Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows

The centerpiece of a museum exhibition of 19th century art is the mysterious painting of a woman rumored to come to life and talk to visitors. One such patron is dragged inside the canvas after talking to the lady, traveling by magic to one hundred years in the past and materializing on a deserted village near a castle. The unwilling adventurer soon learns about the witch's curse that transformed the villagers into shadows. Now, all the pieces of a magical amulet must be recovered to break the enchantment and save the locals.

Like its predecessor, Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows combines hidden object challenges with typical point-and-click gameplay. Most of the time, the objective is to collect a series of items and use them on certain portions of the scenery to perform a required action or solve a puzzle. The objects are stored inside several inventory slots from a tray at the top of the screen, that slides into view when the cursor is over it, and automatically recedes when the mouse pointer is away to reveal more of the background art.

Some of the required objects can be found laying around the many locations, while others are only received after completing one of the hidden object scenes. The spots containing these seek-and-find hunts shimmer to indicate their presence. After being selected they take place on a separate screen, where the goal is to find and click on all the items listed at the bottom of the screen. In some scenes, two items have to dragged and dropped on top of each other to produce one of the list entries (for example, a paintbrush has to be used on a plain egg to produce an easter egg). A variation also occurs where objects have to be put back from the inventory to their logical places.

The hint button is a magic mirror at the top-right that shows the position of one of the required items when activated. Extra hints can be collected as mirrors found amongst the assorted paraphernalia of the hidden object challenges. Mini-games appear on certain scenes, usually as locks barring access to a location, where the player has to manipulate some sort of mechanism to solve them.