Review: Jam and the Mystery of the Mysteriously Spooky Mansion (2019)

Original post: https://misthold.dreamwidth.org/5848.html

Jam and the Mystery of the Mysteriously Spooky Mansion (2019) is a point & click reverse whodunnit set in a haunted house. You play as Jam, a tween detective with ambitions higher than her mystery-solving capabilities. At the start of the game, you've already captured the villain and now you need evidence to prove what villainy he was doing.

Explore through different rooms clicking on things to find “clues,” solve easy puzzles and put together “solutions” to solve the “crime.” These involve picking up both clues and interactive elements, and figuring out which element interacts where (it's not always obvious). It's a short game and not hard to play– the fun comes through the dialogue, the spooky atmosphere, and Jam and Alexandre (the villain) interacting.

There are 16 different endings, 15 through presenting evidence and 1 secret ending that I stumbled on accidentally. Once you present one solution, you can go back to that exact moment and present the other 14 combinations, no need to backtrack. All the endings lead to very funny dialogue, usually with a wham shot because of the demon.

Cool things: the default font is in the style of a 1980s computer game, but you can adjust it to something easier on the eyes (like I did). Also comes with a spoiler-free walkthrough/hints, including an endings checklist to make sure you get all the clue pairings.

Took me almost an hour to go through everything, and I really enjoyed it. I'd love to play a sequel game!

Price: $2.00

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I played the Mac OS version.