this third blackwell game is outstanding! dave gilbert is proving to be one of the most talented adventure game writer/creators i’ve come across. this time around he does a particularly good job of presenting a unique mystery which then expertly ties together threads from both previous blackwell games using the trilogy structure to amazing effect. the game flow, pace and music are extremely well handled also. the graphics retain their characteristic retro stylings, but manage to look more attractive than in both previous games. the one and only disappointment i have is that Sande Chen didn’t reprise the role of Rosangela Blackwell in this game. her performance in ‘the blackwell legacy’ was one of my all-time favourite vocal performances in any media. her replacement does well, but so not the same.

The third installment in the Blackwell series returns to the characters from the first game. The game is more polished, featuring slightly better graphics and better music, but it suffers from the worst technical glitches so far. The game sometimes consistently crashed in various stages, forcing me to reload a previous save and trigger sequences in a different order to bypass this issue.

Game play is similar to the previous installments. The plot is slightly less rigidly structured, but the general type of puzzle is the same. The ability to combine notes is gone, which IMO is a shame as it was a nice mechanic that was poorly used, and the solution should’ve been to use it properly instead of ditching it altogether. You again have to type names into a search engine instead of being able to select them from your notes.

Other than that it’s same old, same old. The plot is not to everyone’s taste - I found the game breaking the rules it previous established to be a cop-out in an attempt to tie all the games together, but other people might care less about the lack of consistency and instead enjoy the “arch”, such as it may be.

Overall there is not much to add about this one beyond the previous two. At 1.5 hours (I have no clue how it could possibly take 10 hours, as some reviewers say - you could brute force the game in half that time) it’s slightly longer and I enjoyed playing it more than the previous two installments.