The Secret Order 2: Masked Intent

I came into Masked Intent with modest expectations for a decade-old casual HOG from Artifex Mundi, and walked out having genuinely enjoyed most of it. The core pitch is simple: you play Sarah Pennington, whose father runs the Order of the Griffins, and a treacherous new council member has stolen a powerful relic to tear the organisation apart. Stopping him means boarding a time-travelling ship and chasing clues across roughly ninety locations, from a contemporary museum to 17th-century harbours, mysterious islands, and a medieval village that serves as the story's midpoint gut-punch. The structure is classic Artifex Mundi. You have hidden object scenes, point-and-click inventory puzzles, and minigames all layered on top of each other across six chapters, with a bonus chapter woven into the middle of the main story rather than bolted on at the end. That structural choice is actually smart: it keeps momentum from dropping at the two-thirds mark. The hidden object scenes present a word list to hunt through each cluttered scene, and you can swap any of them out for a Mahjong mini-session if you prefer. The minigames themselves lean heavily on concentric ring rotation and jigsaw variants, which community players have pointed out do get recycled a few times too many by the final chapter. Puzzle difficulty sits comfortably at the lower end, meaning casual players won't be reaching for a walkthrough, though the 24 Steam achievements do add a secondary challenge layer for anyone who wants to clear the scenes hint-free or beat the speed targets in the hidden object rounds. Visually, the scenes hold up better than you'd expect from 2015 work. Locations are varied, detailed, and genuinely atmospheric, especially the maritime and ghost-island sequences. The soundtrack reinforces the moodier stretches without overstaying its welcome. The interactive map, which lets you fast-travel between the sprawling location list, is a practical quality-of-life inclusion that stops the backtracking from becoming genuinely annoying. Where the game slips is in the mid-story busywork: extended fetch chains asking for rope pieces and crank handles that feel like filler rather than puzzle design, and the story loses some of its intrigue during those stretches before picking back up toward the finale. For the audience this is built for, specifically players who want a relaxed, atmospheric story-adventure they can finish in an evening or two without frustration, it delivers on its promise. If you're coming in hoping for brain-bending puzzle design or narrative depth, the formula will feel thin. But played on its own terms, Masked Intent is a tidy, well-constructed entry in Artifex Mundi's catalogue, and a reasonable starting point for the longer Secret Order series that follows.

Alex · Scout Team

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