I Spy Spooky Mansion

- Reviewed on Wii -

I Spy Spooky Mansion released on October 19th, 2010. 

With such a simple concept, such as the game of I Spy, developers, Scholastic Corporation, managed to create quite a successful game amongst critics. 

As I played this Wii game, I was ecstatic about the riddles after a short while, but shortly found myself dreading the rest of this experience. 

This review WILL have Major Spoilers so keep that in mind before continuing...

I Spy Spooky Mansion's story is a nice, kid friendly plot that is about the player(s) entering a haunted mansion and being greeted by the main guide of the game / riddles, a tiny skeleton named Skelly.   

The door closes behind the player in a classic haunted mansion trope, and now the player must venture through the creepy mansion and solve all the riddles in order to collect pieces to find a way out.

All the game requires is a single Wii Remote, and if you want, you can play with others in couch co-op.

You begin with setting up your profile. You type your name, whether your right or left-handed, then a color for your cursor. 

The main gameplay is just I Spy... obviously. However, the developers of I Spy Spooky Mansion went a step further with small, fast paced minigames for specific items within.

When you reach a puzzle (riddle), a dialogue box appears with the player reading it out loud in a standard, young, male voice. 

The protagonist's voice was bland, but the voice actor for Skelly (Amy Birnbaum) did a phenomenal job and even made me crack a smile here and there, truly adding to the charm of this small Wii title.

You can close and reopen the dialogue box to see what you need to find, and then you can use the d-pad to move your point of view around if / when needed.

Once you find a piece of the riddle, you "press a" and that portion on the dialogue box turns a different color. 

There are over 400 objects to find in the 30+ riddles in I Spy Spooky Mansion!

The thing about the "30" riddles is that there aren't exactly 30 different locations, but instead, once you complete the small number of locations (riddles), you'll have to go through and redo all the riddles two more times!

The plot flows where you find all the pieces to the secret message board, then must help Skelly find all the ingredients to the shrinking soup, then find all the circuit board parts to her ghost machine. 

I hated having to go through all the same riddles and just find different things within them. 

I much rather have had more new locations but again, I wasn't a part of the development team, and I don't know if there were restraints due to budget limitations.  

Transitioning between parts of the mansion were well done (animation wise) but heaven forbid you click on the wrong door / hallway, because you'll have to wait for that animation (transition) to play out before then being able to go back. 

All the animations for finding objects were all slowly paced out but were still pretty fond of to look at. 

My favorite part of I Spy Spooky Mansion was by far, the creepy ambience. 

I was genuinely impressed that for a kid's game, I Spy Spooky Mansion's ambience such as creaking floors, slamming doors, and even evil, faint laughs were all quite the spook (pun intended)!

I finished this game in very short time. I Spy Spooky Mansion is only about three hours (average) in length and doesn't have hardly any side features to go along with it.

I Spy Spooky Mansion is just I Spy with a somewhat descent story. 

When you finish all the riddles multiple times and finally help Skelly get a ghost friend, the game just ends after they let you out of the mansion.

I don't see the longevity being a possible thing for returning players, but the game nonetheless was a joy to play over the course of a few days.

Great ambience, decent graphics, fun guide (Skelly), and a plethora of riddles to solve, makes I Spy Spooky Mansion a fun, short game to play once... but hardly ever again. 

Pros: 

    - Outstanding Ambience

    - Fun Story

    - Easy Controls

    - Multiplayer

Cons:

    - No Returning Qualities (Longevity)

    - Riddles Get Boring Very Quickly

    - Unskippable, Long Animations (Transitions)

My Rating for I Spy Spooky Mansion (on Wii):

3 / 5

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Disclaimer

All Reviews, Ratings, Pros, Cons, and Opinions Shared on this Blog (Press A Reviews) are my (Connor Butler) own Thoughts and Feelings.