Hidden Fears (Moonlight Edition)

Review

Tony and Faith are on a high as they have recently tied the knot to celebrate their love to each other.  Soon after, they receive an invitation to spend their honeymoon at the luxury Creek Fall mansion, which is located in the picturesque mountains not too far away from where they live. After a few hours driving on the bendy uphill road, they arrive at their destination. The place looks magic from the outside, but they will soon find out that the inside is somewhat less accommodating.  After a brief discussion (or maybe the first argument as a married couple), Faith literally vanishes from the Hotel lobby. The only person who can save her is Tony, her husband. Welcome to the creepy mansion, in Hidden Fears (Moonlight Edition).

Hidden Fears (Moonlight Edition) is a Hidden objects adventure developed by Rosen Studio and published on Steam by HH-Games on the 1^st of August 2019.

After setting up your profile, you’ll be asked on which level of difficulty you’d like to play the game. If you select normal, the hint button will recharge quicker, and you can skip both the puzzles and the combat mode if you wish to do so. By choosing the advanced difficulty, you’ll not be able to skip any of the puzzles, and both the combat phases and the hint button will recharge very slowly.

From here, you’ll see a small introduction and soon after you’ll be in the mansion lobby. After faith disappears, you’ll be meeting the hosts of the mansion, Evan and Helena, who have kidnapped Faith. The game is divided into 5 chapters. You’ll be completing a chapter after entering into a fight with one of the ghosts that co-habit the mansion. But before fighting any of the ghosts, you’ll need to find objects or solve puzzles in each location before you can move forward into the story. Most of the puzzles are casual and easy to complete, as are the scenes where you need to find objects.

I actually enjoyed the ghost fight scenes, which require a sequence of actions.
Firstly, use your flashlight to see the ghost, who is floating around the screen.  When a red button appears, you know that the ghost is preparing to hit you.  Block the hit by hitting the button at the precise moment that it turns green.   After a few blocks, you’ll notice that a round button appears on the ghost.  Click this button to retaliate.  You may additionally have to fight off dogs and/or follow various other actions.

Look for the following icons: a key (to open a door within a room), a puzzle piece (informing you that there is a puzzle in the room), a question mark (indicating that there is an item to find), a blue triangle (showing you which room you’re in).

The storyline is interesting. However, the game has many flaws. First, the loading time between each of the scenes is far too long, which can be annoying, especially as you have to move from one room to another in order to solve puzzles. Thankfully, to help you advance even though it’s slow, you can hit the journal which is located on the left-hand side of your screen, select which room you want to go into next, and be teleported there, avoiding the need to pass through several rooms on the way to your destination. 

The voice-over is not the greatest to be perfectly honest, but it is passable.  I also had a few difficulties in some of the puzzles in terms of moving a piece from one place to another; it was a bit clunky at times.  Otherwise, the puzzles are pretty simple. I did experience a crash during the final fight against Evan and Helena, which was very frustrating.

I think the game has a passable story, with a good variety of puzzles and fight scenes.  The loading issue needs to be fixed, as does the game-breaking crash. It’s a bit of a shame, because I don’t mind the game, and I do like the audio. The atmosphere is excellent, especially if you use a headset.