Rusty Lake Paradise

About Rusty Lake Paradise

Rusty Lake Paradise is the third premium point-and-click adventure from Rusty Lake, the Dutch studio behind the Cube Escape series, Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake: Roots. It came out on Steam and GOG for Windows and Mac on 11 January 2018 and is also sold on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Jakob, the eldest son of the Eilander family, comes back to Paradise Island after his mother has died. Since her death, which no one will explain, the island has been struck by the ten plagues of Egypt. To stop them you look for his mother's hidden memories and join the family in rituals that become stranger with each plague.

You play it as you play the other Rusty Lake games: you click around hand-painted scenes, pick up and combine items, and solve the puzzles each scene hides. The game is split into ten chapters, one per plague, and each has its own atmosphere, puzzles and theme music. The pastel background paintings are by the Dutch painter Johan Scherft. PCWorld singled out puzzles tied to the plagues, such as popping the boils of a sick goat or a long sequence with star signs during the Darkness plague, and also found the first five or six plagues easy and some puzzles filler. A first play takes about three and a half hours.

It is not frightening through chases or jumpscares. The unease comes from the calm way it shows terrible things: the masked family standing around a coffin in a pool of blood, swarms that settle over everything. Against Rusty Lake: Roots, which follows a family over generations, Paradise stays on one small island and one family's grief. It suits players who liked Roots or the Cube Escape games and anyone who wants a horror story told through puzzles.

How to play Rusty Lake Paradise

1. Click around each scene of the island to look closer and find items.
2. Pick up items and use or combine them where they fit.
3. Solve the puzzles of each plague to lift it and move to the next chapter.
4. Look for the mother's hidden memories as you go; they carry the story.
5. Come back to finished areas later to find the island's secrets and achievements.

Tips

• Write down symbols, numbers and colour orders you see; they are often the answer to a puzzle in another scene.
• If you are stuck, check every scene again; a plague often changes what you can reach.
• Play with sound on; each plague's music and sound effects hint at what to do.
• The early plagues go quickly; take your time to look at the scenes, since the later chapters ask more of you.

Questions