Diving back into the casual puzzle adventure subgenre, I’ll admit that at a few points in the past they’ve been a pretty relaxing way to burn some time and stimulate some brain cells. One issue has been the fact that most of the ones I’ve played on the Switch feel like they’re really just conversions from quite a few years ago, so the video segments pushing their story tend to look pretty awful. If you can get over that hump, you may still get some mileage out of them.

The City of Legends series, at least for being casual games, have a little more flair to them with some horror and suspense elements to add spice. In the case of Curse of the Crimson Shadow, if you’ve seen the movie The Ring you’ll get the general idea of the plot, with a curse being kicked off by viewing a specific video. Will you be able to dig into a mysterious order of witches and figure out how to save yourself in time?

In terms of the puzzles themselves, I’d say they’re pretty boilerplate for this sort of casual puzzle adventure. There’s a mix of hidden objects, cases where you’ll need to find specific items or combine them somehow to unlock new areas, and then a number of more unique themed puzzles as well. It doesn’t do too much to break out of the traditional mold, but it’s at least well-implemented overall and the story, though familiar, at least gives it a mild edge.