Game Review: Lost Grimoires – Stolen Kingdom (Xbox One)

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom is the latest hidden object/point & click/puzzle adventure game from the vast Artifex Mundi catalogue to be released on Xbox One. Artifex Mundi are the leaders in these types of games with engaging stories, fun & interesting puzzles & enough variety to make each one feel distinctly separate.

You can read all our reviews so far below:

Clockwork Tales: Of Ink & Glass
Nightmares From the Deep: The Cursed Heart
Enigmatis: Ghosts of Maple Creek
Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren’s Call
Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood
Dark Arcana: The Carnival

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom puts you in the shoes of an alchemist’s apprentice who returns home to finish her training. Her home is not the same as it once was though, filled with corruption & injustice.

Finding a strange amulet & encountering a mysterious man who seems to know about her parent’s disappearance many years before, the alchemist is taken on a fantastical journey to learn the truth.

Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdom follows a very similar format to what regular players of Artifex Mundi games are used too. Played from a first person perspective, you use a cursor to interact with objects, picking them up for use in puzzles & interact with characters. Interacting with characters offers conversation choices for the first time in these games; however it amounts to nothing as you have to exhaust all options before being able to move on.

The puzzles are varied & the right amount of challenge versus frustration (the handy skip button is there again if you can’t quite work the puzzle out). There is plenty of standard point & click gameplay but with a bit more imagination used in the hidden object portion of the game. Unfortunately, this new idea is used only once (solve riddles to work out what the objects are) which is really disappointing.

Another new idea that is used more often is transmutation, the combining of objects that are found to create another. These are very simple to do & not particularly exciting but they show that Artifex Mundi is attempting to mix up the expected formula.

Something just feels off with Lost Grimoires: Stolen Kingdoms. It’s lacking a lot of what makes these games so enjoyable. The story isn’t particularly interesting & the locations feel bland (even if they’ve got that lovely visual art style). It just doesn’t grab you in the same way & with no extra chapter (a first for these games) there really isn’t much reason to go back & play it again, save for an additional difficulty setting (expert).

If you’ve never played one of these games before, don’t start here. It’s not a bad game at all, it’s just not quite reaching the standards set by previous Artifex Mundi games.

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