The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition

About The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition

The Last Door: Season 2 continues the Victorian horror adventure begun in The Last Door. It was made by The Game Kitchen and published by Phoenix Online, and the Collector's Edition came out on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux on March 29, 2016, with four episodes, extras and a new score by Carlos Viola. It is also sold on GOG and on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

This time you play Dr. John Wakefield, the psychiatrist who treated Jeremiah Devitt. Devitt has vanished, and Wakefield's search for him leads into a web of forbidden knowledge and a conspiracy that hides it. The trail starts in an asylum and the back streets of Victorian London, then leaves England: the episodes take you to the house of an old professor in a seaside town, with its graveyard, ruins and caves, and to a small island of fog, statues and masked villagers. Each episode runs one to three hours and opens with a short playable prologue that only makes sense later.

Like the first season, it is drawn in very few, very large pixels, and much of the fear comes from what you cannot quite make out and from the sound: whispering, footsteps, screeching birds, ominous classical music. You play by pointing and clicking: examine scenes, pick up items, combine and use them, talk to people and read what they leave behind. Some puzzles are logical, others are old-fashioned pixel hunts, and reviewers admit reaching for a walkthrough more than once. The store says it was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

Against the first season it is bigger, with more places to explore and fast-travel maps in some episodes, but reviewers find it a little less frightening, with fewer sudden scares and more slow dread. It suits players who finished the first season, and anyone who likes slow occult ghost stories and point-and-click puzzles more than action. Play Season 1 first: Wakefield's search starts where Devitt's ended.

How to play The Last Door: Season 2 - Collector's Edition

1. Click to walk Dr. Wakefield through each scene and examine people and objects.
2. Pick up items and use or combine them in the inventory bar to get past each obstacle.
3. Talk to the people you meet and read letters and notes; the clues to the next step are in them.
4. Use the map, where an episode offers one, to travel between the places you have found.
5. Play the four episodes in order, ideally right after the first season.

Tips

• Wear headphones; sound carries much of the dread and some of the clues.
• Move the cursor slowly over shelves and dark corners; some needed objects are only a few pixels wide and look like scenery.
• If you are stuck, re-examine items in the inventory and revisit earlier rooms; some reveal more on a second look.
• A puzzle in the last episode is far easier if you can read sheet music, so keep pen and paper near.

Questions