Seemingly finishing the series, Amanda the Adventurer 3 feels closer to the tight puzzle design of the original, but the ending feels unsatisfying.
I enjoyed Amanda the Adventurer rather a lot. Enjoyable puzzles involving video tapes manipulating the world around them and an interesting narrative about a missing girl who was part of a seemingly buried kids TV show came together to make an engaging experience that wrapped up in around three hours. Whilst the sequel felt a bit more sprawling with more tedious puzzles, it did push the story forward, setting up for this third and seemingly final game in the series. I appreciate that this feels closer to the original’s well crafted puzzles, and whilst the tale is still enjoyable, the ending leaves questions unanswered and a very brief send off for what seemed to be a much broader story. Perhaps I should consult with some lore hunters as maybe I’m just not smart enough to put all the pieces together.
Spoilers for the previous games are coming up, so reader beware. After a brief flashback scene featuring someone breaking into Hameln’s lab, Amanda the Adventurer 3 picks up immediately after the end of the second game. Riley has found her way into that very same lab underneath the library and is determined to find out just what happened to Rebecca Colton who played Amanda in the titular series. Armed with one more video tape, she sets about solving the puzzles that will reveal the truth, and maybe save Rebecca from whatever fate seems to have befallen her.
If you’ve played the previous games, then you likely know what to expect, and if you haven’t then starting on the third game seems a bit silly. For the uninitiated, you’ll need to watch the video tape and pause it at certain points to go and find part of a puzzle’s solution in the environment. If you do this successfully, you’ll find the next video tape and can move on. If not, the tape ends and you’ll need to run through it again to figure out what to do. I will say that this time the main puzzles seem to be pretty accessible, and I didn’t have too much trouble working them out. Although the rat feeding one did take me a few runs to work out exactly what it wanted. That experimentation is part of the fun here though, and you should expect to get it wrong multiple times.
Your initial tape hints at you needing to use the screens around the office space you begin in to find a code. Inputting the code into a Blabbo toy — one of several references to the previous games — reveals more clues and video tapes that allow you to progress. This first tape is kind enough to hint at when you should be pausing it to look around, but later ones need you to pay attention more closely. Admittedly, you can normally tell due to something changing in the background on the tape or the image lingering on something for longer than you’d expect. Most of them are very accessible and you shouldn’t have huge difficulty getting through the game.
You’ll likely get the bad ending first time through though, and much like in the previous games there are several secret tapes you need to find by solving additional puzzles in the environment. Finding these is required if you want the good ending, and many of them are quite tricky. With that said, previous players know this and will be scouring the area for clues anyway, and the fact that this office and secondary area is small and easy to search around makes it simpler than the second game in the series.
Amanda’s video tapes are as bizarre as in the previous games, with the titular character regularly becoming confused and friend Wooly trying to get things back on track in increasingly strange ways. Later tapes become more unsettling, with bizarre imagery and overt jump scares. Again though, if you’ve played anything in the series, you know what to expect and you won’t be disappointed.
With that said, I was somewhat disappointed with the ending. It feels quite underwhelming and doesn’t clear up a few points nearly as neatly as I’d hope. It’s likely that this is the sort of stuff aimed at Game Theory and their ilk to solve by rifling through files and spotting a misshapen brick or somesuch. I felt like there should be more to the ending than there was though.
Ending aside, this is a solid send off for a series that people have enjoyed for some time. I hope this is the actual end point though, even with those unanswered questions, as I’d hate for this tightly made series to sprawl out into the likes of a Five Nights at Freddy’s that keeps going long after it’s finished. There’s a consistent story, tone, and gameplay style here that works as a short episodic series, and those who haven’t played the series should give it a look if they enjoy interesting puzzle games. Those who have played the previous entries can rest assured that this is more of that series and will enjoy it as much as they have the previous games.
Amanda the Adventurer 3 is available now on PC.
