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in the hand of glory detective lars bundy and his trusty bike, greendart, are hot on the trail of a serial killer. we find them in front of an apartment building, trying to talk to the next possible victim of the killer. things happen, bundy gets suspended, but the malefactor is not gone, plus a rich kid disappears around the same time as well. bundy decides to solve the cases himself, hoping it'd make his superiors reinstate him. not gonna spoil more of the story, there's obviously twists and turns and secrets and revelations, some less predictable than others.

I didn't find the narrative particularly gripping or the characters especially memorable, but it was a mostly enjoyable experience. the two protagonists are fine, though lars is your typical smart aleck, his over-the-top introduction of himself got old after the very first time. alice, the intern at the cop shop, is very effective as a sidekick and has a more active part in the second half of the game. some of the minor characters were cool as well, wilo being my favorite with his paranoia.

besides the usual point & click mechanics of walking around, talking to everyone, taking, combining and using items, there's the occasional more involved puzzle, some of which I really enjoyed (the map in part 1 and the safe in part 2, for instance). unfortunately, the game is littered with death and timed sequences, always annoying, always unnecessary, a waste of everybody's time. no progress is lost, you just gotta keep trying until the situation is handled, and on two occasions I got stuck because I didn't realize 'almost dying' was how to make progress. I guess I could've learned from the first and used it the second time, but ideally developers would do away with this. I like a good death scene, but point & clicks aren't action games.

another thing I could live without is the 'I might do that later when I need it' way of handling interactions. the game literally tells you that it's a valid action and will be necessary to perform soon, so why can't I just grab everything without all this nonsense? sure, it makes the inventory less cluttered and the game more linear and idiot-proof, but also leads to a lot of unnecessary back and forth, and figuring out item combinations is part of the deal anyway. instead of wasting resources on animating death sequences and playing them after every incorrect item use, maybe concentrate on improving this part of the game.

a kind of unique selling point in the mechanics department is alice's superpower of kinesics (the study of nonverbal communication). it involves a minigame, each gesture has to be matched up with the correct interpretation for alice to draw some conclusions and act accordingly. the game won't tell you which ones are incorrect, gotta keep trying. it's not used a whole lot, but it mixed things up, I liked it.

the presentation is mostly fine. graphics are colorful and vibrant, characters are animated reasonably well, and overall the game looks good, especially compared to earlier versions seen in the extras section, but there's still an amateurish flash game feeling here and there. can't really put my finger on it, it's just not as cartoony as it could be. and while there's some good voice work from the two protagonists, the rest leaves a lot to be desired, though I've certainly heard a lot worse.

the technical aspects are far from perfect. on the plus side, there's an optional tutorial, saving is possible anytime outside a cutscene and over as many slots as you want (overwrite prompt, date and thumbnail, no naming), there's windowed mode and relaxed reading mode, where text only advances after a click, but volume settings are largely useless, as cutscenes and relevatory music play at full blast no matter what. true, nobody forced me to play in the middle of the night when everything's quiet, but I expect implemented features to work as they should. music overpowering dialog is unacceptable, and since seemingly every other action is set to be dramatic, there's a lot of it happening here.

further technical issues include mouse wheel only revealing hotspots for a few seconds, while space shows them as long as the key is pressed, and the wheel can't be used to scroll the inventory either. there are also typos here and there, and for the first hour or so I didn't get thumbnails with my saves, nor did esc bring up the pause menu. oh, and characters can't run, and sometimes they take the scenic route around a room before commenting on something. luckily, scene transitions can be made shorter work of by double clicking.

this all sounds very negative, I guess, but I already said that on the whole it's mostly enjoyable, if nothing special, plus some of the good stuff is evident from the screenshots and trailers, there's even a demo to try, so might as well highlight the more questionable things. it's a decent game, put together relatively well, took me less than 12 hours to complete (for the 15+ touted on the store page you'd have to get stuck really badly over and over again), but the audio and other issues and the annoying timed and death scenes ruined some of it. if you like point & click adventures, you'll most likely enjoy this as well, but it's not gonna enter any halls of fame.

[quote]For more puzzle game reviews, news and everything puzzle-related, follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25928931-Puzzle-Lovers/]Puzzle Lovers[/url] and check out our [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/puzzlelovers]Steam group[/url].[/quote] in [b]the hand of glory[/b] detective lars bundy and his trusty bike, greendart, are hot on the trail of a serial killer. we find them in front of an apartment building, trying to talk to the next possible victim of the killer. things happen, bundy gets suspended, but the malefactor is not gone, plus a rich kid disappears around the same time as well. bundy decides to solve the cases himself, hoping it'd make his superiors reinstate him. not gonna spoil more of the story, there's obviously twists and turns and secrets and revelations, some less predictable than others. [b]I didn't find the narrative particularly gripping or the characters especially memorable, but it was a mostly enjoyable experience.[/b] the two protagonists are fine, though lars is your typical smart aleck, his over-the-top introduction of himself got old after the very first time. alice, the intern at the cop shop, is very effective as a sidekick and has a more active part in the second half of the game. some of the minor characters were cool as well, wilo being my favorite with his paranoia. besides the usual point & click mechanics of walking around, talking to everyone, taking, combining and using items, there's the occasional more involved puzzle, some of which I really enjoyed (the map in part 1 and the safe in part 2, for instance). unfortunately, [b]the game is littered with death and timed sequences[/b], always annoying, always unnecessary, a waste of everybody's time. no progress is lost, you just gotta keep trying until the situation is handled, and on two occasions I got stuck because I didn't realize 'almost dying' was how to make progress. I guess I could've learned from the first and used it the second time, but ideally developers would do away with this. I like a good death scene, but point & clicks aren't action games. another thing I could live without is the [b]'I might do that later when I need it'[/b] way of handling interactions. the game literally tells you that it's a valid action and will be necessary to perform soon, so why can't I just grab everything without all this nonsense? sure, it makes the inventory less cluttered and the game more linear and idiot-proof, but also leads to a lot of unnecessary back and forth, and figuring out item combinations is part of the deal anyway. instead of wasting resources on animating death sequences and playing them after every incorrect item use, maybe concentrate on improving this part of the game. a kind of unique selling point in the mechanics department is [b]alice's superpower of kinesics[/b] (the study of nonverbal communication). it involves a minigame, each gesture has to be matched up with the correct interpretation for alice to draw some conclusions and act accordingly. the game won't tell you which ones are incorrect, gotta keep trying. it's not used a whole lot, but it mixed things up, I liked it. [b]the presentation is mostly fine.[/b] graphics are colorful and vibrant, characters are animated reasonably well, and overall the game looks good, especially compared to earlier versions seen in the extras section, but there's still an amateurish flash game feeling here and there. can't really put my finger on it, it's just not as cartoony as it could be. and while there's some good voice work from the two protagonists, the rest leaves a lot to be desired, though I've certainly heard a lot worse. [b]the technical aspects are far from perfect.[/b] on the plus side, there's an optional tutorial, [b]saving is possible anytime[/b] outside a cutscene and over as many slots as you want (overwrite prompt, date and thumbnail, no naming), there's windowed mode and relaxed reading mode, where text only advances after a click, but [b]volume settings are largely useless, as cutscenes and relevatory music play at full blast[/b] no matter what. true, nobody forced me to play in the middle of the night when everything's quiet, but I expect implemented features to work as they should. music overpowering dialog is unacceptable, and since seemingly every other action is set to be dramatic, there's a lot of it happening here. further technical issues include mouse wheel only revealing hotspots for a few seconds, while space shows them as long as the key is pressed, and the wheel can't be used to scroll the inventory either. there are also typos here and there, and for the first hour or so I didn't get thumbnails with my saves, nor did esc bring up the pause menu. oh, and [b]characters can't run[/b], and sometimes they take the scenic route around a room before commenting on something. luckily, scene transitions can be made shorter work of by double clicking. this all sounds very negative, I guess, but I already said that [b]on the whole it's mostly enjoyable, if nothing special[/b], plus some of the good stuff is evident from the screenshots and trailers, [b]there's even a demo to try[/b], so might as well highlight the more questionable things. it's a decent game, put together relatively well, took me [b]less than 12 hours to complete[/b] (for the 15+ touted on the store page you'd have to get stuck really badly over and over again), but the audio and other issues and the annoying timed and death scenes ruined some of it. if you like point & click adventures, you'll most likely enjoy this as well, but it's not gonna enter any halls of fame.