MacGuffin's Curse Review
PROS
- Easy to pick-up gameplay; 1) swipe to move 2) tap to perform actions 3) ??? 4) profit.
- Tonnes of dialogue to read and enjoy; all the more thanks to MacGuffin's alternate persona.
- Scaling hint system makes the game as difficult as you prefer without losing a sense of progression.
- Developer commentary adds an insight to the game's design decisions.
CONS
- Visual design feels blunt at times; fun cartoonish visuals otherwise let down by bold and repeated puzzle elements.
- Tendency for puzzles to feel repetitive by the end; lacks a sense of satisfaction in solving similar puzzles.
VERDICT
Whatever platform you choose to play it on, MacGuffin's Curse is a fun puzzler with a surprising amount of depth thanks to its adventure-game inspired dialogues; challenging and amusing for gamers of all walks.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Aussie developer Brawsome is not above a bit of cheeky advertising and my hat is fairly tipped to their tenuous use of ties to Adventure gaming's most well-known celebrities (Tim Schafer, for instance, has provided a single line of dialogue). All of this effort has gone in to spreading the word about their latest title, MacGuffin's Curse, an adventure game locked in to a world where you'll need to master pushing blocks to succeed.
You play as the titular MacGuffin, a thief who is cursed with a split personality by an amulet stolen at the start of the game. By stepping in to a patch of moonlight and activating the amulet, the player can switch between a strong, yet slightly thick-headed werewolf, and a slender, but quick-witted thief. Each room will test your ability to solve its challenges by utilizing these two halves, often needing to push blocks and flip switches in a particular sequence to move on.
Things quickly become more than a bit challenging, but you're never left completely out of your depth as the game provides a scaling hint system that can culminate in side-stepping a puzzle entirely to continue. As a sort of reward, players can head to rooms they've completed to unlock a note from the developer, acting as a sort of running commentary on the design process that went in to the game itself - this is a rare and extremely fascinating inclusion that's amusing and worthwhile in its own right.
Where the game falls a little short is in its presentation. While the environments and objects in a room are often clear, there's no real cohesiveness to the visual design, making most puzzle objects completely alien to the room they're in. It does help to highlight them, but only in the crudest of ways. With that said, there's more than enough side-dialogue to check out thanks to almost every object being interactive and having different responses from the two personalities.
MacGuffin's Curse is a treat for those after a fun mental workout packed with more than a few laughs at the expense of the characters and occasionally the developers themselves. Worth grabbing if you expect more than the usual implied storyline of most puzzle-adventure titles.
Screenshots
$4.99
