Even with one’s radar sweeping low, it’s hard to pick up signals from a valley. Maybe that’s the figurative reason why so little is known about The Legend of Crystal Valley, a new fantasy adventure from Croatian studio Cateia Games. Such obscurity is about to change in a big way, however, as the game has not only recently appeared front and center on the horizon, but it’s within mere weeks of its final release. In preparation for that moment, I’ve now had the opportunity to take the first few steps into this uncharted valley through a playable demo from its developers.

The Legend of Crystal Valley tells the story of a young woman named Eve, who receives a disturbing letter from her father that speaks cryptically of “an end”, along with his favourite medallion. Eve hasn’t spoken to her father in five years, having drifted away in the aftermath of her mother’s death, and in concern for his safety, she rushes to her childhood home. When she arrives at the small farmstead in France, however, her father is already missing, and it’s up to Eve to piece together the clues to his disappearance.

The demo I played takes place solely in this quiet, real-world setting, introducing the scenario with a voiceover narration and cinematic cutscene before allowing control of Eve at the steps of her father’s house. LOCV is a traditional third-person, point-and-click adventure, and players will feel instantly familiar with the game’s format. A smart cursor changes to identify interactive items and exits on screen, and left-clicking any functional objects will call up a small sub-menu with both Look and Use options. Other hotspots can only be observed, but these provide a surprising degree of depth in their own right, as clicking on such items provides three different comments from Eve if you click through all the way. This never appeared necessary in the early going, but it’s a nice way to reward the patient player yet keep the pace moving for those who aren’t.

Like many independently produced games, this object commentary is offered only through text description, and in fact the only voiceover in the game is the opening narration. Music plays in some locations but not constantly, and had a kind of pleasantly soothing, New-Agey feel in the demo. Sound effects are fairly sparse (not that I was making a racket exploring the house), but the farm hens greeted me with suitably ambient clucking as I roamed around outside.

Graphically the game appears to be something of a mixed bag, which isn’t surprising given its budget limitations. The pre-rendered background artwork is certainly pleasing enough, but the character models look a bit unnatural and a fair number of corners have been cut in terms of player animation. On the plus side, the game offers a variety of resolutions, including widescreen, although the latter tends to look stretched rather than properly scaled, so I opted for a lower resolution with the game picture centered on screen.

LOCV’s gameplay is as traditional as its presentation, as I spent my time wandering around and picking up anything that wasn’t nailed down, whether I had an apparent use for it or not. Inventory is opened by clicking an unobtrusive button, where you can access and combine items as necessary. A few select objects can be double-clicked to view up close, but it's unclear which, so you’ll want to try it on everything, even if most of your efforts are unsuccessful. Helpfully, a text description of each item appears when you simply mouse over them, avoiding any of those “what exactly am I looking at?” moments that some games unintuitively impose.

The inventory also has a journal and a section labeled “Magic”, and it’s here where the game hints at the much larger story waiting beyond these opening scenes. By solving an enjoyable multi-level inventory puzzle weaved around a contextual riddle, I opened up a whole new area that… unfortunately, ended the demo. Yes, much to my chagrin, I saw nothing of the fantasy world the developers claim is filled with “strange creatures and characters”, and despite the advertised comparison of Eve to Alice in Wonderland, I wasn’t able to tumble down the rabbit hole myself. And in a game with a reported 9 chapters, 200 locations, over 40 key characters, and 150 items and combinations, it’s clear that my journey had barely begun.

So what comes next? Well, who better to ask than the developers themselves, so with no regard to pre-release crunch time, we flagged down not one but four of the game’s designers to tell us a little more about what to expect in the weeks (and lands) ahead.