OK guys...everybody use yer noggins here regarding the friggin Haystack puzzle at the opening scene (That everyone is getting mysteriously stuck on...) This is a fantastic game! Well...once you get through the front door...
FIRST: click on the hay
THEN: Rotate the 3 x 3 arrangement of squares until you get a picture of a needle and thread.
(TIP: do row 2 / box 1 LAST)
LAST: If you've rotated all 9 properly, they vanish from the screen and you WILL get a needle in your inventory that you can use to pick the lock on the front door. You're in!
N O T E : I am a Firefox user, so if you are solving this puzzle, the boxes disappear, and there is absolutely nothing in your inventory....and you are using a browser other than Firefox, then this might be the problem...
(65.0.1 is my Firefox version, BTW)

I completed the haystack puzzle but it didn't give me the needle

Game freezes for me on solution of first puzzle (Haystack).

I'm useless with these games- got past the clock and not sure what to do next. The 3D and flame effects are good at creating atmosphere, while the music puts me in mind of a night time jungle expedition for some reason. Also, I'm assuming you mean there is gunge on the wall, rather than grunge!

It's an okay game. It lags some here and there, has occasionally jarring zooming, and some fuzzy textures, but it still functions well for a 3-D game. It's pretty common for 3-D games to not function, so that's a step up. I didn't find the puzzles incredibly challenging, but they were a decent time-filler. All the clues correlated well to their designated puzzles, though guessing for the last paper code number was annoying. The one thing I couldn't figure out is why the rack is an interact-able object when it has no reason to be.