In most escape-the-room style games, you play as someone trying to get out of a difficult situation, but in Last Will this is flipped the other way around as you try to get into the “heart” of your late grandfather’s house. And it’s a big house. And he was clearly a bit mad.
Developed by Lizard Factory, this game is a 3D first-person puzzle solver. If you’ve played the Room, it’s a similar concept wherein the player needs to solve a room’s puzzle in order to progress to the next one. As you can see from the screenshots, Last Will is a very pretty game. With smooth animations and creepy sounds, there is a slightly disturbed atmosphere about it without going too far down the horror path. It’s a little difficult to explain, but in reality it works well – with just enough ambience to make you uneasy but not scared.
The focus of the game is to get to the heart of your late grandfather’s house, in order to prove yourself to be a “true Gladsbury”. At the moment the game is in beta, but is due to be released on the 29th of August (fingers crossed). In the beta there is only one episode available, but there are three others that will unlock over time.
Controls are in a standard first-person configuration, with the addition of clicking to interact with objects. There are a few other handy UI elements too, such as the ability to view collected notes for a room in a single place, and the option to draw your own notes on the screen (shame that I discovered that after I had already made loads of paper ones!). If you get stuck, there are clues available – but I can happily report that I managed to eventually solve all but one of the puzzles in the available rooms without resorting to using these, and on the one puzzle I did use the clues, it was more to confirm my suspected solution to the puzzle (honest!).
The point is that, although the puzzles (that I came across) in Last Will are taxing, they are by no means impossible. This is aided by the realism factor in the game, as opposed to the kind of magic and illusion based puzzles you tend to come across in other games from this genre. They are also randomised, so the play experience is never the same twice.
While on the topic of replayability, there are different game modes to explore including a cooperative multiplayer. Each of the various options are accessed through 3D menu screens, which feel very polished and well put together – much like the rest of the game.
All in all I was impressed with Last Will. I think that the developers have done a fine job and made a game that is both enjoyable and intriguing to play. The addition of a storyline and flipping the typical escape formula around has created an interesting and unique game that I am looking forward to playing to it’s completion in a few days time.
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