Adventure games are an eclectic bunch. They range from goofy third-person experiences like the Monkey Island games to more serious, story-driven games like the Myst series. Some rely heavily on inventory-based puzzles; others more on dialogue; still others on logically piecing elements of the environment together in order to progress.

Despite this diversity, there are generally three things that define adventure games:
-They are story-centric.
-They are of a slower pace than most games.
-Most of them are terrible.

Chronicles of Mystery: The Tree of Life, fortunately, manages to side-step that last quality. Mostly.

You play as Sylvie Leroux, a young archaeologist called into a French museum to examine a mysterious chest. Through a series of puzzles and unfortunate events, you’ll work through a story that takes you to France, Cairo, Venice, and a few other locations.

The game tells an interesting story that deals with the Mary Celeste, a real-world ship from the 1870s whose crew mysteriously disappeared. You’ll avoid assassins, gather evidence, and solve mysteries as the story unfolds into a satisfying twist at the end. The pacing, unfortunately, is maddeningly slow. The game is only ten to fifteen hours long, but it feels much longer.

To its credit, the game does sidestep many of the pitfalls that plague adventure games. In each environment, there are a variety of things to interact with – things to pick up, objects to manipulate, people to talk to, etc. In a much-appreciated move, developer/publisher City Interactive included a hint button that highlights each clickable object on the screen. This eliminates the maddening pixel hunts that so many adventure games are known for, and also cuts down on the need to backtrack and re-explore areas of the game to hunt for something you missed. It’s a feature that more games like this should incorporate.

However, it does fall prey to a few other issues. I am a believer that inventories in adventure games are a mistake, because they tend to force immersion-breaking leaps of logic: It’s nice that I can pick up that tablecloth and take it with me, but I have no idea why I’m giving into such kleptomania until I discover that it’s part of a puzzle solution later in the game.

For the most part, the puzzles are intuitive and appropriate to each environment, but there were a few times when I found myself at a loss, randomly trying everything in my inventory until finally discovering what the game wanted me to do. This doesn’t happen often, but it stands out when it does.

Graphically the game is dated, but it works for what the game is trying to accomplish. The voice acting is largely bland, but never offensively bad.

There aren’t many content issues to speak of. Smoking and alcohol are referenced. The story deals with multiple murders, in non-graphic fashion. A smattering of mild language pops up.

There is also some interesting spiritual imagery. The story deals with the Tree of Life, a Biblical reference to the tree from the Garden of Eden. One or two characters reference scripture passages and imagery. The Bible isn’t put down in any way, and some of the references were oddly insightful enough that it left me wondering if the game was developed by a Christian studio.

The game is rated ‘T’, and doesn’t contain content that will worry most gamers in that age bracket.

Chronicles of Mystery: The Tree of Life isn’t as polished, visionary, or memorable as other selections from the adventure genre, but it does spin an interesting tale that will occupy a few hours of your time – if you have the patience for its slow pacing and occasional poor design decisions.

Jerod Jarvis is an independent gaming journalist and founder of Duality Games. He maintains gaming columns for The Washington Times Communities and for The Outpost. When not blogging madly about games, he freelances for the Spokesman-Review in his hometown of Spokane, Washington and attends school at Whitworth University. Check out his presence on Facebook and Twitter to stay up on Duality Games updates and the inside scoop on the gaming news you care about.