Check Out The Serpent of Isis (iOS) Review

There aren’t a lot of puzzle games that feature an actual plot, so a game like The Serpent of Isis is quite welcome in the App Store. There is much to be said about the quality expected in such a product since it’s not exactly easy to pull off. Nonetheless, this game does get to satisfy a lot of the mystery game criteria, which is great if you’re a bit of a noir fan.
This game combines a well-written story with interesting puzzle mechanics, featuring lots of hidden objects and inventory puzzles. They all roughly tie in to the mystery premise of the story, which is fairly alright. After getting a letter from some unknown person, you then set out to look for the Serpent of Isis, which is something like the Maltese Falcon. Like the detective you play as, you must have good attention to small details to find those hidden objects in this Where’s Waldo analogue.

This is where the visuals come in, being well-made enough to do well with the hidden objects mechanic to make it an absolute challenge. There are also other things like moving backgrounds and other details that make it look quite good all on its own. If you like aesthetics in games, then this gives you enough reason to grab this title. If you want to track down the five thieves who stole the artifact on board a train, then you’ll have to get serious with your observation skills and pick up the clues and solve the puzzles along the way.
You may want to sit down and take some time with this game though since most of it really is just looking for hidden stuff, although there are a few other types of puzzles in the mix like code-breaking and picture puzzles to keep things from being entirely monotonous. That does mean that you may be squinting a bit if you’re playing the iPhone version. Nonetheless, there are concise instructions before beginning each newly encountered feature and you do get rewarded for completing the challenges.
This mix of minigames may work all the time during gameplay as a lot of them don’t necessarily tie in to the story as well as they should. Also, the hidden object games tend to feature things that may not be entirely relevant to the whole picture, perhaps being there just for the sake of hiding the target object. Therefore, it’s hard to distinguish which is the important plot device or just some random object of no significance. It also doesn’t help that sometimes, you might find two or more possible target objects that fit the given description. You’ll have to take quite a bit of time to sort that.
Despite the faults, it still does press the right buttons. It’s no Professor Layton, but it’s pretty good all on its own. For a mystery puzzle game, The Serpent of Isis does have the quality and it makes good use of the Retina Display of later iOS devices. You can get the full version of this game for a fair price of $6.99, which is alright if you really are into this sort of game.