These days, Gamehouse keeps churning out new titles in their Gamehouse Original Stories lineup like itโs nobodyโs business. Welcome to Primrose Lake introduces you to a new family of characters when Jenny Carlyle the runaway bride hitches a ride from the physically identical Jenny Carlyle, a descendant of Primrose Lakeโs Carlyle bloodline. Travel up the Rocky Mountains to Primrose Lake, the city where nothing is what it seems in this new mysteryโtinged Time Management game.
Like all the other games in the Gamehouse Original Stories franchise, Welcome to Primrose Lake is a narrative-driven Time Management adventure. However, unlike the other games, the storyline here is more important than ever. In fact, you could argue this game is all about its storyline, which makes it feel more like an interactive adventure than a Time Management clickfest. While the storyline has the potential to be convoluted and confusing, there is no denying that it is also extremely interesting. Welcome to Primrose Lake feels like a good-old drama mystery on network television, with juicy turns of events and memorable characters.
It is certainly a difficult job to smoothly stitch together a rather complex narrative in the form of a Time Management game. Fortunately, the material is handled with such expertise that the game is intriguing and entertaining from the very beginning to the completion of the 60th level. Welcome to Primrose Lakeโs game mechanics are familiar, especially for fans of the Gamehouse brand. In some ways, the gameplay is somewhat linear, considering the amount of handholding and narration in each level as the game tries to guide you to where the story leads. This does mean that the game lacks any kind of challenge since it progresses and cycles through a large number of different locations, which allows for the fast-paced exploration of a wide variety of tasks and themes.
Furthermore, Welcome to Primrose Lake looks gorgeous. Visually, sharp graphics, clean lines, and solid colors give the game a sophisticated look. While the franchise is usually known for its bright and colorful visuals, Welcome to Primrose Lakeโs focus on earth tones and more muted colors create a moody overtone that is perfect for the mystery that the game is telling. In line with that, the enigmatic music also adds some effective dramatic effects to the game.
Just a correction: Jenny Carlyle is the main character (the runaway bride, with straight hair and blue eyes) who gets picked up by her cousin Jessica Carlyle (wavy hair and green eyes) at the beginnign of the game.