The Blackwell Legacy

The Good
I am a big fan of point and click games like this having played all the LucasArts, Gabriel Knight and that sort of stuff way back on my old '486. This game falls squarely into that category and I liked it a lot.

I liked the backstory even though it is not completely told in this opening episode and there are many unanswered questions about both Joey and Rosa's mother & aunt. I expect more will be revealed in the later episodes.

I was surprised to find the whole story fully voiced. For me the voice acting seemed very good. There's also music which was OK and at least did not annoy, and sound effects.

The artwork is what I'd expect playing a retro style game and it worked for me, plus there were no pixel hunting scenes - everything I needed to find I found easily it was what to do with it that I had problems with (see below).

The Bad
There's not a lot in this game that I did not like. My main problem was that I got stuck a couple of times and had to resort to a walk-through. You know that moment in a point and click game where you've done everything at least a couple of times - well I had a couple of those. What I learned was that, of course, I had not done everything and once I knew what I'd missed I was back on track again.
I don't like using a walk-through but in this case I learned how the game works and I hope to carry this knowledge through to the next episode and play through unaided.

The version I bought included bonus commentaries from the developer, on Steam there's an achievement if you play through the whole game with both commentaries enabled. I had one of these enabled by mistake and there came a point in the game where it kicked in to tell me that when the original voice track was recorded a marching band walked past outside and could be heard faintly in the background. This is undeniably interesting but I did not need this information and I especially did not need it at that point in the game. I disabled the commentary and won't be collecting that Steam achievement. It's a good thing if that's what you like but it's not for me.

The Bottom Line
I bought this game as part of a discounted bundle on Steam. It's probably best thought of as episode one in a series than as a game in itself. It's about three hours long, longer if you replay trying to get all the Steam achievements, and I consider the £0.89 it cost me extremely good value for money.