Readers of my reviews will know I love a good puzzle game after all my game of the year for 2023 was one, so when I was handed The House of Da Vinci 3, not only did it pique my interest, but I wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before. Being the third in the series, my thoughts were that the developer and publisher, Blue Brain Games, must be doing something right, and after a quick scout online, I discovered The House of Da Vinci series was received very positively and this is the final game.

For newcomers like me, the menu holds an option called the Chronicle, and as the name suggests, this book recounts the adventure Giacomo has undertaken in the previous games. The Chronicle does a good enough job of explaining what is going on, so as I played The House of Da Vinci 3, I never felt lost, however, having not played the first two games, I wasn’t overly invested in the story. This isn’t to say the story is bad, I was more eager to get back to puzzle solving, but I believe newcomers will potentially have a hard time getting invested as well.

Ultimately, the synopsis of The House of Da Vinci 3 is that you are Giacomo, Leonardo Da Vinci’s apprentice and the invention of a time machine has raised concerns about disruptions to history. Plans to destroy the time machine are thwarted, and Giacomo is teleported back in time when an unfortunate crossbow bolt hits the device, and now he must make his way back to his master and try again.

The House of Da Vinci 3, as already mentioned, is a puzzle game, and point-and-click style, the discovery was a little disappointing, as it felt like the game was on rails. You look around the environments with the right thumbstick and target specific items with the cursor by moving the left. From there, pressing the Y button moves from scene to scene, but it can also be used to focus on an object. Pressing the A button interacts with it; be it manipulating the item, pushing it, pulling it, or picking it up, the controls are very easy to use.

The puzzles are predominantly item manipulation or discovery, meaning logic can be applied, and this is fantastic. I love puzzles that challenge you – the kind that really make you use your brain. They’re not difficult because they’re obscure, and you can’t just brute force your way to the answer. This is exactly what The House of Da Vinci 3 brings – puzzles that make sense. You won’t be scratching your head figuring out why you had to tie a piece of string to the back of a cockroach before putting a lunch box to a big cog to extract the jam from the sandwich inside.

If you do find a puzzle too hard, the hint system will help you out. It starts off with a basic hint, mentioning a place or item, before giving you a vague description, eventually leading you to clues, and then outright telling you what to do. This approach allows the player to easily gauge how much assistance they want, still offering the player a chance to experience those lightbulb moments, but it also never leaves the player stranded with no way forward.

As you may have guessed, by taking control of Leonardo Da Vinci’s apprentice, the game is set in Italy during the Renaissance era. The Chronicle is a beautiful example of the attention to detail that Blue Brain Games has put into the graphics, with drawings and script reflecting that of the Renaissance, and this is spread throughout the game’s environments and puzzles. The animations as you manipulate and move the various objects through the environments are good, however, animations during cut scenes left the characters feeling too robotic, and while they aren’t the focus, I feel like they could have had some extra smoothing.

Soft piano tunes accompany the puzzles, creating a relaxing atmosphere., and combined with the good sound effects as you move puzzle mechanisms, it can create feelings of immersion as if you’re hands-on with the device. The voicing, however, has a horrible echo, regardless of where the character is standing, somewhat breaking that experience by sounding as though they are talking across an empty theatre.

The House of Da Vinci 3 is a fantastic puzzle game with an unfortunate on-rails experience. It’s set in the beautiful Renaissance era, but suffers from robotic human animations, contrasting with immersive sound effects and relaxing music, but unfortunate choices in how the spoken dialogue is delivered. I honestly feel like I’m in one of those skits where people list off, “That’s good, but that’s bad,” and whoever I’m talking to eventually asks to leave.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove