The Lost Crown

About The Lost Crown

The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure was written and made by Jonathan Boakes, who'd earlier made Dark Fall: The Journal and Dark Fall 2: Lights Out. His studio Darkling Room put it out in 2008, and it came to Steam in June 2014. Today it's sold on Steam and GOG, for Windows only, with English and German voices.

Nigel Danvers has fled London with stolen papers from his employer, the Hadden Corporation, and two of its agents are after him. He lies low in Saxton, a harbour town in the Fens of eastern England. There he meets Lucy Reubans, a psychology student, and the two go looking for a lost Anglo-Saxon crown said to be buried near the town. Boakes took a lot from M. R. James's A Warning to the Curious: the seaside, the buried crown and a ghost that guards it even after death. Most scenes were built from photos of real places, the Cornish fishing towns of Looe and Polperro among them, then turned black and white with small touches of colour.

You point and click your way through it, in third person around town and in first person in some dark places. Much of it is talking to the locals and doing odd jobs for them. Then there's the ghost kit, which Boakes based on what he saw while out with a real group of ghost hunters. An EMF meter picks up a presence. The EVP recorder catches voices you can't hear at the time. A night-vision camcorder shows rooms the eye can't see into, and a set of cameras in Nigel's cottage watches several rooms at once.

It's eerie more than frightening. One reviewer found the horror mild apart from the ghost scenes, with only hints of murder and suicide. Critics liked the sound and the art, while the voice acting and slow pace drew most of the complaints. Steam players rate it higher than critics did. Expect a long game: the makers say 30 hours, and one reviewer needed 25 to 30 without a walkthrough. It suits patient players who like the Dark Fall games and old English ghost stories.

How to play The Lost Crown

1. Click to walk Nigel around Saxton, look at things and talk to the locals.
2. Pick up and use items to solve the puzzles built into each place.
3. Use the night-vision camera to film rooms and reveal what is hidden there.
4. Record and listen to electronic voice phenomena for clues from the dead.
5. Follow the legend of the Lost Crown across the town, the beaches and the crypts.

Tips

• Film every room you enter with the night-vision camera; ghosts show up only on screen.
• Talk to everyone more than once; the locals' stories carry the clues.
• Expect a long, slow game; play it in the evening with headphones.
• Check the cottage's surveillance screens after each trip out, since they watch several rooms while you're away.

Questions