The Stoneville Mystery is a fairly short puzzle adventure game telling the tale of the son of the local priest, little Johnny, a small boy in a large house whose father has gone missing, and it is night-time, and there is a storm raging outside. Atmospheric enough for you yet?

The mystery is on the surface just where Johnny's father has gone, but of course if that's all it was the game wouldn't be very long. The real mystery is why did he feel compelled to leave his young son alone in the house in the middle of a storm ravaged night?


Problem solved, game over. Back to bed for you, young man.

The game is listed as a RPG first but it really isn't, it's primarily puzzle based, and the find one item to lead you to the next type of puzzle rather than a push this boulder to get it out of your way, (though there is a version of that too, albeit with barrels not boulders). The puzzles aren't particularly challenging, and take little or no work to deduce the next required step which is a bit of a disappointment. I never felt like I had to take more than a moment to work out what to do next, but there is a simplistic pleasure in just going with the flow and this game did allow that, so if you like your puzzles simple then this part of the game will probably appeal to you more than it did to me. However the kill the skeleton with the spikes puzzle did take a second attempt and it was a bit of fun.

The game is stated as being linear and it is it, very much so, there are no blind alleys or misplaced clues to find, everything follows logically on from what comes before and pretty much foreshadows what is to come, so as far as story progression goes, what little there is of it, not much is left to interpretation. Even the little 'side-quests' are simply a way to enable Johnny to earn enough coins to buy the key he needs to progress further in the game, though there must be someone wandering around town with deep pockets with a hole in them since there is quite a bit of coinage in random places on the town map.

Almost all of the music used is from Gyrowolf's music pack, but since that is a pretty interesting selection, I quite enjoyed listening to them, though I must admit the title music was a little too martial and strident in later sections but you don't spend a lot of time on the title screen so it's not that much of an issue. The sound effects however are quite a bit over the top, or at the very least set too loud, the ticking clock, the pounding rain, the strange thunder rolls are all a little too much. To the point they become almost white noise in the background, which is not the effect I imagine the developer was intending.


Well that's just asking for trouble.

Johnny's house in the town of Stoneville has a very bizarre design element, it is built upside down. All of the living areas are on the ground floor as you enter the house, but the bedrooms are in the basement in what amounts to being a damp windowless box, it's not very healthy. Though it does seem to be a bit of a design feature in the town, of the five buildings available, only one actually uses its basement as a basement, the others all employ them as either bedrooms or places to hold assorted evil forest spirits, and somewhat surprisingly that's under the church.

There are some glitches in the delivery of in-game instructions in that they aren't set to play once but are triggered every time you step on a particular tile, one that can't be avoided, so if you revisit a building you get the same instructions multiple times.

One area the game does show some innovation and great attention to detail are the little hand drawn stills for the opening and closing cut scenes and the interactive nature of just about every item in the game, most give a small banal dialogue response, 'the fire is warm', 'this is a pink dress' sort of thing, but some enable the acquisition of useful items, or a continuation of a running gag. In regard to the items there is no wastage in this game, as there are none you find that you don't actually need, and whilst I do appreciate the minimalist attitude that embodies it does tie in to the overly simplistic progression of the story. No misdirection or red herrings; just get this, go there, do that.

For a game whose primary indicator is puzzle, the puzzles aren't actually challenging in any measurable way. In addition whilst obviously in the 'slice of life' genre, the historical reasons for the conflict feel like an add-on, simply dropped in at the end without any appropriate back story to try and neatly put a bow on the game. Johnny's predicament is actually quite charming and has some scope for a few heart-rending scenes, but the developer missed the opportunity to exploit them, which is a shame.

However if you are willing to overlook a fairly obvious logical flaw in story progression you may enjoy the 30 minutes a quick play through of this game takes, but if you are looking for something with a bit of a challenge in your puzzle games, this probably isn't the one for you.