The Lost Crown: A Ghost-hunting Adventure

I was going to talk about another game, but I'm determined to finish it first and I was feeling nostalgic for this game so here it is!

I don't know what it is about me and scary games/movies.  More often than not you'll find me cowering in a corner at the slightest odd creak or groan that sounds and I have been known to "accidently" fall asleep with the light on after playing one.  Heck, "playing" is a fairly loose term in my case.  Mostly, it's me hiding under a blanket while making someone else fight the scary scary nightmare things.

So why oh why would I constantly subject myself to more emotional torture?  Because as I said in a previous entry, I am a story junkie and a lot of horror games have great stories.  In fact, the best horror games need good story lines because that's what keeps us opening doors to unknown horrors: we want to know the secret of the mystery.  We want to know what happens next and why it's happening.  Enter The Lost Crown: A Ghost-hunting Adventure.

The Lost Crown is an indie adventure game from Jonathan Boakes, who is fast becoming one of my favourite game designers and story tellers of all time.  At the time I bought The Lost Crown, I had already played 2 of Boakes' previous games: Dark Fall and Dark Fall 2 (which I want to cover at some point as well).  I enjoyed them immensely, although like many other horror games I couldn't play them alone.  The Lost Crown, though, marks the first horror game I have played all the way through by myself.

You play as Nigel Danvers, a man on the run from his employer, Hadden Industries (a paranormal research corporation that makes an appearance in all of Boakes' games).  It seems curious Mr. Danvers has stumbled upon some sensitive information and now is fleeing for his life across the English countryside.  The fleeing doesn't last too long though because soon the train is forced to stop in an out of the way village called Saxton due to swamp related problems.  Naturally, Saxton is not all it seems and there are mysteries and ghosts aplenty that Nigel soon finds himself encountering, some nice, some...not so nice.

As I said before, The Lost Crown is an indie game, meaning it was made on a budget of peanuts and love.  The love is evident throughout the game but sometimes the peanuts side of it shows through.  The character designs are a bit stiff and awkward and yeah, the voice acting is not exactly up to snuff.  Boakes did his own voicework for the main character and it kind of shows.  There are strange pauses in the middle of sentences, weird inflections and odd emotional choices.  It's not bad though and a lot of the supporting cast do an okay job.  There's also barely any facial expressions on the character's faces which is a bit off-putting.

There are also a couple of plot points that bothered me, the main one of which is that the whole "Nigel's life is in danger" point is kind of dropped pretty early on.  I was almost certain I'd have to do some hiding from the henchmen that were supposedly sent along...but they never really come again.  But you know what?  This is me being nitpicky.  Because this fast became one of my favourite games of all time.

What Boakes' lacks in character design and voicework he more than makes up for in story telling and atmosphere.  And man, he has got atmosphere in spades.  Keep in mind this is not a survival horror.  It is an adventure horror.  It makes for a very different gameplay.  So anyone looking to bash some zombie skulls in with a hatchet or run for their lives constantly will be disappointed.

The story for The Lost Crown is incredibly complex and riveting.  Boakes' love of history shows through here.  There was an incredible amount of research that went into the game, some of the most interesting being his travels with a paranormal research group to get material for the game.  You can actually read about his experiences here, and it was interesting seeing what influenced the game the most.  It kind of added an element of realism you don't find much in ghost stories now since we now mostly go for "The Ring" kind of look.

Part of the reason I love the game so much is because I was able to get so interested in the setting.  I wanted to read the books of folklore sitting on the shelves, I loved getting to know the strange characters populating the town, I loved simply wandering about taking in the history.  The fact that many of the backgrounds are drawn from real photographs Boakes took just added to the realism.

But of course, this is only one half of it.  This is, after all, a horror game.  Is it actually scary?  Well, yes.  It is very scary in fact.  Despite all the warm fuzzy feelings I got wandering through the countryside, there was always this sense of unease going with me, like anything could pop out at any moment. 

Your goal of course is to get into contact with these ghosts and you use a number of ghost hunting gadgets to detect them, including a EMP meter, a tape recorder, a camera, and a video recorder.  Using these tools is always an incredibly stressful and creepy experience.  You never know which one is going to get a result, nor do you know if using it will actually cause something more extreme to happen and send you flying for a shot of rum to calm your nerves.

As for the hauntings themselves, yeah, I was pretty terrified for several parts of the game.  Nigel ends up staying in a dilapidated cottage in the town and that ends up providing some of the game's best moments.  Like Paranormal Activity, it lulls you into a sense that despite being creepy, you know the house and what will happen.  It gets you into a routine.  Then it breaks that routine by providing a jump scare of epic proportions.  I won't tell you where.  You have to play it.  The museum that you have to break into also had me tense the whole time I was in there.
I think part of the reason I was able to play this one a bit more easily than Darkfall was because of the third person perspective.  In third person, you can see what's behind and in front of the character.  In First person, however, you have more blind spots and the sounds behind and to the sides of you are far more terrifying because you have to turn towards them to find out what it is.  There are in fact a couple of sequences in the game where you have to use your night vision camera to see and the view switches to first person.  These provided some of the more stressful situations of the game.

Boakes, in my opinion, is an unsung master of horror.  He understands that what you can't see is often far more terrifying than what you can see.  He also understands the power of good sound design, and the creaks and groans and whispers that litter the game constantly keep you on your toes as well as a brilliant music soundtrack that both evokes a rich sense of history as well as an extreme feeling of discomfort.

When I think about it, not an incredible amount actually happens in the game.  In fact, you can't really die in any of his games.  Think about that.  There is no way for you to die in either Dark Fall game, and The Lost Crown only has one instance of it.  You know that no matter what happens, you will be fine.  And yet I've talked to a few people too afraid to go on with a couple of the games simply because they were too creeped out.  Boakes spends a lot of time ramping up the tension and atmosphere so that when he finally does decide to deliver the true scares, they pack that much more of a punch.  That is power, right there.

Add to that the stunning visuals (I honestly thought I wouldn't like the black and white look, but there are great splashes of colour throughout and it completely suited the mood of the game), clever puzzles and a great payoff and an epic ending and you have a pretty damn awesome game. 

Soon a sequel will be coming out to the game called The Last Crown.  I plan to be the first in line to buy it (I and the 10 other people in Toronto who play it). I really really recommend this game, especially if you're an adventure gamer or even just a fan of British history or the paranormal.  Even if you're not an adventure gamer, I would recommend trying out this game.  It's gotten some great reviews.  Here is the Darkling Room.  Love it.