The Tartarus Key

When the movie Saw came out in 2004, I figured that this would be the direction we’d see most survival horror games go. Not necessarily the torture elements, but the idea of people being trapped in a maze and forced to play games in order to survive. This turned out not to be the case. While Konami tried to make something happen with a pair of Saw games, the horror genre largely went in a different direction. Until now, thanks to a brand-new thriller known as The Tartarus Key. This is a low-res throwback adventure that traps you and other innocent people in a mansion full of mysteries and dangers. It has demonic symbols, devilish puzzles and a private investigator that seems to know more than she’s letting on, and that’s just in the first five minutes. Does the rest of the game stack-up to the great set-up? That’s what we’re going to find out when I review The Tartarus Key by Vertical Reach.

This is the story of a young woman named Alex, who wakes up in the middle of the night to find that she’s been kidnapped and is trapped in a small room full of dusty old books. Even more curious is that there’s a walkie talkie on the table, revealing that there’s another trapped woman in another part of the mansion. Her name is Torres and she is a private eye who is may have gotten a little too close to the people she was investigating. Together, the two team up in hopes of finding a way out of the mansion and back to civilization.

What Alex quickly realizes is that this is not your typical house. There are cameras everywhere and it’s clear that somebody has brought these two women together for some reason. But why? Before she can answer that, it becomes clear that there are other victims in the mansion, forcing Alex to go from room-to-room solving a series of complicated puzzles and saving people from certain death.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the victims and the mansion’s mysteries, since a lot of the fun of this type of game is discovering them on your own. This is definitely a horror/thriller with a lot of twists and surprises, including a few you definitely won’t see coming. What I will say is that the cast is generally likable, even when it’s clear that not all of them are getting along. There’s the right type of tension in the group, as nobody truly trusts the others and everybody is suspicious that the mastermind may be among us.

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I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that the puzzles are both varied and creative. If you’ve played a lot of these types of adventure games, then chances are you will recognize a lot of the puzzle types and components. But even then, the game knows that it’s plowing familiar ground and does an excellent job shaking some of them up and giving the more played-out puzzles a new facelift.

What I really like about this game is how each puzzle is largely contained in a single room. If you need an item to complete a puzzle, it’s almost guaranteed to be within a few steps from where you’ll need to use it. You’ll also find a lot of hints around the room, giving us a little help when we need it. The only exception to this is when you find keys and access cards, since those are often tied to exploring a whole new wing of the mansion. The rest of the puzzles are isolated, which means that you’ll never run into a situation where the item you need is on the other side of the house.

It's almost comical how many puzzles this game throws at Alex. In fact, there are so many that it becomes an on-running joke between she and Torres. The good news is that there’s so much variety here that you won’t mind that we’re basically walking from one brain-teaser to the next. There are puzzles where you’ll need to memorize your surroundings, ones that will require you to push buttons and even one incredibly tense puzzle that will put your mixology skills to the test in a life-or-death game of bartending. As somebody who loves solving these types of challenges, The Tartarus Key was right up my alley.

The throwback 32-bit era graphics help to set the mood and give this spooky mansion some personality. I like that this game looks the part without actually playing like an old PlayStation 1 game. Apart from the low-res polygons and the setting, the game doesn’t control like Resident Evil or any other survival game from the 1990s. Instead, The Tartarus Key feels like a somewhat modern first-person adventure game, which definitely makes solving a lot of the puzzles a lot easier.

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While I like the look, I wish that more had been done with the sound. This is a game with a whole lot of conversations, and it’s a shame that none of them employ voice acting. This is a game filled with colorful characters, and I so desperately wanted to hear what they sounded like. What makes it worse is that these conversations usually happen during complete silence, making them feel twice as long as they actually are. And it’s a real shame, because there’s some pithy dialog throughout, especially from one or two characters.

On that note, I can understand if people get frustrated by the overwhelming amount of conversions you’ll have in this game. There are moments early on where it feels like you can’t go more than five steps without getting into another one of those silent back-and-forths with Torres. And speaking of frustrating, while the majority of the puzzles are well-crafted, there are a few that are little more than trial-and-error, with nothing giving us clues or hints. I found that these puzzles really brought the snappy pacing to a grinding halt.

The good news is that it’s easy to overlook these issues. The writing is strong enough to keep you invested in the many, MANY conversations, and the few annoying puzzles are little more than speedbumps in this well-paced adventure. Best of all, it has one of those final acts that will stick with you, making the many trials and tribulations well worth the effort. Fans of puzzles and surviving spooky mansions rejoice, because The Tartarus Key is a great new thriller with a whole lot to say. Maybe even too much to say.