Mystery Manor

 The world of iPad and iPhone apps is vast, amazing, complex. There are apps for weight loss, for nutrition, for diabetes, ESP, synchronicity. There are thousands of game apps – backgammon, words with friends (scrabble) haunted this and that. Then there is Mystery Manor.

This game, developed by a Russian company, is free, but you can pay for in-game apps, usually at a nominal price,  if you choose. The premise is simple : Mystery Manor is a place where high strangeness has changed the contour of things.  

Inside this weird manor, you find references to some of the most famous conspiracies, divination systems,  and alternate worlds. Illuminati lamps banish mists that speed up time; Tesla coils  banish idols that resemble the mysterious statues as Easter Island; magical rune stones get you into the fortune teller’s room. One of my favorite rooms is Room 51, where a little green alien sits at a computer, madly typing away. On the wall behind the alien is a poster that reads, I want to believe. To the left of that poster is a picture window of a city skyline where a UFO zips past every few blinks. A certain number of secret containers get you into Room 51. It’s worth a visit.

The manor consists of 30 mysterious rooms and the layout sort of reminds me of Clue. Library, kitchen, bedroom, hallway, kitchen. But this is an iPad game, so we’re not looking for who did it and where they did it,  You’re looking for objects hidden in each room and you point and click to uncover them.  

You have a time limit – 5 minutes. You explore the rooms in various modes –   light, silhouette, darkness, zodiac – and at each level from trainee up to expert, the number of objects you must find increases, and the time and energy you use decrease. There are also charms you can win that help you achieve a particular goal. The magic magnet, for instance, helps you attract coins, experience and collectible items for a specified period of time. And what you’re always up against is your energy level and the level of your experience.

Sounds a lot like life, doesn’t it?

In the game, each room you explore eats up energy. But you can buy – or win – various forms of energy that enable you to stay in the game. A cup of coffee – that costs 6 diamonds (the game currency)- restores 30 points. A bar of chocolate restores 50 points. You need a certain number of energy points to enter the rooms and that number increases for each level you attain.

 Mystery Manor is actually a social game, where you can add friends, visit friends to receive a mystery gift (money, experience points), and ask friends for help in obtaining objects that help you to charge one or several of ore than 200 collections. several hundred collections.   When you charge a collection, you gain experience, money, tools, weapons.

The weapons are innocuous – firecrackers to banish one form of snatchin, these odd little figures that move around your screen, or a laser pistol to banish little green men.  The weapons don’t promote violence. There are no hidden or overt sexual references. Mystery Manor is, quite simply, fun and challenging. It’s a kind of focused meditation in which the rest of the world vanishes. It exercises your memory. There are, after all, only so many placements of objects in particular rooms that can be programmed into a game like this.

Recently, one of our real-life friends said she played Mystery Manor and was at level 70. We were down in the 40s level. We friended each other. Every day when players are permitted to visit their friends – and reap rewards – Rose has sent us something significant that enables us to advance through the game. She’s so far beyond us in the game that we send her hearts – mystery gifts – that include time snails that slow or stop time for a particular period; flashlights; rune stones, secrets containers, even Sakura shells, that get you into another cool room.  

It’s inexpensive entertainment, the graphics are great, and I enjoy the numerous references to the  paranormal and the mysterious unknowns that intrigue me.

But you know what Mystery Manor is missing? An Afterlife Room and A Synchronicity Room.

These rooms should be ones you can explore in any mode that you want, for as long as you want – regardless of your energy points, your experience points, your level in the game. In the Afterlife Room, I envision the player being able to interact with loved ones who have passed on, to explore the geography of the afterlife.  In the Synchronicity Room, I envision players confronted with the trickster, with clusters, with all the inherent weirdness and wonder of synchros.

So hey, Russian designers, do you think you could add these two rooms?

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And as an aside, this game has 20 million registered users. If even a fraction of these users buy an app for 99 cents once a week or even once a month, we are talking zillions this company is pulling annually. This game may be the law of attraction in full-throttled action.