We’re making a tradition out of reviewing each year’s new Carol Reed game. Let’s take a look at the eighteenth title in the series: The Game Maker.
There’s something comforting about returning to the beautiful-but-surprisingly dark world of Carol Reed, British-Swedish detective and star of indie developer MDNA Games. The last two years have followed Carol essentially struggling against COVID-19 restrictions in order to do her job. Now restrictions have eased enough that she can take a vacation -- but the case she’s taken in order to fund it proves to be complicated.
Another short recap, because the Carol Reed series is still a relatively under-the-radar indie series: Carol is a British detective living in the Swedish town of Norrköping, who makes her living solving relatively low-stakes, domestic mysteries. Each game is created with pictures of real locations around Sweden, which can make for visuals that are both arrestingly beautiful and oddly terrifying.
In her most recent case, Carol is asked by Dalton Jonson to find his wife Daria, who has been missing for several days. While there doesn’t initially seem to be a reason for Daria’s disappearance, Carol finds among her things a CD with a crudely made video game on it. The game seems to be accusing Daria of some unspecified crime. So Carol needs to find the game’s mysterious creator, as it’s her only lead to discover what happened to the missing woman.
It quickly becomes clear that there’s more going on than Daria’s vanishing. The clues in the game quickly lead Carol to a series of murders that seem unconnected at first blush, and the stones she kicks over reveals increasingly uncomfortable secrets about the game maker, Daria, and the people surrounding them both.
The Vanishing of Daria
First thing I think I should do is give a trigger warning for anyone planning to play this game: It contains depictions of racism, Nazi imagery, hate crimes, and (spoiler alert) references to (mercifully undepicted) rape and suicide. The Carol Reed games have never shied away from uncomfortable subject matter, but it’s still worth listing it out so everyone knows what they’re getting.
This is not necessarily one of Carol’s most fascinating mysteries upfront. It takes a little bit of time for the hook to sink in. On the surface, it appears to be your standard missing persons case -- even Carol treats it a bit lightly at first, getting involved only to fund her upcoming vacation. But then she finds the game and realizes that Daria’s vanishing is a lot more sinister than it appears.
The games themselves are sinister enough, with the creator taunting the player with the truth of their crimes. As the case progresses, Carol connects the mysterious game maker with three unsolved murders, an older and more horrifying killing, and finally to a group of local fanatics with neo-Nazi inclinations. Even she becomes somewhat disturbed the deeper she delves.
I don’t want to necessarily get into spoiler territory, but this case has some satisfying twists and turns. I much prefer this mystery to our last one, because at least there are stakes here. It feels less like Carol is chasing a ghost story and more like she’s opened the door to a closet with some particularly nasty skeletons, and I quite enjoyed seeing the culprit get their comeuppance.
A Tour of Norrköping
Strangely, for Carol’s first post-quarantine adventure, she seems to spend a lot of time in her own apartment. She plays most of the mysterious games on her own home computer -- which, by the way, looks even nicer than the gaming PC I played this title on. I’m not annoyed by that in the slightest. But seriously, Carol’s home is as lovely as ever, and after so many years returning to it is like being wrapped in a warm, familiar blanket.
Speaking of the mysterious games, each of these presents a small minigame that Carol must solve in order to progress. The minigames aren’t difficult, by any means, but they will present a difficulty for the colorblind. Also, there’s a subplot where Carol actually visits the offices of MDNA Games and discusses the case, which is almost too meta and hurts my brain the more I think about it.
Carol doesn’t meet much in the way of suspects in this game, and I won’t spoil the identities of those she does meet, to preserve the mystery. But she does spend a bit of time with her friend Stina and her boyfriend Jonas. While she does get a bit frustrated doing errands, she’s much warmer to them than she has been in the previous games. Stina gives Carol a corkboard to use as a deductive tool that ends up serving no purpose -- but it’s the thought that counts.
Speaking of the environments, Carol spends a bit more time in urban environments than usual. Her usual environments are the beautiful countryside or abandoned urban areas. Here she walks around areas of her hometown that should be populated and yet are mysteriously empty. It’s almost more eerie than anything else in the game.
Should you buy this game?
If you’re looking for an intro to the Carol Reed series, this is definitely an easy “yes.” The Game Maker properly conveys both the series’s beauty and charms, as well as the tone of its mysteries and adventures. I also think anyone who is a fan of point-and-click adventure games, as usual, should give the Carol Reed series a try if they haven’t already.
The only person I would recommend not playing it is one who’s uncomfortable with the aforementioned distressing subject matter. I won’t lie -- the finale of this game, where you uncover what really happened to Daria and whose murder is the impetus behind all this, is one of the darkest and most unpleasant out of any game in the series. I don’t want anyone who’s expecting just a light, fluffy adventure to make it that far and then be hit with something they weren’t expecting. So let the buyer beware.
Bosch’s Damnation is the tenth installment in the Carol Reed Mysteries series. Carol is a young British girl living in Norrköping, Sweden. She spends her time tending her allotment and solving the occasional mystery! (more…)
