[While the new Indie Royale game bundle that we co-created with Desura is running, we’ll be profiling each of the five games featured in it, giving our honest opinion on the pluses and minuses of each title. Today, we check out Blackwell Legacy, the game that started it all. ]
Remember Lauren Blackwell? The sardonic, nicotine-fueled heroine from Blackwell Unbound? You do? Perfect. You’ll get to meet her again in Blackwell Legacy. At least, for a little while – she gets emptied into the ocean within the first two minutes of the opening sequence. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Lauren Blackwell is deader than a dead doorknob. Now, if you’ve played Blackwell Unbound, you probably know that she was on the fast track to terminal lung cancer but surprisingly enough, it wasn’t a malignant tumor that took Lauren.
It was twenty five years in an asylum with no one but Joey for company. Sort of. Kinda. I’m mostly kidding. You’ll find out when you play.
To quickly recap for those new to the series, the Blackwell Trilogy is a point & click adventure game franchise starring the Blackwell women, Joey Mallone their spirit guide and an eccentric assortment of ghosts and New York’s finest. Blackwell Legacy is actually the first title in the series. Here, we are introduced to Lauren Blackwell’s niece, the bespectacled, gawky and luckless recipient of the family ghost. As you might have guessed, the game opens with Rosangela pouring an urn filled with her aunt’s ashes into the ocean. This is then followed by her being barred entrance from her own apartment due to her inability to produce ID or name her neighbors. And if that wasn’t enough, Rosangela also manages to find out, in the same day itself, that she may be prone towards hereditary dementia – the kind that can leave the unfortunate bed-ridden, sedated and essentially trapped for decades.
Life can’t get any worse, right?
Though I’m a huge fan of the franchise, it’s hard to deny the fact that Blackwell Legacy is substantially rawer than the games that followed. The dialogue is a lot less fluid, the banter more forced. At times, the humor can feel flat, an odd sensation given how polished the rest of the franchise is. But strangely enough, it all sort of works. After all, learning that you’re a medium after being told your family is prone towards insanity is what most would consider an awkward, uncomfortable situation. And it doesn’t help that the Rosangela in Blackwell Legacy is about as graceless as they come.
In terms of gameplay, Blackwell Legacy doesn’t deviate from the standard adventure formula. You point your cursor at things you want to interact with and then, you click. It’s as simple as it goes. Interestingly enough, however, inventory-based puzzles are sparse here. Most of the time, you’ll be working with your note pad and the people you encounter – a pleasant change from the norm.
Will Blackwell Legacy blow your mind? Probably not. Over the years, we’ve gotten our fair share of excellent adventure games. But it’s a good introduction to the series and a fine testament to how far Wadjet Eye Games has come in terms of game production.
Official website here, and you can buy it as part of Indie Royale’s ‘X-Mas Bundle’ for the next few days.
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