If you’ve been following this blog for a bit, it won’t be much of a surprise when I say a couple of weeks ago I was in the mood to play a horror game! It’s one of my favorite genres after all so I often have at least one horror game in rotation. But this time around I wanted to play something a bit different. I wanted to play an older kind of horror game. So I went through my Steam library and found a game I bought ages ago but never really played much. That game being a point and click style horror game called Scratches.

For those who don’t know, point and click games are just that, they are games where you point and click at things. To be a bit more descriptive, they are usually adventure and puzzle games where you move from static screen to static screen examining your surroundings and are usually given very little information on how to proceed. Usually, they place players in situations where they need to use their wits and the various items they will be picking up as they explore their surrounds in order to continue the game. For an example from Scratches itself, there’s a door that’s locked but a key to unlock the door is already in the lock, just on the other side of the door. In order to get the key, you have to use some newspaper, place it under the door, then use another tool to push the key out of the lock so it falls on the paper and you can pull it to the other side under the door with the paper! (This doesn’t end up working and you need to find a different key to open the door, but still a good example of the problem solving you need to use in the genre!) This genre of game is extremely old, and one you don’t see all too often nowadays, mainly because this style can be seen as pretty boring now and the fact that most point and click games are pretty confusing certainly doesn’t help! A lot of people usually aren’t in the mood for the kind of problem solving I laid out above and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that.

You’re also probably wondering how a point and click game, a genre not super known for it’s animation and movement, might make for a good scary game. Despite that limitation, there have been a number of horror themed point and click games! Not many nowadays, but still! While the lack of movement and such might seem like a draw back it actually can really help with the horror. Kind of like with fixed camera angles in other horror games, point and click games also basically force the player to look at things, this can give a great chance to show some terrifying imagery! And while Scratches does have some of this, I’d say the main part of its horror actually comes from more of the mystery aspect of it and what the game doesn’t show. Mystery and story telling in general being one of the other big draws of point and click games! With that in mind, let’s get to talking about the game itself.

Now, like I was saying before, the game’s story and mystery are probably its biggest draw. So with that in mind I won’t be spoiling much of it here but I’ll give you at least the set up!

You play as Michael Arthate, a successful horror writer looking for some inspiration on how to end his latest book. To help with that, he buys, with the help of his friend Jerry Carter, an old Victorian estate out deep in the woods. That estate being called Blackwood Manor as it was last owned by the James and Catherine Blackwood. The manor being creepy from the get go was exactly what Michael wanted! He wanted those vibes, hoping they’d help finally inspire him to finish his book. But not even one night passes before he realizes that this manor has history, some very serious history…

As you can probably guess, the story centers around Michael, the player, figuring out what really went on with the Blackwoods and their manor with the entire game taking place there over the course of three days. And like I said before, the story itself is what really drew me in and kept me going so I won’t spoil anything. But I will praise it! It provided a great mystery that had me guessing at quite a few things. Not only that, the game managed to provide plenty of scares with the mystery. The fact I was guessing and trying to figure things out was super satisfying, with plenty of ‘ah-ha!’ moments. This is honestly why mysteries work great for point and click games in general. The story ties in perfectly with the ‘ah-ha!’ moments you’ll be getting from the game play as you figure things out.

And not to get too spoilery, but despite the genre, Scratches does have some moments of real movement and not just images. And because these moments are so few and infrequent, when they did happen they managed to scare me way more than any other jump scare! I figured I’d mention this despite it giving a bit away about the game in the hopes that it’ll draw some people in that were turned away from the point and click nature of the game. Even though they shouldn’t be because exploring Blackwood Manor in this way was honestly a blast!

I should have mentioned this before but I don’t really play a lot of point and click games. This is honestly the only one I’ve ever really played! I’m not sure what convinced me to buy this game so many years ago but I’m glad it did as Scratches really has got me wanting to try more from this genre when it comes to horror.

While I have played plenty of games about mystery and adventure, Scratches was probably the first time I really felt like I was truly solving a mystery. Like I was saying before, puzzles and figuring things out on your own are a big part of this genre and this game is no different. While the game does have a ‘hint mode’ you can toggle on, it barely does much for you so you’re mostly on your own. This makes sense given how short the game is overall. This game could easily be finished in a sitting if you know exactly what to do. That being said, Scratches‘ cryptic nature is a bit of a double edge sword. While most of the time it feels super rewarding to figure things out for yourself, some things feel like they need some insane leaps in logic in order to figure out. Knowing the overall length of this game is pretty short and that you are suppose to feel this confused does help a bit, but there were still plenty of moments of frustration when it felt like the game wasn’t giving me enough information. I won’t lie, there were a few moments where I did need to consult a walkthrough just to progress. If I had known the game was so short though, I probably would have tried beating my head a little harder but even then some of this stuff was crazy to figure out.

For example there is one puzzle where you need to get some light down into a crypt in order to read one of the plaques. This puzzle involves some odd leaps in logic to say the least…

You get into the crypt after cutting some wire that was keeping the doors closed. After that, you can check around the upstairs area and the downstairs area. Downstairs there is one plaque you can’t read due to it being too dark. The solution to getting more light down there is this. First, when checking out one of the plaques upstairs you might notice a rock by it. Despite seeing plenty of rocks when walking around outside, this one you can pick up! After realizing you need more light, Michael figures he can break one of the stain glass windows in the ceiling with the rock in order to get more light to shine through. However, it has to be the correct window. Some of the windows he’ll state he’s not strong enough to break. When you do finally throw the rock at the correct window though, it doesn’t break. So rather than assuming you simply can’t break it, the game expects you to try and throw the rock again. This time the window will break and more light will come shining in. However, this does not solve the problem. Despite there being a grate in the floor to let light shine down, there isn’t enough light. And here’s where things really get convoluted…

Next, you need to go back into the house away from the crypt, go upstairs to the main bedroom, unscrew an adjustable mirror, take that back to the crypt, use the wire you cut from the doors to tie the mirror to the wall by the light which will reflex the light down the stairs and then you can read the plaque!

I honestly have no clue why the game thought this insane roundabout way was what players would think of. I can only imagine that people figured this out after literally trying everything else! I should mention that all you get from doing this is the knowledge that the plaque in the crypt belong to a person with ‘R’ at the start of their name. The rest of the plaque is eroded. That’s it! This is actually a hint for a future puzzle that is also a massive leap in logic but I won’t go through explaining that…

Puzzles and solutions like this really did leave a sour taste in my mouth. I feel like even if I had figured this out without resorting to looking at a walkthrough, I still wouldn’t have been satisfied since it just seems like such a weird solution. Partly because you have some matches in your pocket! Ones you can’t use because you have a limited amount and they needed to be saved for specific parts, and thankfully the game won’t let you soft lock yourself by using them in the wrong place, but still! The fact that I had a match in my pocket and couldn’t use it was maddening. Thankfully the game doesn’t have too many puzzles like this but the ones it does have did hamper my overall enjoyment of the game. It might be because I’m not someone who really plays a lot of point and click games so I don’t have the proper mindset but I still felt like these solutions really did require either a leap in logic or trying everything else before stumbling upon the answer.

It really is lucky that I was so invested in the game’s story by this point. Which, again, was quite fun to piece together bit by bit until the very end. And some of that rewarding feeling of figuring things out would have been lost if the game held my hand too much. If it had, it wouldn’t feel like I was figuring things out as much as the game was simply taking me on a ride through the story. So by the end of things, I was still satisfied enough with my time playing Scratches for me to recommend it!

Again, this could be because I haven’t played many point and click games so I don’t have a lot to compare to Scratches, but I still think it’s worth the playthrough! And for me personally, it has got me wanting to try more of these kinds of games. Which is another reason why I’m recommending this game in the end! Sadly, if you were wanting to play this game yourself after reading all that, it’s going to be a little hard.

Remember how I mentioned that I bought this game a long time ago? Yeah, that’s the only reason I’m able to play it now. You are sadly no longer able to purchase the game on Steam. The store page is still up but there is no way to buy it. From my limited bit of research, it seems that the license to publish the game expired and no one reupped it so it had to be taken down. Something that is always sad to see regardless of the game. However, while doing that limited bit of research I did find out there is a Discord around this game! And the game’s developer has apparently handed out keys for this game in the past on this Discord. So you may want to check that out if you’re interested!

If that sounds like a bit much to go through in order to play this game that I was pretty critical of then you may want to check out the game ASYLUM by Senscape instead! While I have yet to play it myself, it’s apparently a spiritual successor to Scratches! It only came out recently and has some pretty positive reviews on Steam. Perhaps check that out instead if you’re wanting something like Scratches but don’t want to jump through so many hops to play it legally. I also plan on checking out ASYLUM myself sometime so stay tune for that review someday!

All in all, I did enjoy my time with Scratches! It wasn’t the best game and may not even be that great by point and click standards, but it did certainly open my eyes to a genre I probably wouldn’t have payed much attention to otherwise! And for that, it definitely deserves a shout out and recommendation!

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Are you going to try Scratches out? Have you ever played a point and click game? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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