For its target audience, The Lost Crown is a beautifully crafted, intricate adventure that will satisfy those with a penchant for point-and-click. So, for the rest of you who prefer a gaming diet of first/third person shooters, why do you absolutely need to play this game? Read on…

For a start, Jonathan Boakes has created a living, breathing village – Saxton – in which to tell his tale, a commendable feat for an adventure title. The setting is based on the real fishing village of Polperro, and it soon becomes clear that three years’ development time has been exceedingly well spent. Lead character Nigel Danvers arrives in Saxton escaping the mysterious Hadden Industry with the sinister Hare and Crow in hot pursuit. First impressions make it clear that the game is a drastic departure, style-wise, from Boakes’s previous Dark Fall games. The use of real world black and white photography as a backdrop, with the occasional splash of colour, makes it easy to spend time soaking up the atmo­sphere of each screen.

This technique works extremely well. Where the scenery is beautiful (the Fens and outskirts), it becomes a pleasure to explore. However, as the tale moves towards the sinister, so does its staging. Combined with a skilful use of sound, this approach delivers some genuine chills.

The game’s central hook is ghost-hunting, and these set pieces fit wonderfully into the story. The first time you employ one of the various ghost hunting devices, you’re already immersed in the tale, and with Saxton’s detailed history it’s easy to find yourself on the edge of your seat.

As you move through Saxton interacting with its inhabitants and tackling varied puzzles, each character’s history develops alongside that of the village, and it’s not long before a sense of unease and isolation develops similar to that evoked by the film The Wicker Man. You’re never sure who to fear or who to trust.

Larger in scope than most adventures, this provides 20-plus hours of gameplay complemented by an engaging story, richly detailed history and cert­ain encounters that should go down as gaming classics.

A perfect score then? Not quite. Graphically, it leaves a little to be desired; dated character models and some sub-par animations detract from the overall experience, compounded by occasional dialogue that will make you cringe for all the wrong reasons.

So why should you put down your generic shooter and give this a try? Well, when was the last time a game asked you to record EVP? Photo­graph Orbs? Film ghosts in a graveyard in the dead of night? Hunt a deranged skinner of cats? Investi­gate a local legend? And, finally, make a deliciously tasty stew? The Lost Crown asks all this and then some – quite a spooky achievement.