.The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is a charming game in which you recall the old stories you had with your grandfather when you were young. By means of VR, you are placed in the middle of this nostalgic tale making this a really immersive recollection of the protagonist’s childhood.
Revisit a joyful past
As a child, you and your sister used to make up imaginative adventures in the worlds your grandfather created through his storytelling. Now as an adult your grandfather takes you back to those worlds in an ultimate attempt to mend the broken relationship you have with your sister. As you enter the different joyful worlds of the past, your grandfather tells the stories of you and your sister in better times. Remembering how great the adventures were you had with your sister you start to feel like the bad things between you both, shouldn’t be an indefinite hurdle. The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is a charming looking adventure game on the outside but with a deeper sense of purpose.
Different worlds
After years of telling stories, your grandfather created a whole bunch of different themed worlds. These worlds are presented through paintings on the wall. Each painting can be entered after which you are transformed into that world. Every world has a distinct theme which adds to the overall charm of the game. Each world needs to be “solved” by finding the Stolen Pets scattered around the world. Finding these pets is done by interacting with the world. Each world has many things to interact with. Finding the right combination is key in finally discovering the hiding place of a stolen pet. Some of these “puzzles” took me quite some time to solve. Like many great adventure games, the solution is right there in front of you but often your missing just a small detail to really crack the puzzle.
Specially designed with VR in mind
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is a game that works in VR because it’s designed for it. The fun of the game is the interaction with the world. Physically pushing, turning, pinching the objects in the world is what makes this a great immersive experience. Turning your head to discover a potential clue behind an object makes this feel very natural as opposed to just playing this type of game with a controller or keyboard and mouse. This review is based on the Playstation VR version of the game in which you could play with both the Move or DualShock controller. Although the DualShock controller offered some better control while manipulating certain objects, the immerse factor was more or less gone. Waving the Move controller around to interact was the way to go when you want the best experience.
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets
Charming on all fronts
As you might’ve already seen from the screenshots, The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is a charming looking game. The design of the world is really well done. These worlds reminded me more or less to the worlds I created as a child. The narrative done by the “grandfather” makes the feeling of nostalgia stand out even more. To top it off, the scene for this heart-warming tale is augmented by the great music. Everything about this game caters towards feeling warm inside with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.
Conclusion
The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets is a great immersive point-and-click style puzzle game available on Playstation VR, Oculus and steam. Although the experience is a bit shortlived, you will be left feeling fully immersed in nostalgia after playing this game. A hardened point-and-click aficionado like myself was left a bit unchallenged by the puzzles. Nevertheless, I kept firmly playing anyway because of the great experience.
