Hauntii, a 10-hour adventure game by the studio Moonloop, can be slightly subversive, all the while musing upon what the afterlife means. Hauntii, a tiny, faceless Druid-esque being, embarks upon his trek energetically.

Hauntii soon meets an Eternian, seemingly an angel with flowing hair. Hauntii’s green eyes become wide with attraction. She lifts him to the heavens, where they ascend hand in hand to observe sparkling constellations — a wonderful representation of love at first sight.

As it can be with relationships, she leaves. To find her, it’s key to remember who you once were by collecting lustrous stars hidden among trees or locked away in cages.

As you search, the characters encourage you to stay in their world, a place where you can always be safe. There’s nothing good where the Eternian is, they caution.

Yet it’s not safe where you are either.

Hauntii’s most gobsmacking achievement is the Wickland Carnival. On the midway, a gangly grim reaper sells ride tickets in exchange for a portion of your soul.

Crow Country

It is made for nostalgia lovers who don’t mind graphics that aren’t presented in 4K, and who love a puzzle game that requires concentration and note-taking.

Here, you are Mara Forest, a brown-haired investigator in a white dress who searches for the missing entrepreneur Mr Crow.

Inside, the overall mood is creepy rather than horrifying. The soundtrack gets under your skin. Nothing is really as it appears. There’s the mechanical Great Fairy of Fairest Forest, which spins around to reveal a walkway once the proper code is entered, leading to more disturbing denizens. A tiny house requires crawling on hands and knees like Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

The puzzles in Crow Country, from SFB Games, move from simple to quite complex, and there’s much backtracking hither and yon for clues and items to aid your tasks.

The mutated beings often come from the grim shadows. Shooting them with a laser-guided pistol isn’t always accurate. And turning to run away using the D-pad is a learning experience.

Yet the primary answer to the mystery is one you might overlook. If you miss checking your inventory to read a crumpled yellow paper that Mr Crow handed over during the 10-hour game’s finale, you won’t realise the potentially dire situation the world may encounter in the future. One eerie battle is won. But the indication is that there may be more later, thus setting up a potential sequel.

Paper Trail

Here in the seaside community of Southfold, a lightning storm complete with damaging winds wreaks havoc, and the eel fisherman who has been trapped because a bridge crumbled asks for assistance. Dragging and folding the game’s edges as if
the screen were a piece of paper, you discover a new way to traverse.

For some reason, the fisherman worries whether Aunt Maude survived the storm. How does he know her? Do they have a secret relationship? It’s not revealed, but the puzzles become more intricate from there.

Maude has been eating pine cones because she’s been trapped by the squall’s damage. That’s when Paige, an 18-year-old aspiring astrophysicist whose parents don’t want her to leave for college, comes to the rescue.

Paper Trail, an eight-hour experience by Newfangled Games, is published by Netflix and playable on smartphones as well as on all major consoles.

Paige moves though some compelling environments, beautifully detailed and inked like a children’s book.

After journeys through swamps and snow, Paige eventually gets to college.

Hauntii was reviewed on a PC and is also available on all major consoles. Crow Country was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 and is also available on the PC and Xbox Series X|S. Paper Trail was reviewed on the Switch and is also available on all major consoles and smartphones.

NYTNS