A very good example of the casual adventure game.
Wonderful and detailed artwork, albeit with fuzzy cutscenes and mediocre voice acting.
Great selection of puzzles including 'find the object' (you can bypass this with a minigame of mahjong if you want) that consistently keep you engaged.

A great game to drink and decompress with that makes you feel clever without straining your brain.

At first glance Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart, is a stock standard and formulaic Hidden Object Game (HoG) that primarily stands out because of it's familiarity to the Pirates of the Carribean film franchise. It doesn't delve into larger piratical themes: there's no similiarity to Treasure Island or Captain Blood and swashbuckling on the high seas but there is some similarity to legends such as Der Vliegende Hollander and it's conflation to the English idiom "Davy Jones's locker". As such the pirate elements become superficial, with the larger narrative being focused upon the supernatural, curses and Davy Jones as the sea devil.

Pros
• Average yet challenging puzzles
  
• Variety of Hidden object games, from collectables on screens to Fragmented and listed hidden objects
  
• Decent pacing of plot and game
  
  
  Cons
• Graphics don't hold up well on modern display resolutions (HD and higher)
  
• Story switches genres from mystery to adventure to romance without developing any fully
  
• Animations are pretty terrible and display at a lower resolution than the main game

The Cursed Heart isn't quite sure what genre it wants to be, switching itself from an initial mystery tale, with requisite investigative heroine (a museum curator and archaeologist) to an adventure that has you chasing a ghost, to finally ending as a macabre romance riddled with a secondary character suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Despite this being an Artifex Mundi tale, the relationships are as one dimensional and cloyingly written as any pulp fiction romance novel. This being one of developer Artifex Mundi's earlier titles it is similar in tone to the Big Fish published games which established the genre.
That is to say, narrative holds very little of importance other than to give the players protagonist the bare minimum of motivation and to provide some light elements of context for the locales you visit. The story is not quite as bad as I'm making it sound, its just incredibly formulaic and cliched. A common issue with many HoGs that don't really focus on story as an important element. It's bare boned enough however to be middlingly entertaining, purely through the B-movie nature of its plot.

The gameplay however is fantastic. As one of Artifex Mundi's earlier titles it's one of the games that established them as masters of making HoGs. There is a little backtracking but generally the game opens up new areas in Chapters allowing you to focus on those new areas to solve current quests, and wraps up the side-missions before you unlock the big puzzle to the next area. Movement is incredibly easy between areas as a map indicates which areas you need to travel to, and clicking on it takes you to them instantaneously. The HUD is non-invasive and simplistic (although I would have enjoyed some puzzles which allowed you to combine items), and there are enough environmental clues and hints to assist you through. The objects you need are fairly obvious not obscured or buried in 3 layers of pop up pictures. If anything was to define the gameplay here its how accessible everything is.
The Hidden Object scenes themselves are lavishly illustrated and are varied to prevent tedium. From word lists to silhouettes to the occasional fragmented object, they're nicely varied. Of course the Object scenes can be switched out for a Mahjong minigame. Personally I found this of little use, as I'm playing the game for its Hidden Object scenes so found it strange it included something that allowed you to skip the primary determination of the games genre.
The collectibles made hunting through the overall game world more entertaining and definitely lengthened the playtime, however it was sad that only one type of collectible actually added to the background tale of the game. This perhaps limited a lot of narrative potential, as even the environmental storytelling is limited. With the responsiveness of the Object scenes, the variety of puzzles with clear hints and instructions its easy to see how Artifex Mundi rapidly developed a positive reputation despite the story. The gameplay is executed well in all areas and offered various improvements over older games that drastically improved the experience of play.

That the Cursed Heart is a 2011 game does show. Whilst the graphics in HoGs can generally withstand time, due to their static nature and stylistic images the cutscenes are painful to watch. Not only are they only available in a low resolution (lower than the resolution of the main game) the computer animation is tellingly old. Animations in scenes are also rather painful to watch. Characters faces distort horrifically when they talk as the image itself is bent to convey motion, making them look grotesque when they speak.
The game itself does offer some upscaling to HD systems, and whilst there is the occasional pixellation, a blur effect removes the worst of it, however it was strongly reminiscent of an old CRT monitor even whilst playing on my digital monitor.

The game does have some lovely background music, however mine seemed to keep reverting to one particular track which eventually made it fairly tedious to play through. But the larger issue was the voice acting. The voices fail to convey emotion accurately. The daughter constantly sounded nasal and whiny, even though she was meant to be afraid, and the Dread Pirate hardly sounded fearsome perhaps as a result that his baritone performance kept wavering at odd times.

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is an exemplary title for the genre from a gameplay perspective. It's fun, intuitive and easy to navigate. From a storytelling perspective its rather disappointing, as it ultimately ends up as a supernatural adventure game rather than a horror or romance which it attempts to be at times. The characters are terribly uncompeling, and never have much investment from the player.
For all that though it presents itself well despite the camp elements, and is a worthwhile game for those who enjoy the genre and those who might want to have a first time attempt at playing Hogs.

If you enjoyed this review please follow my curator Virtual Visions for more recommendations.

Anyone who has already played an Hidden Object Game by Artifex Mundi, knows that this developer delivers beautifully designed games, which form the best the genre currently has to offer. The first game in the Nightmares from the Deep series does not disappoint and proves to be another fine release from Artifex Mundi. However, the game does show its "age" a little bit: it was actually already released early in 2012, and this shows – it's not as meticuously polished as Artifex Mundi's more recent releases.

Don't take me wrong: I enjoyed playing this game, but I didn't felt "drawn in" as much as by other games from Artifex Mundi. This was mainly due to the voice-acting of the different characters, which proved something of a disappointment. This is a pity, since the story itself is more than interesting and offers a nice twist on the well-known "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme, although the ending could hardly be more cliché.

Somehow the different elements of the game – point-and-click, hidden object scenes, puzzles and cutscenes – didn't add up for me to something really engrossing. Most of the separate elements are perfectly fine, with the hidden object scenes standing out as beautifully drawn as ever. The puzzles range from very easy to moderately difficult, and add some variety to the gameplay. I was especially pleased to find the option to choose for a game of Mohjang instead of the different hidden object scenes., with the Mohjang games gradually increasing in "difficulty". The music in this kind of games often strikes me as bland, but that's just a matter of personal taste I guess.

As is well-known among collectors of achievements, games by Artifex Mundi offer excellent possibilities to achieve perfect games without too much difficulty. As usual, two playthroughs are needed for this, but both need to be on the same profile in order to let all the achievements unlock. Something to keep in mind, as I made the mistake of starting the second one on a new profile, and playing through it for a third time would be stretching it way too far ;-).

Overall conclusion: recommended, mainly to fans of the Hidden Object Genre

I used to play these "hidden objects" games a lot back then, so I was expecting Nightmares from the Deep:The Cursed Heart to be to my liking, and I was very curious about it since the day I found it on Greenlight.

Well, it didn't disappoint :)
The hidden objects scenes didn't give a headache and the mini-games were just right - neither boring nor needlessly complicated. The story of the "main" chapter is interesting, the cutscenes are enjoyable to watch and the ending was kind of captivating.

Also, undead pirates are badass! <3

This is a surprisingly nice adventure game, blending 3 genres into one game nicely. Puzzles are plentiful and varied, everything is logical and falls good into darkish atmosphere. A bit on an easy side, though.

All in all, if you love the spooky, mystery subset of hidden object games, you will love The Cursed Heart.

...and here we have another Artifex Mundi caliber HOG. I've been meaning to play this game for ages now. Finally being able to find the time, I'm rushing here to give you my full review. Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is one of Artifex Mundi's earlier games, thus it is quite possible to encounter amateur mistakes or some clumsy animations now and then. Yet, the charm attached to the developer’s name doesn't fail to entertain us anyway.

Here we have Sarah Black, the curator of the Caribbean Museum and the mother of one cheery teenage girl, preparing the exhibition of a life time. The mummified corpse of Henry Remington, most notorious pirate of the Caribbean Sea back in 1800s is finally discovered and retrieved from his resting place: "Davy Jones' Locker" a.k.a the bottom of the sea. The corpse is delivered to the museum for the exhibition, and Sarah prepares him to be displayed. Just as we were thinking that he seems kinda handsome for a corpse that's been lying at the bottom of the sea for some centuries, he comes back to life, kidnaps our daughter, summons his ghost ship and sets sail to Skull Island... Oh, where did I see that before?

Okay, okay, I'll say it. I have no idea about the rest of the series yet, but this first game is basically a retelling of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest without Captain Jack Sparrow to lighten up the mood. But as the first instalment of the Nightmares from the Deep series - and possibly the most clumsily done - The Cursed Heart still finds means to keep you interested, with a detailed story of its own, weaved out of countless nautical folktales. Hey, I'm glad that we have a name for the protagonist at least, contrary to "Madame Detective" of Left in the Dark.

Artwork is most brilliant with its eerie depictions, nautical themes and an expected amount of undead roaming around. At this point, no one expects Artifex Mundi to present bad artwork, even with its older titles. What I do wonder though, is that how they've managed to make cinematics in lower quality than actual game artwork. Cinematics are blurry and less presentable compared to actual in-game artworks. Same goes for the voice acting: voice acting itself is beyond par, but the lip synch is non-existent: people do move their mouths rhythmically, that's all. I think this is forgivable considering that this is an older title though.

Here comes the gameplay: we have quite enjoyable and clear HOG scenes, some FROG scenes, a good amount of enjoyable puzzles and alternative Mahjong games if you are bored of object hunting. It takes at least 2 playthroughs to complete all achievements - one for HOGs, one for Mahjong games. The map is not interactive, but you get used to the environment quickly, and there is little backtracking aside going back to the ship to place a Dubloon on a chest and listen to an undead dwarf tell a story now and then. What's that about? You gotta play the game to learn!

Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart is probably not Artifex Mundi's best game, but it is a promising title and the start of a possibly enjoyable journey on a series. If you'd manage to grab it on sale, you'd enjoy it thoroughly when you'd be in the mood for a pleasant little HOG.

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The Cursed Heart is one of ArtifexMundi's first Hidden Object Games and it shows. Compared to their later games animation is nearly fully absent, voice acting is rough, and the puzzles are relatively simple.

However, that does not take away the fact this is a very good HOG entry. The story is a compelling myth which encourages you to continue playing, the AM staples of randomized hidden object puzzles are already present, and it never feels unnecessarily difficult.
And for those who have no patience to solve hidden object puzzles, you can play a simple mahjong game instead.

Definitely worth picking up, if only for the bonus adventure in this version that nicely ties the story to the sequel's.

I got tired of playing my normal games and tried something new awhile back when I got this. The game was a lot more fun than I would have thought. Just a nice look and find type play and easy achievements for playing. I actually enjoyed the game so much I bought everything else the Dev had out at the time and try to get new games from them when I notice recent releases.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Artifex’s games a lot… but this first game from the “Nightmares from the Deep” series is simply bad. The HO scenes were ok, but the story is kinda meh and the cutscenes are in really bad quality.

3/10, get this one on a very generous sale and only if you’re really bored.