Publisher: Alawar Entertainment
Developer: Alawar Entertainment
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 1.7 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0-compatible graphics card, DirectX 9.0-compatible sound
Genre: Horror Adventure
ESRB rating: Not rated at press time
Release date: Available now

I’ve never been a huge fan of point-and-click adventures, preferring a more active style of game, but I know they’re extremely popular as mystery or horror games. Stray Souls: Dollhouse Story is a new horror puzzle adventure from Alawar, and I found myself a lot more engaged by it than I expected to be.

You play the role of a distraught wife desperate to find and rescue her kidnapped husband in the small, abandoned town where he apparently grew up. You’re guided by a mysterious, sentient ragdoll. Throughout the game, the heroine must find her way through the haunted town. As she uncovers the town’s bloodstained past, she must move quickly to keep a murderer who was never caught from adding her and her husband to his victims.

Stray Souls is a point-and-click, puzzle-solving adventure with hidden-object puzzles scattered liberally throughout the game. Finding and acquiring objects required to advance is almost always done by hidden-object puzzles, but there are also word, number and image puzzles. While fairly linear, the game really makes you think to advance, even on the easier mode of play.

A point-and-click adventure is rarely my first choice of games, but I found myself addicted to this one. The story is fascinating and gripping as you try to solve the mystery of the haunted town and save the heroine’s husband. The art is stylistic but beautiful, bringing the town and its horrors to life.

I wish I could say that Stray Souls has no problems. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with the gameplay, the story or the controls. Unfortunately, the one problem it has is a game-killing bug. I found that occasionally in different spots, and guaranteed at a certain point, exiting a hidden-object puzzle leaves the box that kept track of what you found at the bottom of the screen. This blocks your inventory, preventing you from using the items necessary to advance. Nothing I did was able to fix this, and I was extremely disappointed not to have been able to finish the game.

Stray Souls is a good game, deep and engaging. The story is mature and fascinating, and the puzzles are thoughtful and challenging. I just wish the fatal flaw hadn’t ruined the game for me. I know not everyone has encountered this bug, so I’ll still recommend this as a good game, but be forewarned that this game-killing flaw is lurking.

Our Score:
Our Recommendation: