Victorian Mysteries: The Yellow Room is another entry in what is becoming a really common blend of classic adventure and hidden object games. While some lean one way or the other, most tend to hit the middle ground and do both gameplay styles as evenly as possible.
The Yellow Room is no different, and like many of those other games, I feel like it only does okay as far as each gameplay style is concerned, instead of focusing on one or the other and making something that really stands out.
The plot is something most mystery novel aficionados are likely to have come across at some point (although a quick bout of Wikipedia-research tells me "The Mystery of the Yellow Room" was the first of this kind). Put simply, The Yellow Room is a "locked room" mystery. That is to say, the attack occurred while the victim was locked in a room and the assailant had no way of leaving without being seen.
While the book's main character is journalist/detective Joseph Rouletabille, you play as his photographer. You will see your partner often throughout the game, but you are more or less given free reign and you explore Sainte-Genevieve and Chateau du Glandier on your own. As you explore, you will find an unusually high number of puzzle-locked boxes, crazy clocks, statues missing pieces and contraptions with pieces missing. Basically, you can expect a lot of standard adventure game puzzles to be thrown your way.
Like a lot of similar games, not every item that goes into your inventory list will just be laying around the ground. As you explore, you will find hidden object screens that will have you hunting down the most unusual items and one of those will end up in your collection of oddball necessities that you will somehow use.
I do have to say one more thing about the hidden object areas in Victorian Mysteries: The Yellow Room. While most of the items cluttering up the screen fit pretty well with the screen you are looking at, there are often items that just don't work right, and they feel out of place more because they have been scaled up or down so they are not proportionally correct. I've played quite a few hidden object games at this point, and I've always found that the games that snuck in items in a way that doesn't make them feel right just felt a little dirtier than the others. It just feels like cheating in a way and it feels like there needed to be a better designer behind those particular scenes.
