Blackwell Unbound (iOS) Review

The first thing that is immediately present in this story is the totally different relationship that Lauren and Joey have. There is a sense right off the bat that Lauren is far more comfortable with Joey than Rosa and it has the effect of giving more enjoyable interactions between the two characters. Lauren is a lot more likeable as a character.

That likeability may also have something to do with the fact that she actually has a much better voice actor who is able to bring a lot more personality out of her than Rosa's monotone voice and also due to the nature of the story - she has more knowledge of the point of being a medium and is more sympathetic to the various ghosts players encounter during the episode.

As has been mentioned, Joey is back for players to enjoy, and thanks to the aforementioned relationship, he is a more enjoyable and developed character. Indeed there is even a feeling that he actually cares about Lauren a lot more than Rosa in Legacy. Additionally, players can actually control Joey this time around thanks to a clever mechanic that allows switching between Lauren and Joey to solve different puzzles. It is very smartly done with occasions in which the player has to utilise both Joey and Lauren to solve the puzzles together considering Joey cannot touch physical objects.

It has to be said that the murders that Lauren and Joey solve are more interesting than Legacy's tale of the suicides of university girls. Unbound manages to really tap into that engrossing New York jazz feeling with one of the cases being the mysterious murder of a saxophonist and the soundtrack that runs alongside it really transports gamers back to 1973.

The other murder, about a woman who never left her apartment, is slightly more mundane, but is interesting for the puzzle mechanics it employs, including having to track down her son through the phone book and convincing him you were her neighbour by picking the right dialogue according to the clues in the handy notebook that accompanies Lauren and Joey throughout.

The two individual murders in this chapter are tied together by a newly introduced figure known as 'The Countess' who is involved in these murders, and her introduction begins to set out the story of the Blackwell series more broadly, with the realisation that there is a lot more going on than has been shown in the first two chapters, and that the next chapter is really going to be ramped up another notch.