Speaking of which, I was recently wandering around the "Time and Space Hunter Zone" and accidentally clicked on a new game called "Escape Room Candy Land". At first I was just casually watching it, but as soon as I played it I couldn't stop playing it - the familiar puzzle-solving atmosphere suddenly took me back to the summer when I spent all night pushing "Mysterious Island" on the PSP.
The game tells the story of a host named Deborah Whitwick who was suddenly attacked by an unknown virus at a reception at the Museum of History, and then the whole of New York fell into panic. As an ancient language expert, I was urgently sent to the archipelago to find the source of the epidemic. The opening animation, paired with the dimly lit museum corridor, reminded me of the tension I felt when I was alone exploring the unknown when I played "Lost in Blue" on the NDS.
What surprises me most about this game is that it retains the "slow-paced immersion" quality of the handheld era. Unlike many mobile games nowadays, they allow you to earn money, draw cards, and earn daily rewards. "Escape Room Candy Land" is a completely original puzzle-solving process: rummaging through boxes and cabinets to find clues, putting puzzle pieces together to assemble props, and solving mechanisms to trigger the plot. The mobile operation is also very smooth. The virtual joystick plus click interaction is more sensitive than the cross-keys of GBA back then.
I specially compared it with the original version (if it has an original handheld version): the mobile version has optimized the graphics, but the nostalgic feeling of "pixel style + hand-painted scenes" is not lost at all. Especially the old typewriters, yellowed maps, and rusty iron locks in the scene - every time the puzzle is solved successfully, the deep piano sound in the background music is just like what was heard in the PSP speakers back then.
Talking about the subject matter, the current puzzle mobile games are either a reskin of "Escape Room" or a stack of "horror puzzles". But "Escape Room Candy Land" connects "ancient languages", "history museums" and "virus traceability", and it has a wonderful feeling like a mashup of "Syberia" and "Ace Attorney". Every time I decipher a piece of ancient text, it's like solving the elf puzzle of "Golden Sun" on GBA, and my cerebral cortex is numb.
Of course, there are also disadvantages: the process is relatively short, it takes about two or three hours to complete the level, and the charging mode is 0 yuan, and there are no in-app purchases. It feels like the developer is purely using it for practice. But if you think about it from another angle, this is just like the afternoon when you couldn't afford the original cassette when you were a kid, you played the simulator on your computer to clear "Zelda" - a short-lived surprise, but an endless aftertaste.
One final word: If you are an old player who has played the "Escape Room" series on a handheld console, or likes the reasoning rhythm of "Ace Attorney", this game will definitely make you feel like you are young again. Especially those puzzles with ancient characters that are not so difficult that you will crash your phone, but they will keep you scratching your head for half an hour - just like those nights when you would hide under the covers and compete with the brain-burning mechanism on the NDS screen. 😌
Attachment: The game now has a download link in the "Time and Space Hunter Zone", and version 5.0 is perfectly adapted. Don't ask me how I know this, it's just the last stubbornness of veteran GBA emulator players. 📱