## Description

A detective is called to the house of Edgar Lee, a famous but reclusive
author. After arriving, entering and investigating the place, the sleuth
receives a message by the writer where he explains the main source of
inspiration for his novels: a machine that allows him to travel to other
worlds. The detective is commissioned to use the device and search for a
series of missing pages, mysteriously stolen from unfinished books and
scattered through another dimensions.

_Enlightenus_ is a hidden object title with a new gameplay twist: instead of
searching for objects from a list, most of the time the objective is to drag
and drop several inventory objects on logical places on the scenery.

The gameplay switches back and forth between three main sections. The first
one is an exploratory adventure game, similar to first-person adventure games
like Myst, where the player moves from one static screen to another
representing the rooms or places of some location. The inventory is always
visible at the bottom, and after clicking on items found on the scene, they
float towards one of the available slots to be stored for later use. The
player has to solve puzzles in the classic point-and-click manner, by dragging
and dropping the inventory objects on their appropriate and logical places. In
some instances clicking on parts of the scenery brings up a puzzle, where a
mechanism of some sort has to be manipulated directly to solve it, or more
standard challenges like a card matching memory game. The cursor is
contextual, changing shape to an arrow to indicate an exit, and to a
magnifying glass when another view of some scene item is available.

The second section comes up when clicking one of the scattered pages, usually
found laying over the scenery. A separate screen appears showing a location
depicted in the book, and the inventory slots are filled with assorted items
unrelated to the main quest. The goal is to drag and drop these objects to
perform some action, or complete some of the scenery items. For example, a
needle can be used to pop a balloon, a hammer can break something fragile,
missing antlers can be plugged back to a mounted deer’s head, and other
similar association tasks. After the inventory is empty, the page is complete
and the player receives an engraved button to be used on the next section.

The last major section is the portrait puzzle, where the player has to place
all the engraved buttons, previously received from completing all the
available pages, on slots set on two columns framing a central painting
depicting a novel scene. Each column has a plaque with a written clues at the
top, to indicate what buttons have to be put on them. The clues are phrases
and riddles, and each button has a different picture engraved on it bearing
some relation to the conundrum.

A crystal ball at the bottom left acts as the hint button for all sections,
circling the area where one of the inventory objects can be used and revealing
three cards in the memory mini-game. Extra hints can be found and collected on
the page sections, as cards with an E at the center.

Enlightenus