Today's game for Club Members, tomorrow's game for all.

You can download Grim Tales: The Time Traveler Collector's Edition here.



As always, please remember to come back and tell us what you think.

Happy gaming!

Thanks, Marian!

Ana

I'm playing this game right now.
It's very beautiful.

Thanks for letting us know, Cathy.

I have a soft spot for Elephant Games in general ever since the incomparable Nutcracker and in particular for Aunt Gray and Grim Tales although the series itself is decidedly uneven.

Time Traveler is looking pretty good. I just completed a simplified version of a mind boggling move-the-squares-around-available-central-squares puzzle that was on the spiral staircase in Nutcracker. The one in Time Traveler is by no means easy for me but far more doable. There are fewer tiles and when I reset I'm reasonably sure the puzzle went back to where the tiles were the first time instead of resetting randomly. The puzzle in Time Traveler is handsome and elegant, not as glitteringly gorgeous as the one in Nutcracker but that's okay. I could do the one in Time Traveler with some thought and some time, especially at the end, yet not so much time that I had forgotten entire earlier portions of the game when I managed to finish the puzzle.

I always have trouble with that type of puzzle, so, please, don't think I'm advocating for easier puzzles. If the one in Time Traveler had been as hard as the one in Nutcracker, I wouldn't be writing this now. I would be mulling over whether to reset again.

I like several of the earlier games in the series better. The one that has capsule descriptions of the many and varied transgressions and peccadillos of the Gray and McGray ancestors--can't think of the name--comes to mind. Thus far, Time Travelers' descriptions of similar collectible statues are a bit bland. At least those collectibles have a relationship to the story and aren't objects unrelated to anything going on in the game.

The rehabilitation of Anna's father continues. He is becoming a trifle nebbishy and is constantly handing me half of something useful. If he gets any nicer, he's going to sprout angel wings. He occasionally has intriguing lines of dialogue that add dimension to his character, for instance, saying he has a meeting at something, I think, called the Magic Scene club or reminiscing about the dissolute days of his youth. Those unique disclosures add color to his personality and make him unlike a run of the mill game helper. There should be more of these characterization enhancements.

I was just playing the demo of this game. Overall I like the Grim Tales series very much, even though the series (as 8dognight stated) has been uneven.

There's a puzzle at the end of the main game that stumped me. The directions said something about lining up dowels, and I didn't see any dowels or anything remotely resembling a dowel that moved.

I'm playing the bonus game. Dear old Dad appears with a spectral hangover.

I have come to an interesting puzzle which is enough of a challenge that I'm giving my brain a rest. The puzzle seems to be a variation of a slider that offhand I don't recollect seeing before although I'm sure I have somewhere. All else failed, so I read the directions. In addition, the clue to the finished item is subtle.