Rusty Lake Paradise

Rusty Lake Paradise is the third premium point-and-click adventure from Rusty Lake, the Dutch studio behind the free Cube Escape series, Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake: Roots. Jakob, the oldest son of the Eilander family, returns to the small remote Paradise Island after his mother's death, and finds that the island appears to be cursed by the ten plagues of Egypt. Each plague has its own chapter, its own visual identity, its own thematically distinct puzzles, and its own escalation of dread.

The central play is the studio's familiar brand of inventory-based, observation-heavy point-and-click puzzle design, but the structure imposed by the plagues organises the game in a way the earlier entries didn't quite manage. Some puzzles are environmental, some are family rituals you participate in with relatives who range from grieving to actively unsettling, and the recurring strands of the broader Rusty Lake universe weave through the chapters for players who've followed the series.

The presentation is unusually rich for the studio. The pastel background paintings are handmade by Dutch painter Johan Scherft, the atmospheric soundtrack has its own theme song and set of variations for each plague, and many of the puzzles take an extra design beat to fit the specific tone of the plague they belong to. Achievements layer additional secrets across the island for players willing to comb through it after the main story concludes — and given how much of the Rusty Lake universe is told through cross-references between games, that combing usually rewards the effort.