The graphics in Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll are decidedly creepy. As you progress through the home of your sister, in this town that appears to be obsessed with dolls, you’ll see strange sights. Probably the creepiest sight is seeing your young niece, lying sick in the bed clutching her favorite doll. If you approach the child and touch her, the doll’s face turns evil. Chucky, anyone? As far as the backgrounds and areas you’ll visit, things look pretty much like they should and the artwork is nice. It’s a little old fashioned looking, like a glimpse into the past, but still attractive. However, good luck finding items as they are well hidden and sometimes sneakily placed.

The background music is just as creepy and atmospheric as the artwork, although I can’t recall any voicework in the game. It’s all just scary music and sound effects, such as little noises when you pick something up, or ambient creaks and groans in the background. Sometimes there’s no music at all in the background, though and all you hear are the calls of a bird or the scurrying of an animal or some malevolent force hiding in the shadows.

Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll has you visiting your estranged sister, when her young daughter falls ill. The story surrounds a group of girls who befall harm while out playing in the lake one day and their spirits are somehow connected to a cursed doll who continues to plague your niece.

I originally thought Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll was a hidden object game with a smattering of adventure, but do not be fooled. Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll is a through and through adventure with a few hidden object scenes, not the other way around. While you will encounter the hidden object scenes from time to time, even then they aren’t your standard HOG fare. You’ll have a list of things to obtain and there will be one object needed to make the story progress. As you pick up items, they do not disappear from the list, but instead they simply change color. Some items will initially appear in a different color than the rest of the list and these items will require special care to obtain. You’ll have to do some action to reveal the item or match one item with the next. The problem is that they don’t always tell you this, so I would be searching for an item and not realize I needed to make it interact with something else. Worse yet, there were times when I basically knew what needed to be done, but couldn’t figure out how to accomplish this. Tapping a required part doesn’t pick it up to take with you, it just flashes for a second.

Aside from the hidden object areas, you’ll make your way through your sister’s house and into the eerie town to solve the mystery of why your niece has fallen ill. You’ll have to be on the lookout for items you can pick up and use in the various puzzles you’ll encounter, but even on the easiest level of difficulty, there’s no hand-holding in the game. You are on your own, unless you want to consult the Strategy Guide every few minutes to see page by page examples of how to progress. I’m not the biggest fan of adventure games, but I’ve played a few of them. However, in Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll, I couldn’t get around with any fluidity without constantly consulting the Strategy Guide. This isn’t fun, but rather quickly becomes a dreadful chore. That’s the crux of why I don’t like Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll. It feels more like a chore and there’s no natural progression to what to do next or where to go.

There are three levels of difficulty in Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll: Casual, Advanced and Extreme. In Casual Mode, your Skip and Hint buttons fill more quickly than the others and your Active Zones (usually hidden object scenes) will be highlighted with sparkles. While in Advanced and Extreme Modes, your Active Zones aren’t highlighted. Further, in Advanced, Hint and Skip take longer to fill and are completely absent in Extreme Mode.

I played on Casual for the bulk of the game, simply because I found it to be hard even on this mode. Items that you needed to pick up weren’t highlighted in any way, only the HOG were highlighted. On rare occasion, an area I needed to interact with would twinkle, but it probably required some item I saw 7 rooms ago. I’d think that on the easiest mode, at a bare minimum, an item could have the slightest twinkle if you’ve been searching an area for a while and don’t see it. Instead, I found myself retreating to the Strategy Guide when I got hung up. A player should never be forced to consult a Strategy Guide on a regular basis simply because the game isn’t clear in where you need to progress next.

Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll uses the basic tapping gestures we are accustomed to on the iPad. I did experience occasions when I would tap an item to pick it up and I would have to repeat the action a few times before it was recognized. Aside from this, you’ll be tasked with going through rooms and areas of the village to find items for solving puzzles, and occasionally you’ll have hidden object scenes to complete. If you get stuck, you have a Hint button in the form of the creepy doll that will slowly fill (assuming you are playing on Casual or Advanced) and you can click it to highlight an item you need to find. If the item requires two parts, it will highlight both parts, but even then it isn’t often as simple as putting the items together. In one example, you had to find a “wooden doll” and since a lot of the items look old fashioned, I first thought it was an old doll that was also in the hidden object scene. But no, you are actually looking for one of those wooden poseable dolls that you might see on someone’s desk. You had to pick up a chisel and take it to a block of wood and tap the wood numerous times to carve out the wooden doll. Huh? I just wasn’t fond of this mechanic inserted into the hidden object experience.

There’s also a button with feet on it that you can tap to see where you can possibly travel to from your current position, but often it will tell you to visit locations that you don’t have the required items, so when you get there, you can’t do anything. You can tap the Hint button to see what to do next and often, you’ll get a message saying you can’t do anything at that location. It all boils down to a frustrating experience.

I really hate to tear into a game like this since I know the team at Vogat spent a lot of time making Whisper of Fear: The Cursed Doll a really scary experience, but I just didn’t have any fun with it. If you are looking for a hidden object adventure, look elsewhere. However, if you are an adventure fan and like a true challenge, you might be interested. If you can try a demo for free, I would advise doing that first, though.