Tales from Candleforth review

• Reviews by Victoria Sykes
• Published:

Short but eerily beautiful point-and-click puzzler burns brightly at times but may leave you wishing for more

The first game out of the blocks from Spanish developer Under The Bed Games promises a ‘folk horror 2D point-and-click game with puzzles and escape room mechanics.’ For the most part Tales from Candleforth succeeds as a fairly casual experience, delivering on its promise with dynamic environments, an arresting and beautiful melodic score, and some truly horrifying hand-drawn visuals. It’s a short and stylishly gloomy atmospheric adventure with some entertaining gameplay, though a lack of depth and puzzle balance prevent it from fully reaching its potential. 

Introductions go smoothly through a pumpkin-headed curator of stories and collector of strange artifacts called Khal. Sadly, we don’t get to see much more of him past the opening and ending segments, which is too bad since he’s enjoyably enigmatic, cryptically offering little bits of information about his haunted acquisitions. Khal offers us a glimpse of his favourite item – a glowing book titled ‘Tales from Candleforth,’ a mystical tome that changes the tale every time it’s opened, presenting a unique playable challenge for each reader to overcome. 

Ours begins with the story of Dorothy and Sarah, a grandmother and granddaughter witch duo who protect the villagers of Candleforth. Now that Sarah is old enough, she must accept her destiny as a healer and continue the family tradition, but Dorothy becomes gravely ill and must leave abruptly. Determined to ‘leave something behind to ensure Sarah’s wellbeing,’ she writes a note urging Sarah to make a brew containing three special ingredients, which will both cure the illness that has seemingly befouled the aging Dorothy and serve as Sarah’s final part of magic training. 

Of course there’s more to the story than that: Due to the occult method of healthcare she provides, in which she regularly accesses the veil between this world and another, Dorothy has become haunted by ‘seams’ appearing in her world and threatening to consume her. These seams manifest as paper tears (complete with sound effect) on-screen, some of which can be interacted with. As the game progresses, Sarah also begins experiencing the seams, which affect her environment in a similar way. 

This sort of otherworldly narrative relies heavily on ambiguity for much of its mystery. We’ve seen this executed masterfully in games like the excellent Rusty Lake / Cube Escape series, and Tales from Candleforth sets the right mood from the beginning with a gloomy sepia-toned colour palette that already feels unsettling. The creepy atmosphere is further enhanced by a gentle screen flicker in the apothecary and other interior locations, which adds to the ambiance, as if everything is genuinely lit by candlelight. A slight screen shake accompanies the various seams and tears that occur to unnerve us even more. And yet despite the intentionally dreary atmosphere, the animation and hand-drawn graphics throughout this game are of such high quality that they somehow still manage to make the environments look inviting. In one stand-out part, a farmhouse we’ve seen previously during the day but now shrouded in darkness becomes awash with moonlight as a huge illuminated moth which we collected in the previous chapter moves across a seam. 

There aren’t many characters here and none of them are voiced, instead using a synthesised ‘talking’ sound to indicate when they’re speaking, accompanied by subtitles. I found this to be effective at complementing the dialogue, as the effects punctuate each word at the speed of the character’s delivery. In one pivotal story beat, the pace is slow, forbearing and dramatic; in another, the exchange is fast and chatty, and the talking sounds accurately represent both. 

The musical arrangement in Tales from Candleforth is first-class. Starting with Khal’s theme, which is spooky carnival-esque, the score transitions to a more absorbing melancholic piano piece. Two of the chapters are almost devoid of any background music, however, save for monosyllabic low hums that are particularly disconcerting as they crescendo. A couple of puzzles are musical in nature; they use a simple ‘listen and copy’ mechanic but the sounds feel haunting and mysterious. During the quieter periods, sound effects too are used effectively. In the introductory scene, we are met with a booming, distant, cleverly implemented voice sound that echoes around the dusty library. Every whoosh of a door opening, crinkle of paper notes we pick up, and satisfying clunk of a puzzle being completed really adds to the immersion. Even actions we perform only once, such as candle wax being applied to a letter, have a unique and distinct effect. 

Unfortunately, the game lacks much emotional punch despite depicting some mature themes. We are expected to believe that Dorothy and Sarah are closely bonded, but there isn’t much that conveys that to the player, save for a slightly obscure letter at the beginning, and a few comments by Sarah throughout. I wish we had seen more character development and interactions between them to tie the story together, because without that I just felt like I was going through the motions of collecting ingredients in different locations until the very end when I encountered Dorothy once again. This reunion really did not have the effect on me I imagine was expected, and the ending felt rushed and confusing. More than a few spelling and grammatical errors don’t help either, and with limited accessibility options and some dialogue presented in an almost unreadable font, it occasionally takes some of the shine off what is otherwise an intriguing and memorable puzzler. 

Tales from Candleforth

Genre:	Horror
Presentation:	Slideshow
Theme:	Religion/Occult, Rescue
Perspective:	First-Person
Graphic Style:	Illustrated realism
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click

The point-and-click interface is very simple with two tabs on the side, one denoting your inventory for the items you acquire, and another for any important documents or key items (such as objects you’ve reconstructed from separate pieces). You move around in first person, slideshow style, by clicking the directional arrows on the sides or bottom of the screen, which take you directly to a new area. There are plenty of hotspots, but the animated smart cursor is rather slow at indicating which can be interacted with, so you’ll probably just end up clicking on anything that looks interesting. There is a mixture of simple clicks with drag-and-drop mechanics that is contradictory at points, though, so sometimes I was clicking when I should have been dragging or vice versa, and there seemed to be no clear indication that one type of puzzle required a click, and a different but similar type of puzzle needed more. 

But if the mechanics are sometimes finicky, the puzzles themselves are generally very enjoyable. Tales from Candleforth has a fair representation of different types of puzzles scattered throughout. Each location in and around the town of Candleforth consists of a handful of screens that can be explored, with some scenes allowing further exploration in a close-up when a puzzle presents itself, all of which need to be completed before the adventure advances. 

One of the most memorable early puzzles involves a baby’s head with flowers trying to bloom inexplicably from its head, requiring you to control light and shadow from the clouds you can move mechanically across two screens. It is delightfully macabre and melancholic, and the sound design in this particular segment is absolutely flawless. Special mention must also go to the penultimate puzzle sequences before the ends of the first two chapters. These are dramatic, operatic puzzle scenes that play out like stage performances that are very striking with clear, mature styling. Sadly, there are only two, as I would have loved to see this theatrical motif continued and built upon. The final chapters felt less distinctive without them.

Quite a few puzzles are multi-tiered, with each successive level becoming more difficult than the last. In the baby puzzle, for example, we must first get four bulbs to bloom, then six, and finally twelve to complete. This, in theory, should work coherently as the game progresses, but the puzzle balance seems off here. One puzzle may be a simple memory game, then the next chronologically is a complex sequence, then back to something much easier. On more than one occasion nearing the end of the game, I was expecting a puzzle to be much harder than it was, but instead of feeling relief that it wasn’t another head-scratcher, I felt a little underwhelmed. 

Sometimes the difficulty stems from clever design, but other times it’s more due to unclear directions for solving a puzzle. I don’t claim to be the greatest puzzle solver, but I usually have a general idea of the objective. However, a few of the puzzles here are so confusing in nature and offer such little direction that I had to turn to a walkthrough to complete them.  

With a little help, I clocked in at around three hours’ playtime for Tales from Candleforth. Unfortunately, although it is verified and perfectly playable on the Steam Deck, the majority of the cutscenes and loading scenes were not compatible with the format so I looked these up online to fill in the blanks. This seems to just be a limitation on the Steam Deck, but I’m hoping it gets fixed. 

Final Verdict

This game has a lot to offer the escape room fans, with a substantial variety of puzzles that feel very satisfying to solve – at least, once you figure out what it is you’re even supposed to do. If you’re more inclined towards a deeper narrative than a multi-location puzzler, this may not be one for you. Either way, during its short runtime it’s sure to hold your attention with its rich atmosphere, beautifully drawn locations, immaculate musical direction, and a few striking scenes that elevate the experience. I would love to see more of what Tales from Candleforth could offer as an anthology series, and hopefully Wood and Flesh: A Candleforth Short Story, a free playable prequel set in the same universe, is just a small tease of what more there is to come. 

Victoria played her own copy of Tales from Candleforth on PC via Steam Deck.