Haunted Hotel: Charles Dexter Ward ~ save game vanished

I've been replaying this terrific game for a couple of days and am about 3/4 through to the end (plus a Bonus round). When I logged on to play today, instead of opening the game where I stopped last night, it started over from the beginning ~ as though I had never played the game at all. Why would it suddenly stop recording the last point of play and retrieving it from there?

I could find no way to restart where I had ended playing. I went looking in the Users/App/Data/(my name)/Roaming/SpecialBit/games area with no luck at finding a single saved game related to this title. This is an older game, came out in 2016, I think. Is this an unhappy glitch, and my only option is to restart?

Since this game only auto saves, I have a sneaking suspicion you are going to have to start over. Where did you get the game from? If it's a Big Fish game, you can try posting in that discussion forum. I couldn't find anything about this issue.

Yes, I bought it from Big Fish. That is where I get all my casual games.

Since I was near to finishing the main game, I think I'll bag it. I already had replayed in once, a couple of years ago. It would not be much fun to start all over again with the threat hanging over that it might bail on me again at any time.

I know the feeling. I had to do that once with a game and it really wasn't worth the effort since I was almost at the end too.

Reenie, I am beginning to wonder if something else is going on here, being as you were having trouble with a game not saving properly in another Big Fish game recently. The game was Shiver: Moonlit Grove, and your post can be found here.

It seems odd to me that this has happened twice now in such a short amount of time. I have played both of these games, spent a lot of time reading the BF forums when the games were released, and don't remember anyone mentioning such a thing. And I have had no problems with either game, having played them both more than once.

Good point, Marian.

While both problems forced me to stop playing a game, Marian, they are slightly different.

With Shiver: Moonlit Grove, I finished the Main game with no problem but was not able to access the separate Bonus Game. This was the third time I had played the game; I replayed it with no issues as recently as 2018.

With Haunted Hotel, the game simply aborted in the last 1/4 of play with all my progress lost (consequently taking away any option to access the Bonus Play at the end). I had replayed Haunted Hotel in 2019, again having no problems with any part of the game play.

It is a risk with these older games, that something about the old code becomes a stumbling block. I maintain an Excel spreadsheet on my BF game playing, noting how good each game was and whether it merited a replay. I have somewhere between 500 to 600 games in that spreadsheet and there sure aren't that many still listed in my BF account. Quite a few games have disappeared from my list of "Purchased Games."

I have restarted an older Ravenhurst now and will see what happens while playing that one.

True, the problems are slightly different, but they both pertain to save-game issues. That is what concerns me a little.

Let us know how the older Ravenhearst game goes.

And games don't just disappear from your Purchase History either, not unless Big Fish wants a giant lawsuit on their hands, so not sure what the problem is there. Sometimes a game might be alphabetized in a way that is unexpected, like under "The," for instance. Regardless, if you have any purchased games that you believe are missing from your Purchase History, you should contact Big Fish Customer Support ASAP. This is something that I have never heard anyone say has happened to them. This company would have gone out of business a long time ago if purchased games simply disappeared and nothing was done to rectify the situation.

I have at least one purchased game from about 12 years ago that has disappeared. I know it's not offered for sale any more and maybe was pulled by a developer.

Even if a game is removed from the website, it stays in your Purchase History, so I am really puzzled by this. I suppose it is possible that it could be a system glitch, but again I have never heard of this before. Games get pulled from the website but not from people's Purchase History.

All of the games in my Purchase History that have since been removed from the website (and there are quite a lot of them being as I have been buying games from Big Fish since 2006, and games do get removed from time to time due to changes in licensing/contractual agreements) are still there in my Purchase History, available for download.

Again, I would write to Big Fish about this - it's not supposed to happen.

See your Private Messages.