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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: M9 Games Released: June 4, 2026 Requirements: OS: Windows 10 or higher Processor: Minimum, Intel Core i3 33100 or AMD FX 6400; Recommended, Core i5 8400/AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Memory: Minimum, 4 GB RAM; Recommended, 8 GB RAM Graphics: Minimum, Nvidia GTX 750 Ti or Radeon R7 370; Recommended, Nvidia GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 580 Storage: 15 GB available space
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By flotsam Darkstone Bay M9 Games There was a shipwreck 300 years ago. Or was there? A Spanish galleon went missing, presumed wrecked, but no debris or survivors were ever found. Does this island hold the secrets as well as the answers? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make your way through and across the island, one area at a time, to try and find out. Darkstone Bay is very much a series of escape rooms. Your first location is a small rocky beach; solve the environmental conundrum/s and the path to the next location will unlock. The objective is the same, and so on we go. A cave system awaits, as well as mines and forests and more coastal areas. It isn’t a pretty game to look at, and I thought the visuals were a bit ‘blocky,’ but it provides a perfectly acceptable canvass for the main aspect of the game which is the puzzles. I did enjoy them, and thought as a whole that they sat in that goldilocks zone of being ‘just right’ in terms of challenge. Everything you need in each area is there with you; you just need to find it, interpret it and then apply it. What does that colour pattern mean, is that image relevant, what do I do with this? While you will pick up and use some items, most puzzles involve pressing or turning or pulling levers or buttons or wheels in the correct order to lower the barrier in order to move on. Ambient and situational sound as well as a tranquil soundtrack accompany your first-person endeavours. You have complete freedom of movement using the keyboard and mouse. Using the default bindings (you can change them which I always like) W moves you forward and the mouse will steer and left click interacts with hotspots. Right click will pick up an object, which then hangs centre screen until you place it somewhere. Tab opens your inventory but I think I only ever had one item which was discarded once I used it. T will bring up your flaming torch which you will need in a few places. Your curser is a small white circle fixed at centre screen. It will become solid white in response to something you can interact with. The game exclusively autosaves, generally when you transit a location, and a little message top left will tell you it has occurred. It creates a new save point each time and I had about 20 when I had finished. You can choose ‘continue’ from the menu to pick up at the last save point before you left off, or load any earlier ones. While I prefer to save when I want to, I thought the autosave function here worked well. It took me about three hours, didn’t cost much, and gave me a good puzzling time. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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