Enigma Of Fear is a puzzle-horror adventure in which Mia, an agent of the Order of Paranormal Investigators, enters the Perimeter to find her vanished father. The campaign spans four open areas plus the underground base, completable in any order across two sessions.
The out-of-the-box puzzles hide answers inside the settings menu, with dimming the brightness revealing a keypad clue and muting all but the sound effects exposing a hidden message. The playthrough calls the trick very, very clever and is reminded of Tunic.
Playable roles beyond Mia, including the prologue’s Varity and Samuel’s side content, mean different characters are needed for different puzzles. The presentation is a strong point, mixing pixel art with decent 3D in a style like Octopath but with less blue.
The ghost-tuning radio captures spectral echoes of past conversations, and the voice acting is called pretty solid throughout. The layered lore arrives through radio calls, documents, tape recordings and cursed items that piece together the Order’s failed investigation.
The atmosphere leans on the UV-light investigation mode, the sanity system restored by hugging the dog Loopy, and tense stealth against blind blood zombies. The puzzle variety spans a music-following maze, clock-tower synchronisation, ooze manipulation and clever keypad codes.
The final boss force-quits the game on death, forcing a full boot sequence, and the Leticia fight makes no sense with a lack of tells. The bright white visuals obscure navigation in places, and psychological attacks in boss fights cannot be healed.
Overall, this inventive puzzle-horror adventure earns a recommendation, with its out-of-the-box puzzles, presentation and character-switching structure as the highlights. The final boss’s force-quit and the Leticia fight are the main caveats.