Long ago, the fearsome Captain Remmington ruled the Caribbean. Now, his body has been discovered but not all is as it should be when he comes back to life! Solve the mysteries of the Captain and get your daughter back in Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart!
Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is a Hidden Object Game that was originally released on the website BigFish, later on to Steam, and then even later on to current-gen consoles. The game follows a mother, the owner of a museum, who has recently acquired the body of the legendary Captain Remmington. However, after he comes back to life, takes her daughter, and then summons his ghost ship into the museum, she must go after her daughter, even if it means braving the lost Skull Island!
The story is really pretty simple and serves simply as the filler to lead you between the different puzzles. The animation in the game also follows the same simplicity, consisting of only a few gestures and basic movement in cutscenes. Lip syncing is non-existent, and oftentimes the characters will still be “talking” long after their voice has stopped talking.
The main meat of this game lies within the puzzles. You’ll be tasked with exploring both the ship and island to find various items that you need to solve the puzzles. A good portion of these items will be given to you after solving Hidden Object puzzles. For those unaware, Hidden Object puzzles are exactly as they sound – you’ll need to find items hidden within a scene from the list given to you. This list will vary from puzzle to puzzle, however you’ll usually be finding most of the items hidden in the scene between the repeats of the puzzles.
If you aren’t a fan of trying to do Hidden Object scenes then you do have another option – Mahjong. Every Hidden Object puzzle in the game has the option to solve a Mahjong board instead. These boards will get progressively more difficult as you progress in the game, although fortunately they both never get so difficult they become impossible and you have unlimited shuffles. Unfortunately, the controls in these is a bit finicky and I was often seeing issues with trying to select pieces while going fast. The game would frequently drop my inputs or think I had chosen a different piece than I had.
The other style of puzzles in the game are simply that – puzzles. Get the right pieces, put them together right, and solve it. Sometimes you’ll need to place things in the right order, other times you’ll need to unshuffle the image. Most of the puzzles are pretty simple to solve, but if you do get stumped on any an option to skip them will appear after a certain amount of time has passed.
While I didn’t notice any major issues in the game aside from the dropping of inputs during Mahjong, I also ran into the issue of some of the Hidden Object scenes being a bit finicky on deciding if you had actually selected the object properly. My main annoyance with the game was the stiffness of all of the animations, and the fact that when anyone said more than one line there was no pause in between the lines.
If you’re looking for something simple, relaxing, and short and you enjoy Hidden Object titles then you’ll find some enjoyment out of this game. Additionally, if you’re simply looking for an easy Platinum Trophy on PS4 then this game will also be right up your alley. I do feel like this is a game that would’ve benefitted far more from being on the Vita instead of PS4, as both the Mahjong elements and the Hidden Object elements would be much better with a touchscreen instead of a controller. You may want to snag this game on sale though if you can, as you may not find enough content within to justify the regular price of $9.99. As such, I do give this a recommend if you enjoy this style of game.
Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart Review Score
3.5/5
I was provided with a code by the publisher for the PS4 version.
