Solve puzzles and time travel in the Renaissance era | The House of Da Vinci 3 - Review

The House of Da Vinci 3 has come to PC and it is an impressive port of a mobile escape room game. Set in the Renaissance era, you play as Giacomo, series protagonist and a friend of Leonardo Da Vinci in a puzzle solving adventure across space… as well as time.

🟩Pros

+Well designed intricate puzzles

+Surprisingly deep narrative

+Impressive graphics for a mobile port

🟥Cons

-Minor control woes

-Annoyingly slow transition between points of interests

The grand finale to the series trilogy.

The House of Da Vinci 3 has a surprisingly deep narrative involving conspiracies, secret societies, and time space manipulation, all interwoven with our rich real history. Our silent protagonist Giacomo will travel to many different locations across the Renaissance era in his investigative journey, encountering fully voiced historical figures all across Italy and beyond.

The story drops you right after the cliffhanger ending of the second game. It doesn’t provide any deep explanation or plot to the player (it happens a bit later via scattered letters and notes, as well as the story book of sorts in the main menu and the player's own journal) and jumps straight right into the tutorial after the quick intro.

In this regard it is really recommended to have played the first two games first to have a better grasp of the narrative, but if you’re only interested in the puzzle focused gameplay, it stands well on its own.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay is in first person view and consists mostly of point and click mechanics. Using your mouse to use or pick up items across the environment, dragging them around in the inventory, trying to combine them, and applying them to the environment. Every bit of action you make is a bit personal, even the little things like swinging the door open is done by mouse. It's like a VR game wearing a VR headset.

For the most part, the translation from a touch based control scheme to a mouse based one is seamless, except for minor control woes that you may need to get used to, as sometimes mouse gestures won’t exactly do what you or the game wants — for example rotating or pushing the items — requiring a bit of random gesture mashing, minor adjustments, or do-overs.

You can interact with highly detailed objects and intricately animated contraptions such as levers, locks, and advanced mechanisms. Using observation as well as a little bit of help from Giacomo’s commentary, solving challenging puzzles that becomes more complex as you progress deeper into the game.

The usual setup is that you have to solve a big puzzle to progress, but before you are able to solve it you need to solve many smaller problems first. Opening a door? You need to pull a lever, but the lever is broken. To fix the lever, you need to find the needed items, in turn needing to solve more puzzles.

The Unlucky Giacomo

The idea of these multi-layered problems consistently happening over and over again to Giacomo across the duration of the game is a bit ridiculous sometimes. Thankfully, the puzzles are well designed, varied, and interesting enough on their own to provide a satisfying experience in solving them across the five hour experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. If you are having difficulties in progress, a hint will be given by the game as long as its turned on in the settings.

There is no freedom of movement, you can only stand in predetermined spots in the game and move between them via clicks. Double click on a spot to investigate further and you will glide to it ala-Google Street View while right clicking will return you to the general area. A minor pet peeve for me is that you can't skip these transitional gliding scenes and you have to slowly glide to your next point of interest which gets annoying when back and forth-ing between spots. In between these segments are auto piloted cutscenes that also take place in First Person view.

The inventory system is limiting and presents a challenge to the player; you can never have too many items at once, so you have to be conservative in collective items. How the items are used in the puzzles are not immediately apparent, and it's good practice to inspect the items thoroughly to see what you may have missed. Sometimes, the items are just part of a bigger contraption that you have to combine into to compete.

My favorite Time Travelling mechanic is back

While the main core gameplay is the point and click puzzle solving element, the main star of the game is the tool you have — Oculus Perpetua — the same tool in the second game that allows you to travel across time and into the frozen past version of the room you’re in, where you can change things in the past that will affect the present time. Highly reminiscent of the same puzzle mechanic that appeared in two of my favorite games and levels; Titanfall 2 and Dishonored 2.

Impressive graphics for a mobile port

Compared to the mobile version, House of Da Vinci 3 features updated graphics that are more in-line with PC gaming standards. Textures are higher detailed and there are more and better lighting effects making it more realistic.

Conclusion:

Overall, The House of Da Vinci 3 is a pretty short but substantial game, beatable in under five hours, more depending on your puzzle solving skills. This port is impressive and it never really felt like a mobile game at all. A highly recommended game if you’re a fan of The Room-style puzzle solving games, especially if you have also played the first two games that are also available on PC.