Developer Color Gray Games Publisher Playstack Format PC, Switch Release 2023
Not because we didn’t want more (we did), nor that it sold poorly (it didn’t), but because sibling developers Andrejs and Ernests Klavinš had already tied up the bulk of their story’s loose ends, having ruthlessly dispensed with the lion’s share of its major players. We hadn’t considered a prequel, one that gives a couple of its poor unfortunates more time in the sun: The Spider Of Lanka pitches you into the sticky climes of the fictional kingdom, ultimately inviting you to identify the person with the arachnid alias.
The title of the first of three cases, The Overly Enthusiastic Card Game Tournament In The Yellow Lily, is a misleadingly euphemistic moniker for a case that shows the Klavinš have lost none of their bloodlust. This single-screen conundrum features what looks like six bodies (one is merely drunk, a detail that isn’t as throwaway as it appears), tasking you not only with naming them all but the chronology of their deaths. In addition to observing their positions, this requires you to decipher the rules of an unfamiliar card game. Despite the relatively confined space, it’s not exactly a gentle introduction like the main game’s opener: rather, this understands that its players will have acclimatised to solving more complex cases. Indeed, it’s hard not to marvel at just how much information can be contained within a single screen.
The other two chapters are more expansive. The next focuses on a sabotaged ritual that results in two corpses, and asks you to identif...
Not because we didn’t want more (we did), nor that it sold poorly (it didn’t), but because sibling developers Andrejs and Ernests Klavinš had already tied up the bulk of their story’s loose ends, having ruthlessly dispensed with the lion’s share of its major players. We hadn’t considered a prequel, one that gives a couple of its poor unfortunates more time in the sun: The Spider Of Lanka pitches you into the sticky climes of the fictional kingdom, ultimately inviting you to identify the person with the arachnid alias.
The title of the first of three cases, The Overly Enthusiastic Card Game Tournament In The Yellow Lily, is a misleadingly euphemistic moniker for a case that shows the Klavinš have lost none of their bloodlust. This single-screen conundrum features what looks like six bodies (one is merely drunk, a detail that isn’t as throwaway as it appears), tasking you not only with naming them all but the chronology of their deaths. In addition to observing their positions, this requires you to decipher the rules of an unfamiliar card game. Despite the relatively confined space, it’s not exactly a gentle introduction like the main game’s opener: rather, this understands that its players will have acclimatised to solving more complex cases. Indeed, it’s hard not to marvel at just how much information can be contained within a single screen.
The other two chapters are more expansive. The next focuses on a sabotaged ritual that results in two corpses, and asks you to identif...
You're reading a preview of
Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2023