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Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx, March 29, 2024I'm a fan of wordplay games, so it's only natural that I'd end up liking Letters from Home. It took me a bit of time to understand what I was really supposed to do, but the catch here is that you need to collect letters around an old mansion that's being moved out. To give a few examples from the game, (Spoiler - click to show)taking the "F" that signals Fahrenheit on a thermometer, plucking one of the roman numerals out of a date, or working out homophones like "sea" vs. "C".
Once you've found all of these, you get to solve a cryptic crossword. The clues you get are things like (Spoiler - click to show)"Confused DJ was a KC; that's for the birds. (8)" and "Crystal units of volume, we hear. (6)". I was pretty confused, but the logic does make sense if you think about it in an unconventional way.
Strangely enough, the weaker parts of the game have nothing to do with the homophones or pangrams, but are the standard adventure game-type puzzles. You get an array of standard verbs like JUMP, PUSH, and SEARCH that are used sparingly but easy to forget about. One puzzle has you needing to reach something high up, and the solution is to (Spoiler - click to show)push a bicycle in from another room and stand on that, while another one involving retrieving something from a small crack on the floor involves (Spoiler - click to show)jumping to send it up, then putting a pad of paper (specifically this, nothing else) over the crack to catch it. While the game has a lot of items and rooms, things you don't need to bring elsewhere will be left behind in the rooms after you solve their puzzles, which is a nice detail.
There is one thing that you can lock yourself out of, though, and it's (Spoiler - click to show)one of the crossword clues. I was pretty discouraged to realize this, so a warning to new players: (Spoiler - click to show)don't take the yew tree until you're sure you've done everything with it.
Still, I enjoyed my playthrough overall. While many of the puzzles can rely on esoteric knowledge, that's kind of a given if you're even interested in a game like this. There is also a very detailed hint system, with Invisiclues-style hints that get more direct as you go down the list, so don't be afraid to use it as you play.