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3 Cards to Midnight header image
review: 3 Cards to Midnight
Pros
Gripping atmosphere; superb writing; engrossing plot full of unexpected twists; believable and well-rounded characters; terrific noir-inspired musical score; stylish interface design.
Cons
Gameplay becomes a bit repetitive; some objects are hardly recognizable; lack of subtitles can be impairing.
Verdict
4 stars out of 5
About This Score »

If you are a fan of story-driven games, dark mysteries and psychological tales (and don’t mind a more casual style of gameplay), you won’t need a Tarot card to know that 3 Cards to Midnight is the right game for you.


When 3 Cards to Midnight was first announced, the adventure community was thrilled. Ten years after Overseer, Chris Jones and Aaron Conners, the creative minds behind the beloved Tex Murphy saga, were finally coming back. Genre newcomers may not have completely understood this elation, but for longtime adventurers the news was an unexpected but extremely welcome surprise. With their mind-blowing stories and rich gameplay, Tex Murphy’s last three adventures are rightfully counted amongst the genre’s masterpieces, and Tex himself is such a multi-layered and identifiable character that he surely deserves his spot beside the likes of Gabriel Knight and Guybrush Threepwood. Make no mistake: 3 Cards is not a new Tex Murphy game, but with such a remarkable pedigree, the expectations surrounding Jones’ and Conners’ latest effort were sky high from the outset.

That initial anticipation took a step backward, however, when it became apparent that the new game would take a different approach than the Tex adventures of years past, featuring a substantial “hidden object” component that’s become so popular in the casual gaming market. Sensing from early feedback that the balance was not quite what they’d planned, Jones and Conners decided to redesign significant aspects of the game to increase the focus on the story even more, enhance the cinematic quality and better integrate the puzzles within the main plot. Still, the question has lingered as to whether the game would really end up being a casual title or a full-fledged adventure game.

Since this will be an important issue to some players, it’s better to answer the question right away: it’s somewhere in between. No, 3 Cards to Midnight isn’t a traditional adventure, but while it’s true that the gameplay has a lighter and rather casual feel, calling it a hidden object game would be like saying an icecube sank the Titanic, and such understatement does no justice to the label it truly deserves. Regardless of one’s gameplay definitions, the one issue that isn’t open to any interpretation is what Jones and Conners have been saying all along: 3 Cards to Midnight is a “story game”. And oh my, what a story. Never mind casual games, the story here is richer and deeper, both in presentation and scope, than the vast majority of adventures, and the characters – always believable and well-rounded – undergo serious development throughout the course of the game.

The tale begins rather abruptly, with a young woman named Jess Silloway finding herself in a dark room. Jess has no recollection of her past few days and doesn’t know where she is or why she is there. In front of her sits a mysterious man, whose face we can’t see and whose name we don’t know. Between them lays a deck of Tarot cards, which the man says can help Jess regain her memory. The Arcana, he explains, are connected to her life by means of their inscrutable magic, and if Jess concentrates on one at a time, she will be able to unveil the mystery behind her amnesia. Each of the game’s seven chapters begins with this man asking Jess to pick three different Tarots and lay them on the table, where the player can read their atmospheric descriptions and then choose in what order Jess will deal with them. When she picks one, the mystical power of the Tarot brings a picture to her mind, usually an image of a location relevant to her story. For example, the High Priestess – a card of femininity and motherhood – connects to her mother, Lila, and thus the image suggested by the card is that of Jess’ parents’ house. After hearing a brief explanation of the emotions Jess feels toward the place, the scene switches to a first-person view of a cozy living room. And then the real game begins.

In a typical hidden object game, players can expect a list of random items to find amongst all the mess, but here there’s only a certain number of blank spaces, and it’s up to you to “construct” the list in the first place. Continuing the example of the High Priestess, when asked what words popped into her mind when thinking of her mother and her childhood home, Jess answers “house”, “school” and “honey”, the name Lila used to call her. Through a word association process, the player must therefore find all the objects whose name produces another word or common expression. For example, clicking on a little statue of a boat constructs the word “houseboat”, while a tiny porcelain doll provides the word “dollhouse”. The exercise is as much a test for your brain as one for your eye, and it’s a welcome variation that forces the player to think, not just randomly click on everything. Most importantly, this process strikingly mimics what Jess herself is going through.

When the player has filled every blank space (which number as many as twelve in the later chapters) for each keyword, it’s then time to solve a standalone puzzle in order to unlock the final memory connected to that particular Tarot. These puzzles – which can be completely skipped if they prove too tough a challenge – have been cleverly written into the plot, representing the obstacles Jess must overcome to gain some vital information, like cracking a computer password, interpreting an astral chart or deciphering encrypted messages.

This is all the gameplay you’ll get in 3 Cards to Midnight, and I must admit that, after the first four chapters, the whole word association mechanic started to feel a bit repetitive. Furthermore, it requires an excellent knowledge of English. Certain associations rely on figures of speech and idiomatic expressions, or even pop-culture references, and players must know the language well enough to get through the linguistic meanders of the game. Even with an adequate language competence, the game is difficult at times, because some associations feel a little arbitrary. For example, I still can’t understand why “night owl” is a correct pair, while my repeated clicks on a statue of a horse were deemed incorrect. I expected that “mare” would be a clever solution (thus composing “nightmare”), and it didn’t seem a stretch.

Admittedly, English is not my native language, so I found myself resorting often to a good dictionary, and after the twentieth keyword, I was definitely tiring of the process. Thankfully, the story is so mesmerizing that it provides more than enough motivation to proceed, and the standalone puzzles are nicely varied and provide a refreshing diversion from the word association segments. I particularly liked deciphering an old runic document, using a ouija board to communicate with a strange entity, and examining two photographs in search of subtle differences and clues. On the other hand, I could have lived without a puzzle concerning the zodiac, which seemed far-fetched and a bit contrived.

Although players must resolve all three cards in each chapter, the freedom to choose the order means that the way the plot unfolds can vary greatly. For example, in one chapter I unlocked a memory concerning a certain man, whose name I didn’t know at that point, paying an unexpected visit to Jess. I was puzzled: who was that man, and why didn’t Jess comment on his name? It was almost like she already knew him. Later on, I discovered the memory where Jess first met this man. It may sound tortuous, but the writers were so careful that regardless of the order you choose, you can always understand the development of the story. Personally speaking, I found the game even more entertaining when I unlocked memories in an odd order, because the process of putting together the various pieces was incredibly satisfying.


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Where to Buy [affiliate links]

3 Cards to Midnight is available at Big Fish Games!


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Hidden Object and Casual Adventure Games at Big Fish