Tales from Candleforth Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

Tales from Candleforth, a point and click horror game by birthright, has just this moment arrived on consoles and PC, effectively ushering in a new scroll of scripts and forbidden texts of another, slightly more twisted iteration. Think the Brothers Grimm—an anthology of short stories and folk tales that depict some of the most beloved characters and redemption arcs of modern times, and remove the elegant touch of Disney-Pixar — and you’ll have a vague idea of what sort of iteration I’m talking about here. For the record, this is not—I repeat, not—a classic depiction of a children’s fairytale, much less a vessel for Walt Disney to tap into and transform into a bubblegum-like movie adaptation; on the contrary, it’s a dark, somewhat mystical tale, and one that showers any form of innocence in dread and, well, horror.

The Brothers Grimm, for those who’ve yet to brush up on their classic literature, is a collection of stories that illustrate the lives of several prominent characters—Rapunzel, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood, to list just a few—as well as their untimely deaths and their rather bizarre adventures. Why am I telling you this? Well, as it turns out, Tales from Candleforth tells a similar story, in the case that, its darkest tales were once hidden behind kinder, slightly less sinister versions, similar to how Walt Disney flipped the script and made otherwise gory stories a bit more, I don’t know, family-friendly. The only major difference here, however, is that the original versions of Tales from Candleforth are still in the margins; Walt Disney couldn’t save this one. But, can you? Let’s talk.

The Tallest of Tales

Tales from Candleforth is a classic point and click horror adventure game in which you navigate a series of folk tales—altered versions of beloved stories that have since bled through the margins of their former pages. In the strangest turn of events, the happy-go-lucky iterations have become one with their darker counterparts, and have since forced their readers to slip into a dual reality, one that doesn’t quite seem to know which characters are real, and which verses belong to which source, and so on and so forth. It’s a classic “mixed narrative” sort of thing, and to be fair, it pulls it off remarkably well, all things considered.

What’s great about Tales from Candleforth, really, is the hand-drawn art style that it chooses to adopt; it’s absolutely beautiful, and a real tribute to the likes of Tim Burton and—dare I say—Grimm’s Fairy Tales. It’s so beautiful, in fact, that I didn’t even mind having to endure some rather convoluted puzzles every once in awhile, as the ambiance and horror aesthetic was so clean and immersive, that it was easy to forget about the challenges and simply bathe in its surroundings. Needless to say that I found myself doing that — a lot, to the point of neglecting a solid portion of the story just to be able to soak up its unsettling aura.

To say that Tales from Candleforth is a real page turner would be an understatement, truly. Thankfully, this isn’t one of those short burners that takes twenty-six chapters to finally get the snowball rolling, so to speak; in fact, it all begins on the first page, and it somehow manages to hold your attention from the initial paragraph, to the closing chapter. I can’t complain about any of that.

Click Here for Horror

It’s a point and click game, and so, naturally, you spend a lot of your time tapping away at various mechanisms and locations to make some level of progress. And that brings us to our next stop: the puzzles, which are arguably the vanilla extracts of the entire journey. Don’t get me wrong, there are a great deal of simple logical puzzles embedded in the book, but similarly, there are just as many tough cookies to crack, too. For example, some puzzles require you to navigate a selection of wires to locate the correct mechanism, whereas another invites you to align several stars for a hidden door to unlock and usher you into another section of the book. Suffice it to say, there is a rather generous selection of challenges to overcome here, all of which require some level of effort and perseverance to complete. And that’s, you know, good.

I will put my hands up and say this: I did cheese my way through several of the puzzles in Tales from Candleforth, but that was mainly due to the fact that a lot of curveballs were easy enough as to let me simply tap in certain locations and somehow locate the right answer. This wasn’t always the case, but I think I speak for everyone when I say, when it comes to point and click games, you’re likely to hit the sweet spot by simply clicking, dragging, and, well, clicking some more. But that’s just me; I blame the fact that I’m unable to comprehend even the most basic tasks even when the answers are spread out right in front of me.

Read Between the Lines

Whilst Tales from Candleforth isn’t the scariest game on the market, it does make the occasional effort to instill some level of fear into its readers. Aside from it having a relatively sturdy script (bar the odd typo and grammatical error), it also has a thick layer of detail strewn across its settings, which range from eerie dungeons to blood-soaked farmsteads, as well as an entire network of dingy locations that make even the most cozy rooms come across as disturbingly opaque and creepy. Add the fact that it also peppers a good amount of sinister music and sound effects to the mix, and honestly, you’ve got all of the right ingredients to create a genuinely enjoyable horror experience. And it has all of that — and then some.

Tales from Candleforth isn’t the longest game out there; in fact, it can be swept under the rug in four, maybe even five hours at most, depending on how quickly you can solve some of its tougher puzzles and decipher the rules of the game. With that said, as this is, rather generously, a $10 game at heart, it almost feels like a no-brainer, and therefore, if you’re even remotely familiar with such a genre, then it’s almost too good to go to waste. Point is, if you adore horror—so much that you’re willing to overlook the lack of depth in its gameplay department, then you’re probably going to fall head over heels in love with this one, for sure.

Verdict

As an avid reader of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, I can quite easily see the similarities between Tales from Candleforth and the folk tales of the source literature. Like a Tim Burton novel, perhaps, the game itself radiates a certain unpleasant aura that’s both mildly disturbing and intriguing for all the right reasons — and it just works, even when it shouldn’t. There’s a tremendous amount to love about everything that its world echoes from its inner margins, and it maintains that high level of quality for the entirety of the story, too, which speaks volumes about its potential and the sheer amount of love and care that went into its inception.

Again, this isn’t the lengthiest of games that you can throw your cash at, but given the sheer volume of content that it manages to produce in its five-hour story, it’s hard to dismiss it and simply seek refuge in an alternate chapter. Could it do with a bit more? Perhaps. But then, I’d also be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy just about every word that it projected.

If you’re a die-hard fan of point and click games, then there’s honestly no reason as to why you shouldn’t take the opportunity to plunge into the hand-drawn verses of Tales from Candleforth. And, even if you’re not a fan of the genre, you should still consider it, as its art style and ambiance are reason enough to enjoy just about everything that it emits from the page. Sure, it’s a bit of a niche subject, but if you’re hell-bent on exploring the roots of a twisted folk tale that bears all of the necessary hallmark qualities of a top-shelf indie horror, then honestly, you needn’t look any further than the passages that etch themselves into this particular anthology.