9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek, sssssomething is off about thisssss place.
Hoo-man, I’ve had this game for a while, and I think I’ve played it once before, but I can’t remember. The cover image looks nice enough, but looks can always be deceiving. I did notice this HoG comes within a small bundle of other games, so I wonder if maybe I bought it within the same bundle as well, or another larger one.
That’s usually what I do with hidden object games.
Anyway, these are sometimes hit or miss. And I can say for a fact, because I’ve played it as of writing this sentence, that this HoG has some violence in it that deals with a gun and shooting some evil-doers.
- Developed by Tap It Games
- Published by Artifex Mundi
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FAQ
What is this page?
This is an in-depth critique of the game 9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek. I go all in with my review by picking apart the game, piece by piece. By doing this, I try to help not only the devs that created the games, but also future aspiring devs by giving my viewpoint on everything as an avid gamer, but please understand…
There may be spoilers.
How long does it take to beat 9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek?
Around 2.5-3 hours, give or take. Don’t forget that there are extra portions of the game to do, which might add on a bit more game time as well.
Title Screen
Background
Well, as you can tell, as a whole, this entire screen is completely cluttered and kind of an eyesore to look at. But as far as the actual background of the screen, everything has you focus on the middle area, which is kind of a neat little artistic trick.
Basically, we have a hotel at the forefront, and then a gate that blocks off the main portion of a town. After the town is…an abandoned house, perhaps?
Maybe not abandoned. There is a light in a window. But it’s a singular house nonetheless.
And beyond that is a lighthouse.
I get the feeling, if you took away the menu buttons that are on the right side and the save button on the left, plus the board with your name on it, there wouldn’t be too much to the background. It’d be a lot of mountainside and maybe forest greenery, and that’s it.
The main focal point is literally in the center.
Is this a static image?
One thing I can say that is somewhat nice about all this clutter is that this is not a static image and you can interact with some of it.
How can you tell what to interact with?
The mouse icon, which is typically a snake eye (that blinks…) will turn into a magnifying glass the moment you hover over something that you can click on and interact with in the background. One of those things is actually something you can’t see in the picture because I clicked it already, and that’s a black cat that would’ve been on the board with your name on it.
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A snake’s eye might not be able to actually blink, which might throw people off in the title screen of this game, but if you’re wearing snake eye sclera contacts, they can certainly blink! They’re great for those who like to do cosplays and just enjoy being outside the norm, y’know?
(Personally I like the black sclera contacts, but maybe that’s because I’m more int tune with my demonic side.)
I wish they would’ve had it so the black cat comes back around, but alas, they didn’t.
The only other two options to click on is the lighthouse and the hotel. Which is a shame they didn’t add more in to interact with.
Overall, the background has a dark and mysterious vibe to it, and I honestly would’ve liked it a lot more if it hadn’t been so cluttered with everything else.
The snake eye mouse pointer would’ve been a lot nicer if it didn’t blink, too.
Title Font
There’s a bit of variety that comes with the title of 9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek, so we’ll try to hit all of them.
First off, the number 9.
It’s unique in the way they use it as a question mark that also makes it look like the number 9. But to me, it honestly looks more like a question mark than a number. So when I first looked at it I was wondering why they had a question mark at the front, and it took me a few more seconds to be like, “Oh.”
So while yes, it’s a cool concept…I don’t think it quite works out as intended.
There’s also an elegant swirl and a line separating the “9 Clues” from the rest of the text below, but…I don’t understand the elegance of it. This is a mystery with apparently an evil representation on serpents. But this is a pretty style they went for instead of a straight line or even a serpentine line.
The Secret of has a sort of curl to some of the lettering making it a bit serpentine, I suppose.
It really all blends in with either snake-like or elegant. And with the font being gold, the elegant part wins out, in my opinion. At this point, I really think they’ve done too much with the font and pushed their limits on it.
Finally, we have Serpent Creek.
Since this is the main portion of what the game is about–I’m going to assume the town’s name, perhaps?–it’s in larger lettering. Not only that, it’s got snakeskin coating the letters as well, which tells me the game somehow has something to do with snakes.
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If you love the look of snakeskin, but find snakeskin itself kind of gross to have hanging around your house (unless you have an actual snake, then I guess you’re kind of use to it), here’s an amazing knife with scales pattern.
I chose the green to fit the theme of the game, but they do have other color scales as well.
I don’t know about you, but I’m mesmerized.
And if that’s not obvious, let’s look at the cursor with the snake eye.
The words are also outlined in the same gold as the other writing so it also stands out a bit more so that’s good. Otherwise it could’ve gotten a bit diluted from the background.
Menu
Premium Adventure Collection
All right, originally I wasn’t going to show this as part of the menu, but I decided to anyway, since it’s there on the same side and why not tell you why it’s there so you know, right? Basically, if you click on this big chunk of a section, it’ll open a new screen in-game of other games you can choose to buy.
By choosing “Play Now” on any of the games, Steam will open up to that specific game and…yeah, you can choose to buy it or play it or whatever, I guess.
It’s really tacky to have it there, if I’m being honest.
Play Now
Obvious. And I actually like how it stands out amongst all the others. When you hover over the other icons, they do not change into this gold and ornate button. Instead, they darken and make a click.
Achievements
This shows you all the achievements you can get in-game, and the ones with multiple achievements to them have a green bar that fills up as you complete them.
Options
You can change the three different volumes of Music, Sound, and Voice. You can also choose the custom icons or not, and then fullscreen or not. Don’t forget the Difficulty, whether you want to challenge yourself with Expert, go completely Casual, or the in-between of Advanced mode.
More Info
This will bring up a screen where you can either choose Help or Credits.
Quit
Something us gamers have a love/hate relationship with.
Gameplay
Achievements
There are 19 achievements.
Plot
Save your missing friend and reveal the corruption of the town’s citizens to stop an evil plot to bring the evil Snake God back to our world.
Game Length
Anywhere from 2.5-3.5 hours.
Replay Value
Unless you weren’t able to complete one of the achievements within the game, then there’s not much point to replaying the game.
Genre(s)
There are actually two kinds of hidden object scenes that make this game a bit different, but also a more of a detective game.
You have your typical hidden object scenes, which involve a list of object names at the bottom of the screen that you’ll have to find in a mess of an image. Anything with a different color is something you’ll have to combine within the scene in order to acquire it.
The other type of hidden object scene is a detective scene.
You’ll have to click on the areas that are different and piece together a scene in order to figure out what happened in the vicinity. That’s it. Again, there are names at the bottom of the screen, but some of them are greyed out and you’ll have to find them on your own.
Sure in hidden object games you’ll be clicking around a lot and all that in those screens, but I’ll be calling this out within this genre because not only do you have to point and click to find useful objects to further yourself into the game, but they’ve also got it so you have to find and click on the question marks hidden throughout your playthrough.
It’s not something crucial to the game, it’s just something fun to see if you can find them all.
(In the middle image above, the question mark is hiding in the painting on the left wall.)
The puzzles aren’t too bad and mind-straining to deal with. Some of them you might have to think through, but others you can kind of keep clicking around on and eventually get to the proper result.
If you like putting puzzles together, then you’ll like a good chunk of these puzzles, at least.
There also aren’t a ton of them.
Interactions
First off, I want to say that I have the Custom Icons in the Options menu checked, just in case what I say is different to those that don’t have it checked on their gameplay.
You have two types of interactions. The first one is where you look at something, and that will have your cursor change into a magnifying glass. The second type is where you can pick something up, and that will make your cursor become a grabby hand.
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Speaking of a grabby hand…
Well, okay, technically it’s not exactly grabbing your booty when you sit down or anything, but it’s a super cool design as a “hand-crafted” chair (hehehe) for those that like unique designs in their household.
Couldn’t resist that pun. Sorry.
Yeah.
Literally a grabby hand.
As much of an eye-roll as it is, I suppose it could be worse. One thing they didn’t do anything with is having a show-effect of one object interacting with another. An example would be in the beginning where you can use the inhaler on the passed out man, but there’s no implication of being able to use it on him when you hover the item over him, even though you know that’s what you have to do.
Graphics
Style
They went with a lineless, sort of blotchy soft shaded style of art and while some portions of it don’t look too bad, other portions of it don’t look that great. When placed together, it all becomes okayish to look at, and if you play a lot of hidden object games like I do, then you kind of get used to this sort of artistic look.
Like, if you look at the first image, her eyes are mesmerizing to look at, I really like them. And her mouth is done very well.
But the rest of her?
I don’t know what kind of shampoo and conditioner she uses, but girl needs to change her brand pronto and head to a new stylist if she even survives whatever encounter she’s having. You can also tell the artist probably doesn’t draw hands all that often and isn’t too good with drawing them at that. It sort of shows.
We all have our flaws.
But they’ve placed those flaws in a game now.
The movements in scenes are your typical jarring ones. There’s not much fluidity to them. As far as background scenes…everything looks so blurry. That’s my biggest issue.
Inconsistencies
The lip-syncing doesn’t match up when you have other characters talking to you. Their mouths just open and close as they talk, and whether they match up to the words is kind of hit and miss. It’s not bad as long as you’re not paying too close attention.
Soundtrack
Background Music
The background music isn’t that bad throughout the game. Sometimes it’s a bit catchy, and it typically fits the setting, but the loop is pretty quick to reset itself and if you’re paying too close attention, then it can get pretty annoying to listen to in a single around for a lengthy period of time. Especially if you’re doing a puzzle or on a HoG scene and it’s just…being repetitive and you’re just hyper-aware of it.
But there’s different music throughout, don’t get me wrong.
It’s not one long strand of the same song.
Ambiance
The ambiance fits into most of the areas, but sometimes they’re a bit too much. Like with the hissing snakes in some of the scenes.
I don’t know. I think…maybe some of the ambiance is just too forceful. Too loud and overpowering, if you will.
Sound Effects
I’ll be honest. I didn’t pay too much attention to the sound effects within the game. And in saying that, I can also say that means that none of the sound effects were overtly obnoxious or had a sense of wrongness.
So yeah, the sound effects weren’t bad in-game.
Final Thoughts
9 Clues: The Secret of Serpent Creek is what I’d like to call the perfect hidden object game for beginners of the hidden object genre. The puzzles they give you aren’t terribly difficult, though one or two gave me a bit of time to figure out (such as one of those, don’t have the lines cross pentagram type of puzzles). On top of that, only one area really eluded me toward the end, because I didn’t realize where it was in the background and I refused to use the hint button to find it.
But yeah, an easy HoG that doesn’t make you chase your tail too terribly much, like some I’ve played.
But not one for someone who wants a challenge. It’s more laid back than that.
