One of the biggest themes in the video game industry is death. The vast majority of titles produced across the last 30 years require the player to kill at least one living being before they can be completed. What is far less common is for games to explore what happens after death. This is the main idea behind Wayward Manor, which places the player in control of a suffering ghost, for all is not well in the land beyond the living. The unnamed ghost had been happily haunting an old forgotten mansion until the arrival of the insufferable Budd family. Annoyed by their mere presence and angered by their treatment of the house, the ghost sets out to scare off these unwelcome intruders.
This adventure takes the form of an interactive point and click title that centres around solving puzzles. Developer The Odd Gentlemen are no strangers to puzzle games having also created the award winning The Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom. The game contains 5 chapters, each of which focuses on a different area of Wayward Manor and is split into a number of levels. The objective of each level is to fill up the fright meter. This is done by scaring the house’s various inhabitants and making them jump. Each time the player manages to frighten someone, they will be rewarded with a scare, which is represented on the fright meter by a skull symbol. Generating 6 scares will fill up the meter and allow the player to progress through the game.
The puzzle solving elements come from trying to work out how to get these scares. As a ghost, the player can interact with any object in the level that glows green with ectoplasm. A simple click is all that is required to activate the object. At first, the scares are quite easy to get. Dropping a bottle onto a character’s head or making a mouse run across their path is all that is needed. As you move on to the later levels, you’ll come across characters who are much harder to frighten. For example, two of the characters who live in Wayward Manor are a set of twins who cannot be scared whilst they are in each other’s presence. Players will have to find a way to split them if they are to fill up the fright meter. Wayward Manor has quite a well balanced learning curve although seasoned puzzle game players may find the game to be too easy. Nethertheless, it will still take both intelligence and timing to complete the game’s later stages. For anyone that does get stuck, each level contains some helpful animals that will offer hints and tips if clicked upon.
The game’s biggest flaw is its simplicity. Whilst this does help to make the game accessible, the shallow gameplay also means that Wayward Manor can start to feel repetitive after a while. The game’s puzzles are neither intricate enough nor satisfying enough to truly grab the player’s attention. Thankfully there is some extra depth to be found in the secret scares. In each level there are three hidden objectives, which require thought and careful planning to achieve. Finding all three of them is much harder than simply completing the level. The secret scare system is one of the best parts of Wayward Manor as it adds some much needed challenge and replayabillity. It is a shame therefore that the game does not keep a record of which secret scares you have found and which you have not. This feature would have been a much welcome addition for those players who wish to complete the game 100%.
In terms of presentation, the best part of the game is its characters, which are well designed and full of personality. Whilst Wayward Manor is by no means a graphically impressive game, it is nice to look at thanks to an art style that is part Luigi’s Mansion and part Coraline. Comparisons to the 2009 stop motion film should not come as a surprise. To create the story for Wayward Manor, The Odd Gentlemen teamed up with Neil Gaiman, a Hugo award and Carnegie medal owner, whose book Coraline was based on. As well penning the game’s story, Gaiman also provides the the voice for the manor itself, which acts as the narrator during the cutscenes. Fans of his past work will be disappointed to discover that the story of Wayward Manor is actually quite bland, although there are a couple of interesting plot points.
Overall, The Odd Gentlemen have produced a good point and click adventure, but not a great one. Wayward Manor is built up on some very solid foundations and the core game mechanic works well, while the game’s aesthetics compliment each other wonderfully. However, behind this spooky exterior lurks an interior of simple puzzles and dull design. The best puzzle games surprise players with their inventiveness and keeps them hooked with new mechanics and ideas: Wayward Manor fails to provide this. It is a game that feels more like a boredom killing mobile app than an addictive puzzle adventure. Neil Gaiman fans may get more enjoyment than most from a trip to Wayward Manor but for everyone else, there are better properties on the market.