DobbyxEscape: Spooky Adventure

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

DobbyxEscape: Spooky Adventure (elsewhere going by the title DobbyxEscape: Halloween Adventure) is a family-friendly Graphic Adventure released on PC in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game puts players in the role of a young witch helping her witch friend by gathering ingredients for a potion she’s brewing.

I should note that we’re not given a proper introduction to any of the characters here, or any indication why we should care about them. This game clearly wants to place its focus on the gameplay, which is firmly in the “point and click” style – players will have to play the game either using the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, or moving around a verrrrrry slow cursor.

Yeah, one of Spooky Adventure’s biggest problems is how user-unfriendly it is for a game seemingly made for younger players. There’s no option to adjust cursor movement speed, and you can’t exit out of zoomed-in views with a button press, meaning that if you’re going to inspect a series of objects, you have to slooooowly move the cursor to the object, slooooowly move the cursor to the “X” at the upper-right to dismiss the box, then sloooowly move to the next object, and so on.

Even worse, this game doesn’t have any way to reveal “hot spots”, meaning you’re clicking around in the environment hoping to find something to interact with, and the game makes this even worse because some parts of the environment don’t bring up anything unless you clock the right spot on that item. Early on, you encounter a coffin, and clicking on it seems to do nothing… unless you click on the foot of the coffin, and are told that it’s locked (and presumably needs a key).

In addition to this, some puzzle solutions make zero sense. Early on, a talking cat tells you they won’t part with their candle unless you give them a trade. Okay, so I guess I’m looking for a fish or a cat toy or…? No, you have to give the cat an eyeball. At no point does the cat tell you they want an eyeball, you just have to be desperate enough to try everything and luck upon the correct answer.

I suppose there is one element in this game that isn’t absolutely terrible, and that is the colorful, cartoony 2D visuals. They’re not anything special, but they’re appealing enough to make this seem like a game youngsters might enjoy… at least until all this game’s issues frustrate them and they lose interest. Oh, and the game’s extremely repetitive music is incredibly annoying – you will want to mute this game within a few minutes of playing it.

In the end, DobbyxEscape: Spooky Adventure is quite possibly one of the best lessons you can find in how not to make a Graphic Adventure game. Paper-thin characters and plot, extremely frustrating gameplay, puzzles with nonsensical solutions, terrible gamepad controls, bad music… all of this within a game that from the outside looks like it will be a cute, fun, family-friendly take on the genre. Suffice it to say, there’s no fun to be found here.

tl;dr – Spooky Adventure is a family-friendly “point and click”-style Graphic Adventure that has players taking the role of a witch gathering ingredients for her witchy friend’s potion. As Graphic Adventure games go, this is a game that does almost everything horribly wrong – the plot and characters are virtually nonexistent, the gamepad controls are excruciatingly bad, the lack of hotspots makes hunting for interactive objects a chore, the puzzles sometimes feature nonsensical solutions, and the annoying repetitive music will have you muting the game within a few minutes. Do not inflict this game on yourself.

Grade: D-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Port/Remake

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