Good game, but a much too short...
Reviews for "Reincarnation: BB"
(Spoilers ahead)
While this game's graphics and sound are a lot better than your everyday mediocre half-hearted escape-the-room game, the puzzles and general design are not. Not by much, anyway.
One thing you want to always keep in mind while making an adventure game is that the player should have a reason to think the way you think, and not feel the need to guess randomly what they are supposed to do. "Figuring out the puzzle" isn't the same as "stumbling upon the right combination of garbage to make something happen."
For example, nothing hints that you are supposed to click on the moss in the background, nor does anything suggest that the moss would do a great job muffling the bell in any way, shape, or form. The drunk fly-frog idea was a creative one, but the hint that the purple demon gives is far too vague to really constitute a puzzle since the solution was so bizarre. "I need to make sure it stays there longer if I'm going to catch him" could have meant anything, from stabbing the frog, to distracting it with something else, to guiding it someplace where it is less mobile. It helps to be consistent, too; until the very end of the game, the pole with the lantern is never visibly loose or flexible, so why would it make any sense to have it knock out the wife-beating soul as opposed to using... almost anything else at your disposal to make him fall into the swamp? And how on Earth are you supposed to know that there is a crocodile in the swamp, when it is not present any other time the frog leaps into the water, but suddenly it is when you choose to tie the frog up with the rope? Nobody's going to solve that puzzle and think, "Oh! I just put two and two together! That makes sense!" afterwards.
There were other little design decisions (unrelated to the ridiculous nature of the puzzles) that I simply couldn't appreciate as I went through the game. One of the draws I have to the Reincarnation games is that rather than just being escape games like most are, they follow a unique formula in which you find a motive for killing a sinning soul and then make it look like an accident in the end. In this one, the motive is shot toward you as soon as you start the game, and it felt like something was missing. I kept hoping that the gutter on the house leading into the truck would come into play somehow, and it made me sad that it didn't, because it was a perfect setup for a potentially great puzzle. The constant yammering of the husband at the end of the game became quickly irritating, and somehow he kept screaming clearly when he was submerged in the water getting attacked by the crocodile. The music here was reused from a previous Reincarnation game, and it's good music, but it really doesn't fit the mood, because the banjo tune races at a hundred miles per hour whereas the gameplay and atmosphere go at more like a meter a minute.
This installment to the Reincarnation series also has the gripe I've had with every single previous game in the series. Programming-wise, I understand making a point-and-click game is easiest when you get to leave tons of buttons on the screen that do absolutely nothing, but it's very frustrating. When I see my arrow cursor turn into a hand cursor, I expect it to do something when I click my left mouse button down, and when it doesn't, I feel like I'm playing a dysfunctional game, and it makes this that much more of a guessing game. It doesn't help when there are other objects that you think you should be able to interact with in some way, such as the dog bowl or the bucket at the dock, and yet they are apparently only there as background elements (like the moss should have been).
Honestly, there's nothing that impresses me about me about this game, and I'm especially disappointed by that because this series been around since 2008, and that is plenty of time to learn how to make a truly enjoyable, well thought-out point-and-click game, which this was not. What could have been a short, sweet, mind-bending and rewarding experience was little more than mindless screen-clicking.
More guesing then thinking pluss i thought you could use the bucket to collect water put it in the water bowl with the moon shine (ITS THAT BEER)
Realy not apar with the rest of the series, the puzzle is realy strange. And the item chosing was not well made...
good game but it was too short, there were bugs and it was a guessing game instead of riddles. a good point-and-click game should have jokes and riddles. i missed the riddles in this game.
just an idea: why not going to heaven to get souls back to hell?