Fans of wee beasties and things that probably go bump in the night, assemble! Mateusz Skutnik’s  gloriously atmospheric point-and-click series is back with Daymare Town 3, the latest in the Daymare Town saga. When disaster strikes, you find yourself waking up in a strange hospital with the cutest little creepy doctor keeping an eye on your hurts. Which is all well and good, but you really need to find your money bag and carry on with your adventure. Of course they’ll just let you walk on out the door… right?

Daymare Town 3Use your mouse to interact with the screen, searching the area for clues and the items you need to proceed and clicking on hot spots to investigate. A changing cursor eliminates most pixel hunting, but you’ll still have to be careful about combing through scenes, since many items or area transitions are small enough that you can miss them if you just whip your mouse around willy-nilly. The lack of explicit directions in most circumstances means you’ll have to go everywhere and try everything to proceed. Hey, you! Sad guy! Do you want my dead insects?… no? Hmmm. Conundrum. You’ll need to put on your exploration pants to solve this one, and some people might find the scavenger hunt-ish gameplay more frustrating than others. Navigation in particular can be annoying as you hunt for that one perspective you might have missed in a room.

As always, the series is more charming than scary, but the atmosphere in this weird little game is wonderfully unsettling, like a children’s book that fell off the back of a truck somewhere. You can interact with a much more varied cast than before, and even indulge in a bit of item trading if someone has something you want. (And who doesn’t need more vomit pills, eh? Eh??) Figuring out just what the strange, glowering (or cowering) inhabitants of the hospital want from you is a bit of a challenge, but if you keep your eyes peeled (ow, my eyes! I have to stop taking myself so literally.) you’ll win the day. Will you finally manage to escape this weird little town? I ain’t tellin’. You’ll just have to play to find out. You can hold my hand if you’re scared… as long as you promise to buy these dead bugs off me, first.

written by Dora.