There are a great selection of places to visit and a plethora of puzzles to rack the mind and keep you entertained.   Some of the puzzles you might get quite easily, whereas others might have you looking online for the answer (it’s not cheating!) but each is enough to keep your attention and make you play through the game.

The graphics are lovely to look at and whilst they could have more animation to lift them a little it does not detract from the game as each screen immerses you if the weird world of your eccentric grandfather.  The sounds are suitably atmospheric and give the whole a ‘eerie’ feel.

Once criticism would be that it feels a little short as we got through it relatively quickly (with a little help of the net) and would love to see it go further in the story department as there was a loads of puzzles to keep us going.  However, if the sign of a great game is to leave you wanting more then Fire Maple has achieved it as we can’t wait for the sequel.

US LINK

UK LINK

The post Review: The Secret of Grisly Manor appeared first on AppTrawler.

Per a recent posting on the Myst forums, Myst [$4.99 / Free] just had an update submitted to Apple to add iOS 4 compatibility. Interestingly enough, also mentioned in the same thread by Cyan employee Chogon is the fact that yet another Cyan classic is coming to the App Store: The Manhole.

The Manhole is a children’s adventure game written by Rand and Robyn Miller, founders of Cyan (and creators of Myst). It was developed for the early Macintosh using Apple’s HyperCard, one of the first available hypermedia authoring systems. The game was Cyan’s first release and was published on floppy disk in 1988. In The Manhole, you open a manhole revealing a giant beanstalk which can either be climbed up or down with no real objective other than to simply explore the game world and have fun. The Manhole has since been re-released in a number of forms on various platforms, including Brøderbund’s 1995 re-release, The Manhole: CD-ROM Masterpiece Edition, and its release on GameTap in 2007. According to Cyan, the graphics in the iPhone version of The Manhole have been enhanced even further than the Masterpiece Edition.

Per Chogon’s post on the Myst forums, The Manhole was submitted on June 30th, so barring any issues it should hopefully appear on the App Store sometime next week. While I’m sure quite a few people have never heard of The Manhole before, I expect this announcement will be a delightful blast from the past for some.

The post Coming Soon: The Manhole – From Myst Creators appeared first on AppTrawler.

Cyan Worlds recently released a free version of Myst that will allow you to relive some of the 1993 classic adventure game. While technologically rather simple from today’s standpoint (mostly static images), the game’s graphics and soundtrack were remarkably immersive. The game starts you on a strange island where you must explore your surroundings, solve puzzles and figure out the backstory.

The free version of Myst allows you to explore Myst island while the full has 5 additional ages to explore. Removing that additional content shrinks it down to 124MB, so still a sizable download. Meanwhile, the full version has dropped to .99.

If you’ve never experienced Myst, here’s your chance.

App Store Link: Myst Free, Free – Myst, .99

The post ‘Myst Free’ – Relive (Part of) Myst for Free appeared first on AppTrawler.