Rating: 6/10
Overview:
Grim spectres, howling banshees, and sly gremlins are yours to command as you unleash ghastly spirits on the town of Gravenville and scare the wits out of its citizens. In the world of the Ghost Master, spooks do your bidding, as you solve puzzles and unlock mysteries in a challenge that combines the best of strategy, adventure, and resource management games.
My Views
You know when you get to that point in the Sims where everything's okay and all of your sims are happy and doing well, you know the part where it gets boring and you start trying to make your sims miserable. Well this game is basically that point in the game permanently, you are tasked with scaring inhabitants out of every property you are sent to, its pure bliss and a great stress relief even if the game can feel clunky at times.
The small things
You have a team of ghost on each level and every ghost can only be linked to certain things within each environment, sure some can be linked to rooms or outside but some can only be linked to electrical items for instance. This system isn't the worst idea I have ever seen but sometimes you will take a ghost with you who can only be linked to one thing on the entire map (the ghost who link to air items instantly come to mind) although the interaction with these items are also pretty good like when electric based ghosts send sparks through televisions or pinball machines and particularly like the telekinesis power and how it sends everything flying across the room.
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The puzzle elements of the game are really well done, with you having to use certain ghosts powers to release trapped ghosts are creating situations where the inhabitants have to discover certain items to release each ghost so they will join your team, this adds a new layer to the game where you don't just simply go mad scaring everyone but instead try to help guide them into finding and releasing these ghosts for you.
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A couple of my favourite examples are using one ghost to cause an earthquake to reveal a skeleton and allow the ghost attached to it to posses a human and dropping the temperature in a room to cause a human to light a fire revealing the chimney to be blocked by another ghost. These puzzles are best and worst part of the game however.
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One of the levels tasks you with getting the people in the level to perform a ritual to revel a powerful spirit and it is an absolute pain in the neck, if you scare them off the level you fail but if you don't scare them then your ghost power drops and if that completely drops you also lose, so you have to scare them just enough to keep your ghost power up but not enough to scare them off, and that's not even mentioning getting them all down in thee basement at the same time. And then... and then you finally raise this spirit and you don't even get it, no you have to come back to that level later and then you can try to release it and get it to join your team. no... no thank you.
Gameplay
So you take a team of six ghost into a level and if you rescue of ghosts on the level they will also join you and you can use them to help you complete that level. Now each ghost has different powers and you must use these powers to complete puzzles and scare off anyone in the level. Now in-between levels you head off to your hunted mansion and upgrade these ghosts to have different powers to really suit your playing style which is much apricated as some of the ghosts feel to similar when you first acquire them. The first six you get plus the handful you unlock off of the first few levels are really sufficient to get you through the game. I think this may have been because the developer didn't want anyone to get stuck in the game as they hadn't saved a certain ghost.
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It's a shame really because this could of really elevated the game, forcing the player to try and complete all the challenges on every level. Saying that however it is probably best that this is not the case as sometimes I completed the necessary puzzle to rescue a ghost but it didn't unlock, why? and some feel almost damn right impossible to unlock like the ghost Lucky out of the pinball machine.
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Later Game
The later levels in the game do start to become slightly more difficult starting from the one with the ritual to raise the spirit but ultimately it never becomes so difficult that you can't reach the end. And some of the levels do become very creative like a hospital and a mob bosses boat.
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So with only this slight difficulty increase the ending to the game leaves you feeling like maybe there's part of the game missing and may not leave you with that sense of achievement.
With all that being said
This game has bags and bags of charm that will leave you smiling throughout its entire playtime. It is also unique in what it tried to achieve as a game and I have not found any other games that explores this type of resource management in this way. It also now on steam for £4 I mean its worth a go at that price for anyone's money, it is also simple enough that I could recommend it for 9+ but I must state that obviously there is ghosts, corpses and other mature themes, so although thy would understand how to play the game it is up to you as a parent if you think that you children can handle the themes.
My last thoughts
With everything I have said and the score I have given it you may think that I 'm not the biggest fan of the game, but you would be wrong I really enjoy it, but with its simplistic game play/ difficulty level and then the more mature nature of some of these ghosts backstories and horror themes and its cartoonish presentation it's hard to know who this game is aimed at. Then at £4 on steam maybe you would be willing to make up your own mind?
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Until next time... Toby