Witchcraft: Pandoras Box

Review

Buying a house is one of life’s thrills. Some of us decide to build it from scratch, while others buy from a plan (mostly units), and yet others purchase pre-lived-in houses. In the latter case, let’s say you fell in love with a property without having a single idea who had lived in the place before you. What if the old, spectacular house you were about to purchase had been the home of a witch who was in search of eternal youth? That would be very creepy, wouldn’t you say?  Well, you might hit the jackpot in Witchcraft: Pandoras Box!

Witchcraft: Pandoras Box is a casual hidden objects game developed by Meridian93 Studio and published by HH-Games on Steam on the 3^rd of January 2020.

After choosing your mode of difficulty between Casual and Expert, you’ll receive the key to your new house. As you start unpacking, you’ll discover Pandora's Box. While your daughter is satisfied to sit and draw, you manage to open the box and the nightmare unfolds. The witch kidnaps your daughter and escapes to a fantasy world through Pandora’s box. All you think of from that time onwards is to save your precious little girl.

As you would expect in this genre of game, the interface will have a map showing where you are, which locations you have and haven’t visited, a book to record your progress in term of the story, and a hint button.

I found all the illustrations very colourful and well made. There are various types of puzzles, including matching, sliding and more. At several stages within your progress, you might wonder how to move forward. When you hit these spots, you might need to use the magic runes from the Lilliputian you saved early in the game. That will trigger another puzzle where you have to trace the symbol lines without using the same line twice. In terms of hidden objects scenes, there are not many.

The main issue I encountered during my gameplay was that the game froze a few times during both of my playthroughs. These occurred randomly both at the start and the end of the cut scenes with the witch and the young girl. It’s a shame because the game is actually quite good and can be enjoyed by all ages. Unfortunately, the final score has been heavily influenced by these issues. On the good side, you won’t lose your progress when you restart the game.

It will take you around 1 hour and 30 minutes to finish the game in casual difficulty and slightly longer on the other difficulties.