The puzzles are structured around the story of Ravenhearst Manor. The Queen of England (yep, that's right) has sent you a letter asking you to investigate the strange occurrences at Ravenhearst and solve the mystery. To do that, you must reassemble Emma Ravenhearst's diary, which has been torn up. In order to reassemble Emma's diary, you must first find all the "clues" in several rooms in the house. The clues don't really have anything to do with the story. In the living room, for instance, you might need to find a cake, an egg beater, a cat, and so on. The object here is merely to find all the objects and complete the puzzle; you won't need a cake, an egg beater, or a cat to reassemble the diary pieces. Once you've found a number of clues, you will be given a puzzle screen where you reassemble the pieces of the diary page, something like reassembling a torn note or page in the
CSI games.
The map screen gives you a series of tabbed folders, each representing an area in the house. You can choose to search for clues in any of several areas - the first, second, and third floors, the garden, the tower, the attic, and the basement. Some of the rooms are locked with crazy puzzle locks - and these puzzles do connect to the story, because Emma's lover Charles Dalimar put them there to keep her trapped in the house. The lock puzzles are whimsical but logical - and if you can't figure it out, you can put in a call to headquarters (click on the phone at the bottom right of the screen) and skip the puzzle. The only penalty is a loss of allowed time to complete the puzzle.
While I am accustomed to playing adventure games that have wildly elaborate graphics, environments, and puzzles that are attached seamlessly to a deeply entrancing storyline, Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst, in spite of its departure from these conventions, is really surprisingly fun. It is a casual adventure game in all the best possible ways. I was totally taken with the perceptual challenges the game offers. A psychologist I know told me (in an effort to disparage computer and video games) that humans don't learn anything substantive playing video games. Well, whatever - my powers of observation were markedly enhanced after seeking and finding objects in the Ravenhearst screens.
