Lake Ridden | PC Review
It’s a dark, misty night and Marie, her sister Sofia, and their friends are camping in the woods. Although this sounds like your typical recipe for a horror story, Lake Ridden by Midnight Hub will surprise you. The game is a story-rich puzzle game that is full of intrigue and mystery. Marie and Sofia are separated in the woods, when Sofia siddenly disappears. While searching for her lost sister, Marie finds diary pages of others who disappeared searching for their lost loved ones. She stumbles upon an abandoned manor and its nearby town and instead of finding answers, she seems to keep finding more and more questions. While playing the game you start to wonder: are the spirits that you encounter helping you or preventing you from finding the truth? What beast lies in the mist and why have so many people gone missing over the years?
One of the things I loved most about this game was the soundtrack. Typically, you would feel frightened and alone wandering in the woods, and yet the music provides a calmness and serenity that encourages you to keep searching for the truth. The creep factor is certainly there, however, and I felt it most in the abandoned buildings. I’ve always had a fear of basements and furnaces, and the visuals combined with the music in the background had my heart pumping.
The spirits in the game are faceless. You hear them speaking to Marie, and subtitles are provided, but you never actually see who is talking. It provides a chilling feeling and at one point I thought maybe Marie was just hearing voices in her head.
Since the game covered quite a bit of land, I thought the incorporation of lanterns and candles throughout the game was a great way to keep track of where you’ve been, like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs. I made sure to light every lantern I could find to avoid double tracking unnecessarily.
There are a few key puzzles that you will see repeated throughout the game: puzzle boxes, music boxes, and gate locks. The puzzle boxes take the longest to figure out because you have to find the patterns, but it doesn’t take too long. Once you have the pattern identified it is really just a matter of identifying the right sequential order so each button is turned over at just the right time. If you’re patient you will find it very rewarding.
There are additional puzzles along the way as well. Some unlock a supernatural power, and one of the final puzzles that I really enjoyed combined the lake’s water heights, moonlight, and mirrors to solve. Another neat puzzle combined different items to make a potion that Marie had to drink in order to find out how to proceed. It reminded me of the older Nancy Drew Mystery PC games that I used to play.
Lake Ridden Final Verdict
Overall, I really enjoyed playing Lake Ridden. I was drawn into the game and couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next. I lost track of time and found myself playing well into the wee hours of the night. If you like supernatural, story rich puzzle games, you’ll enjoy Lake Ridden.
This review was written based on a PC review copy provided by Midnight Hub and Sandbox Strategies for coverage purposes.
Lake Ridden
$19.99
Pros
- Creepy Atmosphere
- Great puzzles
