I don't remember exactly, been a long while, but I was searching for Hidden Object games after playing Eye Spy somewhere. I found Big Fish, it was *by far* the best deal for the least commitment, so here I am, years later.

sandipuppy wrote:Maybe Rose was the one doing the poisoning and trying to point the finger at Charles? She wanted him for herself!!

Emma is sick=poisoned long before Rose shows up. Charles first poisons her to keep her there. He's not actually killing her, just incapacitating her, at least at first. Maybe he fell for ROse after she showed up and ecided to hasten the process.

Snugs76 wrote:you know we don't really know much of anything that happened to Rose after Emma was killed. She was writing the diary entries because Emma was too weak and that was it. I think that was the last we heard of her.

In the next to the last diary entry, the one with the axe murder picture, Emma is writing (she had said Rose *sometimes* made entries when she was too weak) and says that they have decided to escape and Rose has gone to fetch her things (ladies, leave your things, get out *now*!) and that entry is cut short, pun intended. So no, only one more entry, her ghost emploring you to release her, and no mention of Rose.

eleanor1183 wrote:Isn't white phosphorous in the white part of "strike anywhere" matches?

For that matter, any match heads would have some kind of phosphorous in them...

Yes, you are probably right. I wasn't actually implying that it wasn't the poison used by Charles, just saying if the real life cops searched your computer after someone died, ala Forensic Files, it would be an unlikely poisoning agent for any of *us* to use. *TWISTED CONVERSATION!*

Snugs76 wrote:but why would Rose say it was part of the poison then? Hmmmmmm mysteries abound LOL

Well, I know, and this has kinda been bugging me, and actually bugged me the first time through the game: I assumed when Rose showed up she'd be evil because Charles, who was poisoning Emma to keep her there, hired her. She had to be in on it, right? BUT it was *Rose* who showed Emma all the creepy stuff, found the wedding dress, found the nursery, told Emma about the poison in Charles' pocket, went through his books with her, told her to and was helping her to escape! Doesn't make a lot of sense if she was Charles' secret sweetie the whole time.

BUT Charles, at the end of Madame fate, refers to Emma as his first love (and confirms that's who you released in Ravenhearst for those wondering about who's in the final puzzle coffin) and Rose as his true love, and that yopu'll never have her. Maybe after killing Emma he kept Rose and we have a case of Stockholm Syndrome here. Or Charles just being his loopy self and thinking his captive was his "love". Since he had just hacked up the intended mother of his children in the livingroom, he'd need a substitue.

Snugs76 wrote:i also googled phospherous white (the ingredient that rose said was part of poison) and all I got was that it is used in the military to produce incendiary devices. also phospherous apparently plays a role in DNA

Ok, you realize if someone near to you dies suddenly they will do a search of your computer and find out you've been researching poisons... I watch all the true crime shows and Forensic Files popped into my mind as I was (just now) googling White Phosphorus too... Luckily that particular agent is not on easily handled or something anyone could get I imagine, so an unlikely poisoning agent. Now castor bean seeds... Just what did Charles have on that tray...?! "Here, Emma, I made you a lovely 3 bean salad and baked beans on toast for tea..."

Ok, clearly loopy, back to the game for more clues! Mwah ha ha ha!

eleanor1183 wrote:

Poodlebear wrote:Cripes I *am* gonna hafta play *again* and take screen shots of the diary.

This is my first time through and I've been doing screen shots of all the rooms (before clicking any items) plus all the diary picture close-ups (finished jigsaws) and the diary entries. When I'm done I plan to transcribe all the diary entries so we can go over them with a fine tooth comb!!

Now *that's* dedication to the "Case"! WTG Eleanor, you are a better woman than I.

eleanor1183 wrote:

Snugs76 wrote:well I noticed at the end when you find emma's skeleton. there appears to be a rose on the skeleton itself..

I haven't gotten that far.
So is she in the living room? Or is that somebody else's coffin in there?

Mystery coffin, Emma's in the basement.

Well I think the winner of the creepy sweepstakes is the picture of Emma on the floor and Charles raising an axe above his head...

Was working finishing up the jigsaw for that particularly grizzly scene when my hubby walked in and said, "What the h3ll?!" Yep, not for the squeamish, Mystery Case FIles.

Adding my Wizard's Pen (nearly) daily affirmation here in hopes it will happen...

Mortimer Beckett Deluxe??? Loved Mortimer Backett, gonna go search for Deluxe.

UPDATE: Um, just looked at a site that had Mortimer Beckett Deluxe and it's an identical description and screen shots as Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor... I don't think there is another game.

soymocha wrote:Also, (finished ravenhearst and can not go back to check) in the last scene it shows a women in a wedding gown running down the stairs. Emma was to weak to even walk. Was it really Emma in the cellar even thought that is who was said to have been released. Would we really know without a DNA test. Could it have been Rose?

Nope, that's Emma for sure coming down the stairs in the last picture in the diary style, it's not her running down the stairs it's her ghost imploring you to hurry and find her in the last puzzle. I was paying particular attention this time trough and was thinking, "Why is she wearing her wedding dress to escape?" and then noticed you can see through the lower half of her body.

...and yes, just finished Madame Fate last night and it is a wioman playing the Detective. Not sure if it always was in the MCF games but by this time I guess BF realized who were their primary customers...

AND I think Picman was trippin' when he wrote some of those clues because:

1 - 3 months is a piddly short time to build a mansion and

2 - Emma *was* abroad in England, she was from America, but did not go further abroad once she met Charles, unless he's speaking of who was Charles with *before* Emma came to England.

Didn't Charles go away for some period of time after Emma rejected his proposal? Then popped up again all cheerful (creepy) and started building the mansion?

Cripes I *am* gonna hafta play *again* and take screen shots of the diary.

Who(what) could reveal the future about something dark that happened in the past?

Well, Madame Fate could and was going to at the end of the game just before spooky Charles evil ghost guy killed her. Picman would also qualify as an answer to that question...

cherbtoo wrote:Sorry Rose cannot be Frank's wife unless she changed her name after his death.

14 July 1895 Rose Somerset arrived.

Ah, well caught!

spyque wrote:I played Ravenhurst so much, it became a race to see how fast I could find things. I've tried doing that with Madame Fate, but it seems a little more complex than Ravenhurst. Either that or I'm forgetting everything. (at least it makes old games look new. ha ha)

Having just replayed both Ravenhearst and Madame Fate back to back (haven't played either since released) I can say Madame Fate is definitly more complex with the addtion of the mini-games with each uncovered character which takes you to a "find 15 of these" type puzzle and then there is also the wonderful challenging adventure puzzles, like the door locks in Ravenhearst, at the end of each characters level. There's more of those I believe as well than there was in Ravenhearst.

Love both those games, but I prefer Ravenhearst. It may be simpler but it didn't begin to feel tedious at all and I liked the look of it better than Madame Fate.

cherbtoo wrote:
Picman asked:

"How long did it take to build Ravenhearst Manor and why so long?

2 June 1895 Newly completed Manor.
(To me 3 months does not seem overly long to build a 30+ room Manor House.)

I was in architecture for 15 years before I retired. That is actually a very short period of time to build a mansion, even today with power tools, let alone how it would be built then and the level of craftsmanship that would have been used. So sorry, Picman, that was a dud clue I'm afraid... Now why it took them 10 days to bury Frank is a bit more mysterious.

I just finished up Madame Fate and sheesh! It, the vengeful spirit of Charles, *tells* us that we freed his "First Love" BUT we will not get his "True Love" Rose! I have no idea why I didn't remember that. The twins in the Carnival are a dead end, pun intended, because by the end of the game *everybody* is dead, including Madame Fate, so she is not Rose. She didn't have anything to do with Ravenhearst, actually, you just brought the evil spirit down on her. Then the Queen phones up to send us back to Ravenhearst because more diary pages have turned up.

So I'm thinkin' the theory of Rose being Franks's wife (remember wife and 2 kids) might be a good one OR after dispatching Emma attempting escape CHarles decided to hang on to Rose and fathered kids with her locked away behind all those locks...

Is it Nov. 26th yet?

Yep. Pretty rare though. I got crazy bored with Amazing Adventures: Around the World and was sooo ready for it to over. I think it is a very fine line between a game feeling like you got your monies worth and it just dragging on. With Amazing Adventures I felt like they just padded it with repitition to make it last longer.

To be honest even replaying Madame Fate just now by the end I was getting a little tired of returning to the same scenes to get to the next puzzle. The puzzles are *awesome* and well worth the slog through the HO stuff and they do break it up nicely with mini-games and you have choice of which of those you re-play, but still, a bit longish feeling.

With HOs I feel if a developer can not afford to make enough unique scenes to have it be a new one for each level than I'd rather it be shorter, honestly. I mean within reason. I don't mind returning to a scene a few times especially when the list does not repeat, but when I have nearly everyting memorized it's not good.

lttlmischievious wrote:Has anyone purchased this game? I got it today and have gotten to the end but am having a slight problem to finish. I am at "Ode To Joy" and in need of finding a Tiwsting Handle and Fresh Paper for the printer to get my last Outline. Has anyone played and found this?

The handle is on the right side of the table at the bottom near the legs. The paper is either on the table or in the apron pocket by the door, can't remember.

I always just go ahead and hit run when I download again rather than saving the installer to the desktop because I trust this site. Generally it's good to never hit "run" on a website because you're sort of giving it carte blanche to run whatever. On a site I am unsure of I download to desktop, virus check, then run. BUT I would very rarely download from any but very safe sites anyway.

At Big Fish, in my experience, you are safe just hitting run.

Poodlebear wrote:

Snugs76 wrote:Now my brain is wandering around all the possibilities and i started playing ravenhearst again last night and am paying close attention to the diary entries.

Ooooh, thanks for reminding me! As I was *trying* to fall asleep this morning guess what my brain was working on? I want to go look at the graphics files in the game directory to see if I can find the diary images and print 'em out for review.

Well I tried but clever Big Fishies do not have the images accessible like they sometimes are in games, so shy of taking screen shots of the diary or writing it out long hand, one can not read it without playing the game. What bugs me about that is once you have completed the game you can't access it any more, soooo short of playing it again, which I might anyway between now and Nov. 26 (26 Nov. in EU ) anyway.

solara wrote:

eleanor1183 wrote:A-hem...

eleanor1183 wrote:
How do we know there's a photo of the painting in the Bettmann archive? When I did searches on the Bettman archive page for "Brownscombe" and "Thanksgiving" it yielded exactly zilch. So where did the idea for this connection come from?

Can someone answer this for me?

I went to Google and put in Bettman archive vs Jennie a. Brownscombe and you get links there. You can see some of the artwork she did including the thanksgiving painting. Can you believe there is a link to this thread? Hope this helps.

It looks to me from the links that The First Thanksgiving Brownscombe painted is not in the Bettmann Archive but there is another painting there called "The First Thanksgiving". The clue was, imo, about the release date which we have determined is the day before Thanksgiving.

Snugs76 wrote:Now my brain is wandering around all the possibilities and i started playing ravenhearst again last night and am paying close attention to the diary entries.

Ooooh, thanks for reminding me! As I was *trying* to fall asleep this morning guess what my brain was working on? I want to go look at the graphics files in the game directory to see if I can find the diary images and print 'em out for review.

..yeah, like I could stay away...