The more you read about fairy tales, the more you see them as sad or creepy tales. The Creepy Tale series takes fairy tales and reimagines them in a more in-depth light. This, in particular, fairy tale is supposed to be about Ingrid. Instead of dirtying her shoes, she has decided to put a fresh piece of bread on a puddle and walk over it. In the Fairy Tale, she instantly turns into stone under the puddle. In this version, she gets sent to Purgatory. You have to move throughout Purgatory in this Point and-Click game to escape or stay there forever.
Game Name: Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance
Platform(s): PS4 (Review), PS5 Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PC
Publisher(s): Creepy Brothers, Silkey Games
Developer(s): Creepy Brothers
Release Date: March 9, 2023, or August 16th, 2023 on consoles
Price: $9.99
The Good
In the first moments, we get to see Ingrid being an absolute pain to deal with in Creepy Tale: Ingrid Penance. She is not listening to her mom and finds it a chore to try to spend time with anyone from her family. The bread she uses to save her shoes from going into the puddle is supposed to be fresh bread her mother made for her grandmother. She instantly falls into purgatory and is now tasked with playing games with demons. If she doesn’t, then she stays in Purgatory and will most likely turn to stone or be eaten. I appreciate that making Ingrid one of the most insufferable characters in any game ever also means watching her die due to you losing puzzles or just wanting to see the animations play out that much more satisfying.
The puzzles in Creepy Tale: Ingrid Penance has quite a variety. In one puzzle, you have to gather several teeth from around the house; in another one, you have to trick an owl into exploding himself. There are a lot of puzzles in the game, and they all have a good amount of difficulty or critical thinking involved. The only one I felt like I was guessing was finding all the keys in the crypt and trying to figure out where everything went and what item needed to be traded for the big guy. Not only do the puzzles have a good variety, but the way you solve them also will give you a sin or a good deed which you can keep track of by looking at your hands. If you want to kill children and owls together, then that counts as a sin. If you only take out the owls and take the extra step to save the children, you get it counted towards your good deeds. Generally, trying to do good requires extra feats to solve the puzzle. You will need to find hidden items or extra puzzles all over the map to find out other places to do good.
At first, while I was playing Creepy Tale: Ingrid Penance, I was kind of turned off by the art style and approach they took to the visuals. After playing through the first puzzle and getting more used to the character designs and demons, I appreciated the simplicity. It makes sense for the approach they took for Purgatory to make it a bit unseemly.
The Bad
There isn’t a whole lot I dislike about Creepy Tale Ingrid Penance. The art may take a bit to get used to, but it isn’t bad. The voice acting is serviceable too. Granted, there are some awkward line reads sometimes, but overall, they fit the aesthetic the game is trying to go for. There are not a lot of hints in solving certain puzzles, which can make things a bit difficult without a guide. Talking to people a second time can help you sometimes, but more often, it just is an exact repeat of what they said in their cutscene.
Creepy Tale Ingrid Penance is pretty short. It took me only a few hours to beat it. Doing a second run-through will only take probably an hour or two at max now that I know most of the solutions to the puzzles. That also means if you get the game on the PlayStation 4/5, it will be relatively easy to max out the trophies to get the platinum. This is an extremely easy game to platinum once you have everything figured out.
The Verdict
Overall there is a fun time to be had in Creepy Tale: Ingrid Penance. It may take some trial and error to figure out some of these puzzles. However, getting to the end is fun to see if you were good or bad in your time in Purgatory. The game may be short side, but the price reflects that, in my opinion. This is a perfect $10 game that will give you easy platinum or easy Gamerscore additions. It’s good to see someone like Ingrid get some comeuppance for how she treats her family, yet I still had an emotional feeling when she does see her mother again after how badly she treated her in the opening. It’s a fantastic purchase for what it’s worth and easy to complete.
Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, on August 16th, 2023. It is currently out right now on PC. (Pre-Ordering it on the console will give you a discounted price of $7.99)
Review Disclosure Statement: Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance was provided to us by Keymailer for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.
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Summary
Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance is a short but worthwhile game that has some issues with making some of the puzzles kind of impossible to figure out without doing some trial and error, but overall I think it does quite well with the material it does have.
Pros
- Puzzle Variety
- Satisfying to see Ingrid get comeuppance
- Fun death animations
Cons
- Solutions to puzzles can be a bit complicated on the first go around
- Short
- Atmosphere a bit unseemly
