Artifact Seekers

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Artifact Seekers, not to be confused with Artifact Seeker, is a free-to-play Graphic Adventure game released in 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. This game puts players into the role of a pair of contestants on an odd sort of game show with an aesthetic that combines Indiana Jones and Survivor, with players solving puzzles to get to a hidden treasure.

The presentation here seems really outdated, with poorly-voiced characters, a pre-rendered introduction video that increasingly goes out of sync with its sound, and detailed 2D visuals that get the job done but lack any sort of memorable style.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game has players moving to various static locations and interacting with the environment, picking up useful items and using them to get past obstacles, while occasionally uncovering puzzles to solve.

This all works well enough I suppose, but feels similar to countless other games of this sort, and is made worse by sluggish cursor-based controls with a cursor that moves agonizingly slow. Players can alternately opt to use touchscreen controls in handheld mode, but these controls are frustratingly imprecise, and caused me to repeatedly have to redo puzzles because they detected the wrong input.

Even worse, at one point I got to a door that was shut with metal wiring, and I was sure I had to use wire-cutters in my inventory to cut them, but no matter how hard I tried it wouldn’t work. Eventually I decided I must be wrong and used the game’s hint system to direct me to the next action, only for it to tell me that this was indeed what I was supposed to do. So I’m not sure if this was poor detection, or a game-breaking bug. Either way, it made it impossible for me to continue.

It’s hard to complain too much about a free game, but in this case that game is so poorly-made and buggy that it made my time playing it agonizing until it literally kept me from proceeding. You have countless better options for Graphic Adventure games on Nintendo Switch, and I highly recommend you get one of those instead, even if you have to spend some money to get one.

tl;dr – Artifact Seekers is a Graphic Adventure game where players take the role of contestants on an Indiana Jones-meets-Survivor-style TV game show, with players searching static environments and solving puzzles. Unfortunately, this game is so poorly-put together it will only lead to frustration and eventually force you to stop playing altogether. I recommend you take a shortcut and just don’t play it at all.

Grade: F

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