Dark Canvas: Blood and Stone – Review

Dark Canvas: Blood and Stone is the sequel to Dark Canvas: A Brush With Death from Vast Studios. Blood and Stone is a very promising game, unfortunately, it is not as great as expected. The story base is fairly strong and could be developed much further as it is very interesting and quite new as well. However, we just did not feel the excitement when we were playing this game. Everything seems to be just dull, no real tensions are built, no peaks and therefore, the whole game just falls flat and in the end, we found ourselves did not care much about the story.

On the other hand, the visual quality is good. The graphics might not be off top-shelf but they do look nice and sharp. The setting in the Greek city is really beautiful and we love the water-painted artwork style this game has. The audio is nice and smooth, as well as the voice overs that do not feel as jerky as in the previous game.

Dark Canvas: Blood and Stone is a pretty straightforward game, nothing unexpected; sadly, that means nothing stands out. The interactions are simple, most of the Hidden Object scenes are standard junk-piles and there is a lot of backtracking to do if not for the game’s interactive map. Luckily, the puzzles are better – they are well-designed and the game features a nice mix of easy and challenging ones as well as typical and original ones.

On the Extras side, all the typical extras for a Collector’s Edition game are there including Achievements, Collectibles and Morphing Objects. Collectibles in Blood and Stone are Coins which can be used in the shop to purchase statues of characters from previous Vast’s games, not so related to the game though. The Bonus Chapter is good, but nothing special.