Creepy Tale: Some Other Place

About Creepy Tale: Some Other Place

Creepy Tale: Some Other Place is a puzzle adventure by Creepy Brothers, the fourth Creepy Tale game. It came out on PC, Mac and Linux on 30 May 2024, and on PlayStation 5, Xbox and Nintendo Switch on 26 September 2024, published there by Sometimes You. It tells a new story set in the same fairy-tale world as the earlier games, so you can start here.

An autumn morning promised Martin, a peasant boy, a quiet fishing trip by the lake. Then a hairy creature steals his catch and runs off through a hole in an old tree, and Martin follows it into another world. That land is being overrun by the kvargs, tumor-covered toad-things at war with everyone else there, from dwarfish miners to scarecrow-like leshy. To get home, Martin has to help the creature stop the kvargs' plans and save whoever he can on the way.

You walk Martin through wide side-view scenes, pick up items and solve puzzles. Many puzzles turn on a magic ring that stops or speeds up time near Martin: speed up a seed until it blossoms, or freeze a hostile creature while you move things around it. There are also inventory puzzles, combination locks, a star-chart globe, a beer machine and short timing presses when Martin swings a pick or casts his line. If Martin dies, you go back to just before it happened. Late on, an arcade-style battle against a monster can be skipped if it gives you trouble.

The horror is that of a grim folk tale. Corpses lie around the forests and the kvargs' camp, characters meet grisly ends on screen, and severed limbs and heads are part of some puzzles. The hand-drawn, stop-frame style art keeps it cartoonish, and Adventure Game Hotspot found the monsters closer to storybook creatures than anything to lose sleep over. It is rated ESRB Teen for blood and fantasy violence.

The story is voiced in English and Russian, with subtitles in ten more languages, and the makers recommend a gamepad. A run of the main story takes about three hours. It suits players who like steady, clever puzzles in an eerie storybook world more than chases and jump scares.

How to play Creepy Tale: Some Other Place

1. Plug in a gamepad if you have one; the makers recommend it.
2. Walk Martin through each scene and look for things to pick up or interact with.
3. Use items on people, objects and mechanisms to clear the way.
4. Once you have the time ring, use it to stop or speed up things near Martin, such as a growing plant or a creature in your way.
5. Solve the puzzles that block your path, from codes and charts to machines, and press in time when Martin swings a pick or casts his line.
6. Help the people you meet where you can, and keep going until Martin finds the way home.

Tips

• Look closely at notes, charts and drawings; they can hold the answer to a puzzle.
• When a puzzle has several moving parts, think about which one to freeze and which one to speed up with the ring.
• When you are stuck, go back through earlier scenes for an item you may have missed.
• Dying only sends you back to just before it happened, so try things.
• The arcade-style battle late in the game can be skipped if it is too much trouble.

Questions