Following Freeware: July 2012 releases

Mystery Shack Mystery

Twin brother and sister Dipper and Mabel have recently moved to the town of Gravity Falls to live with their Great-Uncle Stan. “Grunkle” Stan runs the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap and museum of the weird. One day, up in their attic-based bedroom, they find that he has inadvertently shut down most of the lights and locked them in. Using all their wits, can the twins escape this unfortunate entrapment?

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Based on their new cartoon series, Gravity Falls, this Family Channel game offers a bit of light family-friendly fun. The graphics are done in a fairly high-detail cartoon style that matches those of the series itself. The presentation is largely realistic except for the characters’ large heads. The shack appears to be built in a mostly log cabin style, but it’s full of weird knick-knacks such as shrunken heads and a dinosaur skull. The animation is also at a level with the television series, including background movement, most notably whichever twin you are not controlling doing their own thing. The title screen is backed by the TV show theme, with a softer, more mysterious musical piece backing actual gameplay.

As befits a game based on a family cartoon, both the content and the puzzles are at a fairly simple level. At the start of the game you pick one of the twins to play. That character is then used throughout, the other twin accompanying you in the background to offer observations if clicked on. The puzzles vary slightly between the two twins, giving the game some small replay value. Puzzles mostly involve hunting for items, such as door keys or the missing teeth of the dinosaur skull. Some of these are in plain sight, though others require a bit of environmental manipulation to locate. There are also some combination and inventory application puzzles. In case you get stuck, there is a hint button that will suggest an area of the shack that is worth investigating when pressed.

Mystery Shack Mystery can be played online at the Family Channel website.

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