cutscene decisions that would embarrass a junior detective. Visually the hand-painted art looks serviceable rather than gorgeous by modern standards, though the hidden-object scenes themselves are readable and fair in a way the genre does not always bother with. Occasional bugs (disappearing props, a few obscure object names that make no sense in context) add a sense of roughness that a 2015 release probably should have ironed out. Who is this for, then? If you are already a fan of Artifex Mundi's catalogue and want a self-contained mystery with a creepier atmosphere than their usual fairy-tale palette, The Ward delivers a solid session without demanding too much of your evening. If you played the first 9 Clues - Secret of Serpent Creek - and loved its tone, manage your expectations: this sequel is darker and messier in both story and execution. First-timers to hidden-object games will find it one of the gentler entry points in the genre, and achievement hunters can clean up the list in a single, unhurried sitting. Anyone who needs strong writing and convincing performances to enjoy a mystery will bounce off it hard.

Alex · Scout Team

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