Artifex Mundi Fantasy Bundle Review

Before today, I had never experienced playing a game created by Artifex Mundi and I am quite disappointed that I hadn’t. To my surprise I was so captivated by the colourful art, casual story game play and very complicated (in my eyes) puzzles I played the first game within two days and the second game in just a day, bonus levels and all! As a fan of puzzle games this was definitely a game I was willing to sink my teeth into.

This is the fantasy bundle with the games; Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride and Eventide: Slavic Fable. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but this is different, I judged a game by its name and from what I depicted, the game about the bride would be related to a fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers? And the second game is about Slavic legends, I wasn’t 100% sure but either way they sound interesting. Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride places you in an enchanting world full of forbidden castles, creepy forests and a land full of secrets. You play as a twin sister returning home to a village called Ravenbrook to attend your sister’s wedding but you soon find out that not all is as it seems as a stranger arrives in to crash the wedding.

Eventide I found was a lot shorter than Grim Legends but had exactly the same elements of game play and story. This story line focuses more on Fable creatures and you play as the granddaughter of Boruta the heritage park’s curator. After receiving a strange invitation from the grandmother an evil force ruins your day (and your car) by taking away Boruta. You have to work together with the mythical Slavic creatures and the help of the mysterious Fern flower to defeat the evil villain.

The game play and controls were very easy to master and it’s pretty much a point and click, hidden object adventure game, so there would be puzzling mini games throughout where you can retrieve the necessary item to progress. For the hidden object games you can either do that type of game or change it to a domino game in The Forsaken Bride. For my first play through I decided to play the hidden object games and then the second time I did the dominoes as these were for achievements. As this is a game with a series of static screens you just have to move your cursor to the area you won’t to go, for example to the swamp then you just hold the A button and you’ll go to that location.

Now the animation, I was quite impressed with having not played any of Artifex Mundi’s games before as things get animated as you are investigating areas, which probably seems normal but it’s hard to describe. Imagine an animated kitten all the time in the bottom corner of your screen and when you have to use it to interact with an object on your main screen, it clambers off the button it’s on and then voila it’s right in front of you doing its thing. Trust me it’s a lot cooler to see for yourself.

The visuals are so aesthetically pleasing and combined with the animation everything is just a feast for the eyes. The settings for the different locations are colourful and bright and the details for the characters is very well done. The music matches well with the locations and whatever is happening in the story and the dialogue for the characters are all dubbed so you can just relax and listen.

So overall I thought this fantasy bundle was more than I expected and is definitely a good value for money. Sometimes it can be quite difficult to figure out what to do as there is just so much to take in and you sometimes have to exit and enter locations before something happens. I consulted a guide as I didn’t have the brain power to handle these puzzling games (plus I wanted to earn achievements hehe). Definitely give this bundle a go if you are up for a mentally challenging game, I’m now off to explore more of Artifex Mundi’s trove of hidden gems!

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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