Matthew's grandmother wants him to take on the family business she left behind, something Matthew is surprised to hear considering he just came back from her funeral. In Carmel Games' spooky point-and-click adventure The Gatekeeper, Matthew's going to become a ghost hunter like his grandmother whether he likes it or not, starting with an evil spirit haunting a hotel. To play, just click on things to interact, and click two items in your inventory to try to combine them. The cursor will change when it passes over something you can use, so don't worry about pixel hunting. Or haunting, for that matter, since despite the game's morbid subject matter it's not particularly scary, though there are a few attempts at jump scares to be had. Carmel Games rarely try to play it straight when it comes to subject matter for their games, and they've managed to craft a sufficiently creepy atmosphere here. Most of the puzzles make sense, though some small items are hidden in the dark a bit too often, and while it's over too soon, hopefully Matthew's adventures will be even bigger and scarier from here on out.
About the tiles and gravestones -
A bit short, I was just getting interested and it was over. Nice little game though.
Walkthrough
In general this was fun to play, like all Carmel Games are, but also it was a MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT. As nikikinz above said it was too short but there were more problems than just that. Hopefully someone from the game company is reading this.
My biggest concern I will save for last [if you think this is TL;DR just skip to the bottom of the comment], but there are quite a few "minor" concerns that really aren't that minor:
* For one thing (and this is not a spoiler) there is a possible unfair advantage to people who speak French -- I do not -- since something in the game is spoken (audio) in French with no translation. I even replayed the game in French to see if maybe the audio would switch to another language but it did not. If you are going to use a "mysterious" language you should use one nobody actually knows.
(Can someone here translate that audio into a SPOILER comment?)
* Speaking of language (again not a spoiler) there are a LOT of misspelled words in the written English captions text, and some totally wrong words as well (one example is "gustes" instead of "guests" in both text and audio -- I think that is Spanish?).
* One last thing on language, there is a scene where
but he completely mispronounces several words just based on the spelling alone. Very sloppy audio work there.
The Carmel game mechanics worked rather well as always but there were some game design problems:
* There was a horrible lack of color contrast on some items. This is disrespectful of those game players who are color-blind/color-challenged.
In the Grandmother's house when you
the writing is almost impossible to see
At the hotel when you
the list is VERY difficult to see if you are color-challenged, especially between dimmed and not-dimmed items.
Once you reveal hidden texts in a game, then by all means show them clearly!
* I found myself wondering a lot about the characters' details:
and his story (especially the dates, which don't synch with other clues) is rather confusing.
* There are a lot of "red herrings" and "checkov's guns" in this game, which is NOT typical for Carmel Games.
In the Grandmother's house these include
and
I would also add
because even though that is clearly explained in the dialog, why put it there at all?
At the hotel there are
,
, and
.
NONE of these items seem to play any role in the game whatsoever!
Which leads me to my BIGGEST concern/issue with the game: This game feels incomplete. It feels like it was rushed out the door to hit an arbitrary deadline. It feels like Carmel Games didn't really care about the quality of the work, which translates as they didn't care about the users of the game. The final scene (one last time, not a spoiler) makes it clear they intend to follow up with a sequel to this game. If that sequel is
then this was not a real game, it was just a teaser. If this was a teaser then they should have labeled it as such! and teaser-or-not they should have done a lot better work finishing the game, spellchecking and proofing the dialog, thinking about the logic of the characters and the story, and generally doing what they have done well in the past. If their next game is as badly done as this one was, I will not be playing anything with their name on it again.
I am stunned by the above critique ... This is a FREE game! If you don't like it, don't play it.
If you have a constructive criticism (or two), that's fine, but this novel-length diatribe is downright ungrateful!
I like Carmel Games a lot. Their stuff is always offbeat and unexpected, and their production values are top-notch.
Just because something is free doesn't give it an excuse to be poor quality. I agree with all the above critiques (especially about the red herrings in Grandma's House) and believe they are justified in voicing them. They could potentially create a better game or make improvements on a sequel if they listen.
ok? when i found the elevator number and tried to use the elevator..what to do after find it?
Qruntsh, I think a lot of the out of place or unnecessary items in this game are actually references to horror movies and books. For example,
I have not seen enough horror movies to place all the references, but I think this explains a lot of other weird artifacts and characters in the game, like
And I would say this game is not a teaser, but more the first part of a bigger installment. In any case I am looking forward to play the follow up.
Does anyone even know what the voice in the elevator is saying?
Plus,
Not going to comment on your lengthy diatribe, except to say:
(a) I'm also colour-blind and didn't have a significant problem with the game in that respect, as I often do; and
(b) with respect to viewing the writing on the ceiling in grandmother's apartment, it can be zoomed in on and read quite easily. It's another "Checkov's gun", anyway. And by the way, for a person so concerned about proper spelling, you've misspelled "Chekhov".
Maybe your form of colour-blindness is different from mine, but I had no issues with this particular game.
Update