Twenty years. Twenty games. For any other series, such a milestone might mean a great big celebratory entry, with a story more bombastic than usual to honor a decades-long legacy. But if you’re Carol Reed, rather than taking some grand, well-deserved victory lap, a twentieth anniversary means little more than quietly brewing a pot of tea, stepping out into the serene Swedish countryside once again, and methodically unraveling another mystery – all with the same understated charm that’s drawn fans back time and again every year, to the steadiest of rhythms.
The lack of pomp in Murder Malady feels perfectly on brand for the Carol Reed mysteries. Since 2004, this cozy and unassuming point-and-click adventure series has quietly endured, delivering its signature brand of laid-back puzzling and investigating in picturesque settings without ever straying from its low-key photo slideshow roots. Series fans who plead to creator Mikael Nyqvist “Don’t change anything” can breathe easy: The new game is exactly as we all remember. It’s modest, minimalist, and not about to set the adventure gaming world on fire.
That’s not to say it simply goes through the motions, either. While I haven’t exhaustively gone through each installment (yet), this game is one of the stronger outings I’ve played, with an affecting core at the center of the mystery that gives it more of an emotional through-line than I’ve come to expect from this series, even if the actual storytelling is largely relegated to the background (as always).
In Murder Malady, Carol is contacted by the tormented Immodia Berling, who’s been grappling with a mystery that’s haunted her since childhood. At nine years old, for motives unknown, Immodia’s mother killed her father and then fessed up to the crime. After serving 13 years in prison, her mother simply vanished after an early release, with no word for over a decade – until now, with the arrival of a cryptic text to Immodia attempting to bring some closure while she still can. The message implies that Immodia’s mother’s is in poor health and with not much time left, but also raises more questions than answers. Immodia wants Carol to try to track down her location so she can finally understand what she’s been burdened by all her life: just what caused her mom to do such a thing?
From here, it’s everything you’d expect in a Carol Reed mystery, plus a couple small surprises. Some locales this time around are just a touch more expansive and labyrinthine than what I’m used to with this series. Never overwhelmingly so, but in a series first, I did opt to keep notes on the locations of all the various locked drawers, boxes, and other unsolved puzzles I found along the way so I wouldn’t lose track of them. Early on, before even discovering very many places to go, I had amassed eight of these “locked door” puzzles dotted around the game world with no sign of their keys, which was a bit daunting. (This was later outdone closer to the midgame, when I took stock of all the objects waiting for their keys, and counted up a whopping FOURTEEN!)
System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/Win7/Win8
CPU: 1.4 GHz
RAM: 514 MB
DirectX: 9.0
Hard Drive: 1.63 GB
