There are two types of sequels. We’ve got the direct sequel, following on from a previous story, maybe a few weeks, months or years later, with the same characters or heroes in a continuing tale. Or we’ve got those which are set in a shared universe, but with different protagonists and brand-new stories that still manage to share the same tone.
The Creepy Tales series of games now comes to its fourth incarnation, sticking to a shared universe as the gaming experience gets stronger and stronger. That’s the hope for Creepy Tale: Some Other Place, anyways.
In this story, you play a little boy from a poor but happy family. That boy is Martin and one day he goes out fishing, all before encountering a little hairy monster who seems anxious, chattering to him in an unknown language. Suddenly the little monster grabs his dinner and runs off. Martin chases him through a hole in a tree, emerging in a strange mysterious world that is not his own… How does he get back?
Creepy Tale: Some Other Place comes with a great sense of dark fairy tales. You see in the other place a strange world, one full of witches who need feet rubs, strange skeleton monsters scratching at trees, and giants being mined by dwarfs. There’s magic and mystery at play here, and Martin represents the audience, each trying to understand the journey and what it all means.
I like the writing as it reads like a fairy tale and the story has a classic setup with the search and trying to rescue a princess. The visual storytelling is the strongest here though, and the locations themselves fire the imagination.
The game makes the most of a 2D world, as a point-and-click adventure genre is nailed. It has all the old tricks of using items with other items, puzzle solving, and exploration. However, as with most games of the genre, some things do get a bit too obtuse, even if it’s hard to deny that they are clever. The puzzles themselves are great, fun to solve as you work your way through various answers. There are a whole lot of them too; all very different.
Some little mini-games complement the main event, working as skill tests in which you need to move a pointer into a green area. This is used for everything from fishing to massaging the witch’s feet. While this mechanic is fine to begin with, it does start to overstay its welcome after a while.
Creepy Tale: Some Other Place’s visuals are superb, and – as a series – it seems to have got better with every entry. The developers quite obviously feel at home now, utilising different techniques all the time, but on the whole it works. It must be said too that the detail in the environments and backgrounds is wonderful, as is that of the monsters themselves; seemingly ripped straight out of a fairy tale book or a Tim Burton film. It’s all fine in terms of audio too, even if the voice work is a little uneven.
The Creepy Tales series seems to just get better and better, and that’s the case for Some Other Place. A main criticism is that the puzzles are a bit obtuse and the minigames do outstay their welcome. But the atmosphere and story are great, as is the opportunity to explore an unusual, creepy place.
Buy Creepy Tale: Some Other Place on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/creepy-tale-some-other-place-xbox-series-x-s/9mvt9mskfjxt
