This game cannot not be finished, because of a bug that was not in the original disc version. The publisher doesn't care for fixing it, instead they just gave out a save game for download that puts you at some place behind the broken part so you miss an important part of the story.

They show on the shop page screenshots of the HD iOS version, while the PC version they actually sell here still looks exactly like the original game from 2001. Also I didn't see anything about this alleged "Updates in this new version of Necronomicon".

Normal thinking people would call this version of that game simply a fraud and Valve shouldn't allow to sell it on Steam.
Better just watch a Let's Play of it (of the original disc version) instead of wasting any money.

Update: I've found a fix for the problem with the missing video sequences and the missing briefcase, check out this forum post for more information. Buy the game if you really want to and know how to two juggle with two files (wich is really not that dificult actually).
My rating stays the same as there is still no official fix, although it's actually that simple. Also the problem with the technically seen ♥♥♥♥♥ screenshots and the missing addtional content stays that way too.

UPDATE: I've gotten this link from Meridian4 support team
http://support.anuman.net/necronomicon

there is a save file you can download that fixes the "brief case" bug at the last part of the game where you cannot access your alchemy kit.

that said, a great portion of my review below is still relevant!.

===================================================


I have never written a review before. Thats how strongly I feel about this. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FINISH IT.

It would be a great game if
1. You could actually finish it.
2. the cut scenes that are important to the plot acutally worked
3. there were meaningful clues to what you need to do next.
4. YOU COULD ACTUALLY FINISH IT!

You know what you should do? Buy a game called Darkness Within: Pursuit of Loath Nolder (and theres a part 2 as well)
those 2 games are exactly what you expect from a Lovecraft point and click adventure. THIS GAME IS A RIP-OFF.

Whats that? You've seen videos on youtube that look decent? Well, thats because those videos are showing you the half-way decent Playstation version of the game.

I am a veteran of the horror point/click genre. I enjoy solving obscure puzzles and thinking about the game for hours and hours.. i had to use UHS walkthrough and eventually youtube videos just to get to the part of the game where... uh.. you CAN'T FINISH IT.

So don't waste your money. Its a pity b/c there is a real potential here, if you could acutally finish the game, and the cutscenes were put back in it would be "ok".

I hope this helps.

I am genuinely baffled by my conflicting feelings over this "Lovecraftian" adventure game. Okay, Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness is nothing miraculous. It's old, it's clunky, full of bugs with irritable animations... yet still manages to set an eerie enough atmosphere to drive your perception skills to its limits. For that account only, it is not possible to recommend this game to anyone. Even if one is to set aside the fact that the game is raddled with bugs, it would still be an acquired taste forced down your throat.

It's year 1927 in rickety village of Pawtuxet, Rhode Island. A silent afternoon is abruptly interrupted for young William Stanton by his friend, Edgar Wycherley. Edgar seems off, panicked and fearful. He entrusts William an odd pyramid shaped relic and asks for him to protect it, even from Edgar himself at all costs. Then, Edgar takes off as oddly as he appeared before William's door. Minutes later, Doctor Egleton, Wycherley's family doctor visits William to inform that Edgar hasn't been himself lately, consumed by his studies of archeology and asks William to inform him immediately if Edgar is to be contacted. After these strange visits, William decides to visit Edgar himself and learn more about these "studies" of Edgar's in hopes of aiding his friend. That's how young and avid William Stanton gets himself into an interplanar mess centering a quite specific book of occult: Necronomicon.

So far, so good. The story is interesting to begin with, weaved with mummies, strange disappearances, long deceased ancestors, sigils and summoning of spirits. Yet is the presentation of the story fulfilling and satisfying as the game progresses? That, I'd like to vote as abstaining. There is a great amount of lore thrown around for us to monitor and take note, but they are not processed as elegantly as possible in my opinion. Anecdotes keep coming to us without any time for us to digest any kind of on-goings. On that part, it is bad construction for a story revelation.

The game hailing from 2001, graphics are nothing extraordinary, a bit clucky and plastic even for character models. Aside oddly shaped characters, the basic environment presents a creepy yet dull atmosphere suitable for any gothic setting, yet it doesn't actually deliver the Lovecraftian elegance that one would be waiting. Voice acting is neat, with accents of the original time period, but without the option of a subtitle, and much information for you to pursue hidden in cinematic dialogues - without an option to record spoken information in game - ends up being a complete obstacle for progression. You have to play this game with pen and paper + earphones if you'd like to make something out of the story.

We are already used to the linear gameplay for an adventure game, but Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness takes this part a bit more seriously than it should. One of the main problems for this game, if you ask me, is that you are expected to complete one solemn action at a time, and unless you discover and accomplish that specific action, nothing progresses. You are allowed to explore on your own; it just won't do any good. That's why everything turns into an "action hunt" on a wide map for you to figure out quickly.

Puzzles are another issue altogether. They are quite obscure even with the collectible information, asking you to run through a series of spiritual and occult references - most of them are authentic, by the way: kudos on that part - to figure out your next step. They are never easy and demand that you take notes in every step of your game. I'd love that if the lore that we use for puzzles would be at least somewhat relevant to the plotline that we are pursuing... It is mostly not. Oh, and remember "Old Ones" concept that we were so excited about, because, I don't know, this is a LOVECRAFTIAN game? It really doesn't deliver at all.

Combined with a series of common bugs that would make the game impossible to finish without an exe. copy of an old retail cd - it is possible to reach one in the guide section of community - Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness ends up being a lame adventure game with some cool references thrown around. If you are a fan of Lovecraftian literature, sure, you can try. But even then, I'd doubt that you'd enjoy it much. I tried so hard to like this game but even as a Lovecraft fan myself, I sadly did not.

Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page here - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!

First thing to do if you have any desire to play this game is to download the .exe file from the link below that fixes the missing cutsecene and the game breaking bug of not being able to access your inventory items.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341051983

All set? Great, now we can talk about the game itself.

William H. Stanton, aka you, find yourself face to face with an old childhood friend Edgar, who seems very scared and gives you an item to take care of and keep away from him under any circumstances. Right after him, a doctor barges in to tell you that Edgar has gone mad and needs to report to him for a medical care. And of course, being the great friend he is, Willy goes on the quest of saving his friend from whatever madness he descended into.

Because the game is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, I was excited to play this game expecting an interesting and intriguing story. While the game does have it's moments where the story seems to be heading in the right direction, more often than not, it just makes no sense and is all over the place. One thing that I didn't like in the way storyline progresses is that you are always expected to do one thing and one thing only to keep the story going and until you do that you can't move on; it is very linear in the way of what you need to do. The puzzles are very difficult to understand and to solve some of them I had to look up a FAQ because I was lost.

The graphics are not very good, but considering this is a 15 year old game, that's not unusual. The voice acting is actually really good, but there are no subtitles, which can be a problem because some of the characters talk weird and you may not be able to understand them at times. The sounds of the game and the background music do a really good job of creating a suspense and eerie atmosphere throughout the game which is always a plus.

I haven't encountered any bugs, apart from the one already mentioned in the link above, so at least that is not broken (too much). It took me about 7 hours to finish, but bear in mind I wasted at least 2 hours on the puzzle brainstorming.

+ Good atmosphere and sounds
+ voice acting
+ H.P. Lovecraft inspired lore

- linear and broken story
- plastic graphics
- difficult to understand puzzles
- no subtitles

I would only recommend this game to adventure lovers, everyone else should probably be better off playing something else. 5/10

What could have been a fun, notalgic release on steam is unfortunately hampered by some serious issues. This port is poorly done and sections of the story are missing. The best cutscene in the game is cut out and you are thrust ahead in the story with no idea what just happened. A game breaking bug makes the game impossible to complete a little later on when you can't access an important part of your inventory. As of yet there has been no word on a potential patch of fix for these issues and because of this I cannot reccomend the game.

Features two MAJOR bugs that prevent actually playing this properly, or at all. One of the largest curscenes is missing, and close to the end a menu is disabled that you need to access to get a key and progress with the game. Contacted the developers several times, but it appears they don't want to know. DO NOT BUY.

For The Love of Lovecraft Curator

Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness is an old school point and click adventure game. There are some that have nostalgia tinted glasses going into this game but even those find it a bit too hard of a game to get behind and wholly enjoy. The game does a few things right but unfortunately it just does a lot more wrong. The environment is pretty well done as far as what you see and the accompanying soundtrack. There is an access to files that go a bit into the lore and story more and some of the ritual requirements and lovecraftian lore is very spot on. The game has two endings which is kind of cool for games of it's time. The bad thing is that's about the high points in this one. Everything else unless you see hilariously bad animations as a plus than it's going to be a rough trip from here.

There are some gripes that I can honestly forgive that most probably won't. Yes the animations are dated and terrible. I found them to be hilarious most of the time so I looked past it. There is a major cutscene missing unless you follow a guide that copies the original cd exe file into your folder. I simply did this and did not experience any issues while playing and it didn't skip any scenes. A quick fix doesn't really deserve bashing although it would be nice if the devs would have taken the time to fix it. The game is extremely linear. Linear as in objects, events, and unlocked doors won't happen until you do something else. Most of the time you have little to no clue as to what to actually do. There's not a bunch of interesting side dialogue to find either. The point that really hit me hard was the bungalow section. There is a section of the game that requires some pixel hunting in near black screens. I used a video walkthrough once I got to here and still had problems figuring out where I was going or what I was supposed to do. The voice acting while good enough was hard to hear at times unless you have pretty good headphones. Couple that with no subtitles and some other poor ui choices and it just adds to the reasons that's hard to recommend this game.


So with following a guide I was able to go through this in around 4 hours. Without the guide I would have stopped playing after around 2 hours which is when I made it to the "dark" section of the game. This is a game I say it would be better instead of buying just load up a complete play on youtube. It did some interesting things for the time but there are just too many negative aspects to warrant going through yourself.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2190727629

𝕀𝕗 𝕐𝕠𝕦 𝔼𝕟𝕛𝕠𝕪 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕋𝕣𝕪
https://store.steampowered.com/app/298930/Darkness_Within_1_In_Pursuit_of_Loath_Nolder/

PROS:
+ Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft
+ Good atmosphere

CONS:
- Buggish
- Not configurable at all
- Bad interface
- Bad graphics
- Bad animations
- Meaningless puzzles

There's very few times in my life I actually feel the need to write a review, I generally let things speak for themselves. However, this game is the biggest brain suck I have ever come across and I felt the dying need to alert people to the waste of time and pennies they will experience if they buy this game. I could forgive the tired animations if it weren't for the dreadfully boring gameplay. As someone who is a big fan of adventure gaming, I am generally quite a patient person. However, this game forces you into such a linear pathway (only one action becomes available at any given time and you have to search through the game to find something that has become clickable) that I feel the problem solving has turned from an exercise of logic to a "search for the button" quest. Most actions that become executable wind up turning into a eyeball-tearingly long monolog from some dreadfully acted character that is supposed to advance the storyline but leaves you wondering where the heck the last half hour just went. Major fail guys, don't bother, even if you can get this game cheap.

A good old point-and-click adventure mystery type game with Lovecraftian themes. I don't know how long it is but it's been fun so far. The only problem I have is with the dialogue... there are no subtitles and because of the accents some of the people are seriously hard to understand if you're hard of hearing or bad at slurred American accents so it is advised that if you are about to talk to anybody SAVE your game. You might be able to figure some things out by logic or just clicking around but sometimes they do give you hints that save you time. It's a good practirse to save all the time anyway if not have multiple save files. PS - I loved the part with the guy that gets angry at you for ringing the doorbell. Naturally, I kept doing it to see how far the game dialogue would go and the guy bashed me to death haha. The graphics are pretty ordinary but it's probably to be expected for such an old game, and it's from a relatively unknown developer. Not that I'm the font of knowledge for devs but Anuman? Seems to be from France. Never heard of them until I downloaded this game.