15 Days

Adventure with a nice story.

To play on Linux I used Proton 6.3 and protontricks. The game is crashing a lot with d3dx9_39.dll, so I changed it using winecfg executed via protontricks --gui. After that I got one crash before end of the game, but it was not a problem, because I was saving often. Alt+Tab worked well pausing game in background.

I did The Mystery of the Druids with some friends and somehow decided to play every House of Dreams adventure games.

Well this one is ... Barely an adventure game to be honest. More like a bad visual novel. Barely any puzzles or reflexion needed, just go where the people tell you to go and see what happens next.

I did have a few giggles here and there but ... about 10€ for that ? Not worth it. There are a bunch of other better adventure games that last longer for less than that price on Steam.

Oh by the way. The crashes. It is not even stable, got a lot of crashes that set me back several minutes of boring walk.

Story is so uninteresting that the game was DOA. Unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Bad mechanics, eeeeendless dialogues (literally around 70% of game time), hated characters, many crashes. No wonder House of Tales closed down after that. It seems they were a one-hit-wonder (The Mystery of the Druids).

this is an inherently broken game. i wasted considerable time to running properly this crap but i eventually gave up to try. just a friendly advice. don't waste your time trying to work this game just like me. i think it's so embarrassing they released this game with this beta state.

Played game for 5 hrs and then it stopped working and won't load again...so no...I do not recommend.

I enjoyed this very much. I had a few crashes but I do think in my case, it was due to my older computer .
I made sure to save constantly, every single transition (even though the game does have a very good automatic save system, I'd recommend saving more...)
There are several comprehensive reviews here on the review page that are worth reading .
The game is fun! It has a great story, engaging characters and good voice overs.
The game play is all point and click and there are no action scenes, and no danger of dying.
If you know of The Moment of Silence, and Overclocked... same game developers... But this offering is more polished . Heartily recommend for all point and click fans and for anyone who likes a good adventure game.

Good game, enjoyed it. Decent storyline & would recommend.

Run in Compatibility mode to avoid the crash issues (Go to \Steam\steamapps\common\15 Days\rhc.exe, right click file and run Compatibility Tester - should default to Windows Vista SP2).

To sort the quiet voice over, just turn down the music and special effects to about 30%.

Well, I bought this game because I love Point & Click games.
But this game is... Well, let's proceed in order.
- Graphisms/Animation : it's not that bad for a 2005 game with a low budget. Excuse me, you say? 2010????!!!! Holy sh-
- Story : it sounded pretty boring at the beginning but if you can persevere until the first heist, it's not that bad.
- Gameplay : well, there are some puzzle in this game and some are hellish as hell when they're not "buggy" or without common sense. One point that really get on my nerves is that sometimes, the game expect you to do something to progress but this thing doesn't follow the course of the events or you can't just guess it seeing the situation
- Music : the music is catchy as fuck. Seriously, I want to get this OST. Sadly, the mix is ruined by TOO LOUD footsteps or music above the characters voices.
- BUGS : I never saw a game crashing this many time in a row. Save often. And if ever the game crashes again and again at the "cells entry", skip the scene and it will be fine.

So, I finished this game in 2 sessions of 4 hours. It can be appreciated if you can look over the bugs and poor technical qualities.
Make your choice ;)

This game crashed repeatedly when I typed a search into the in-game search engine.

I might have tolerated the pace (slow), the graphics, etc. if only it didn't crash repeatedly with no obvious solutions. I play lots of mystery and adventure games.

That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

15 Days is the second of House of Tales' games that I've played - and I'm pleasantly surprised about this one, despite the bulk of negative reviews. The first game from the developer team that I've played was The Mystery of the Druids, and it was little else than a straightly bad P&C adventure. Now this one, is both enjoyable and thought provoking. Sure, it's Steam integration is problematic and, has known bugs and crashes; but all those problems can be avoided if you were to play the game in an older system a.k.a. anything prior to Windows 7.

The game revolves around a group of highly educated art thieves: Catheryn the art school drop-out, Bernard the mysterious Belgian man and Mike the hacker with a mouth. This bunch of quirky individuals all share a flat and work as international art thieves with a cause: they donate all their earnings to charity organizations. As the game starts, they are offered an odd job for a suspiciously grand amount of money. From there on, they will go through the most dangerous 15 days of their lifetimes as the ideological aspect of their work becomes downright political and dangerous.

You play the game as Catheryn mostly, but there will be times that you get to play others since they all have their individual roles in a heist. Oh, and in some additional transition parts between their travels, you'll take the role of an international policeman who's been investigating political murders too. Interesting, huh? Well, telling more would be giving spoilers. Let's say that this one turns out to be a stirring spy thriller pretty quickly.

The game hails from 2010, and its graphic quality isn't the best, but still the environment and character designs do contain an impressive amount of detail. Cutscenes are way better compared to the in-game graphics, which is expected from the time period anyhow. The music is one of the best parts about this game though. It can very well be the soundtrack of a Bond movie. Voice acting itself is believable and character appropriate too.

What really grasped me though, was the game's story and the questions of morality it rises. As you play as a band of criminals and encounter the results of various power politics in the game, it forces you to think about right and wrong; crime and punishment - and even the concept of justice itself. Character interactions and character depths are genuine. Maybe inspector Stern may come as a bit of a cliché, but all other characters have genuine personalities, moral dilemmas and life expectations. Dynamics within the group are displayed in a way to enrich their personal stories. That is some good character writing if I've seen some.

The gameplay isn't revolutionary: it is a point & click adventure, in the end. But neither item combinations, nor puzzles are obscure or boring. Everything keeps the story flowing primarily. There are five mini-games in total, and they are the just right amount of challenging. If you listen to the dialogue appropriately, you'll always have a solid idea about what to do about item combinations too.

Let's get to the part concerning the bulk of negative reviews here around: crashes. The game was intended for older systems, and since the developer team is long gone, the game's Steam integration is clunky. There are 2 points in the game that may cause a crash: first one is about using the online search engine - since some words may trigger a crash; and the second one is when you get into the catacombs the first time. First of these errors is easy to correct, since someone posted an appropriate fix on the discussion forum. The second one is a persistent error though, which may be avoided if you are playing the game on an older system. For me, downloading the search engine patch, and playing the game in a Windows XP did the trick.

Again: the game is intended for older systems, so if you are playing it on Windows 10, you've been warned. There sure is some crashes, and no, the game doesn't autosave, but saving manually during any scene takes a second of your time, and the story is well worth your effort. At the end of the day, I can recommend the game to anyone who'd appreciate a decent P&C adventure. Enjoy!

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Updating my review to reflect the fact that I have now finished the game.

The negative reception to this game was a bit surprising to me at first. The game couldn't be that bad, could it? Well, after playing I can safely say, yes. Yes it is that bad.

The opening pre-rendered cutscene almost had me fooled into thinking this game would be a cool, fast paced action thriller adventure. Those hopes were quickly dashed by the first in-game cutscene.

Here's a full list of everything wrong wth this game:
-The characters move WAY too slowly
-The animation is stiff, cheap, and clearly cutting corners. (At one point, I swear to god, one of the characters walked straight through another character. Not like the models just overlapped, one character moved DIRECTLY through another character model. HOW do you fuck up animation that badly?)
-The voice actors cannot convey emotion for crap, not helped by the lack of facial animation.
-The game is very dialogue-heavy, making cutscenes take FOREVER to go through. Metal Gear Solid 2, eat your heart out.
-The direction you are given in game is either blatantly obvious ("I'm going to go over there now" probably means you have to go over there) or too vague.
-The interface sucks. It should not be this difficult to open your inventory in a point and click game.
-The story is repetitive and ultimately leads nowhere. How the hell do you make a trip to Paris seem boring?
-Every single character in this game is a cardboard cutout with no unique traits.
-The sound design is terrible. I had to turn on subtitles to even understand half of the rambling dialogue because the characters never speak above a whisper and the music is cranked up to 11 by default..
-The game REPEATEDLY crashed on me while I was trying to finish it, so I had to pause and save the game after everything I did just in case the game decided to randomly stop working on me.

At the very least, the game was short by Point and click standards. Even with all the crashes, sections where I got hopelessly lost or stuck because of some minor detail, and the endless stream of dialogue, I was able to finish the game in about seven hours.

If you are intrigued by the mystery and want to know where it leads, just look up the Wikipedia page and save yourself the disappointment. Stay away from this game.

I enjoy point and click adventure games a lot and I play a large amount of these games. I would have liked to enjoy this game as well, but this game [15 days], is far too frustrating to play with all of the inevitable game crashes. I think I crashed like 5 times in the first 15 minutes.. I could tell I wasn't getting anywhere with this game at the rate of the crashes popping up, so I chose to abandon playing it.

This game crashes a lot, constantly. There's a crash report window that opens when the game crashes, however, its been 7 years since this games initial release and I don't think the developers have worked on fixing anything at all, nor do I feel they are committed to this project any longer.

If you are up to the challenge of completing the game against the bombardment of crash screens, then by all means go for it. But I wouldn't recommend it.

After several crashes where i lost too much game play and had to start over i couldn't be bothered anymore.
You have to save manually and sometimes i just forget things like that lol.
There were a lot of slow cutscenes and a lot of talking. Talking that you could skip thankfully.

The 1,5 hour that i was playing i was really bored.
Sometimes i had no idea what i had to do so i just randomly clicked on things.
The game looks decent, the audio was good and the story (so far i have seen) was alright.
From what i have seen in the reviews the game is around 6 hours long! That is long for a game like this.
I wished i enjoyed it more! Personally it felt like there was something missing.
The game didn't suck me in... It was so slow! And the crashing was frustrating.

If you can look past the crashes and you decide you want to buy this game anyways.
Please Don't buy this for 9,99€, that is a ridiculous price for this game.

I hope the developer fixes the crashing problem and adds in a autosave!
I will give the game another try in the future if it gets updated.

I Must Be Strange..
Based on the completed game.
I'll give it 3 stars leaning for 4. Obviously I should buy all older games with a “neutral or lower rating” I seem to really like them for the most part! Might be my oddness showing.
I’ve found the Adventure Company games to date are my favorite’s however I think I've only played two. :-)

This was a shorter yet fun enough 3rd person point and click game/movie..
There are countless characters that appear is this game. I found it refreshing that numerous characters were included in scenes too! Not constantly (there was some) jumping from one to another.

Starts off In a London Loft and off you go and back and off and back anddd..
Main character’s are.
Cathryn - (Sounds exactly like Minnie Driver in Goodwill Hunting) < Just saw a re-run of it!
Mike
Bernie
Jack-The Cop
Robert
These 5 come and go through out the entire game but you meet many as you move on.

If you haven’t played this game; FYI you’ll have a love/hate relationship with them all!
It's a presonal choice if their good or bad! I tended to side with Jack most of the game!

Really well done graphics in my opinion.. I did like the soundtrack but ran into a few scenes where no adjusting made it so you could hear the voices so had to read subtitles.
Voice Over’s sounded good but no actual mouths moved..

Oddly I enjoyed the in game computer search.. However if you search for anything off topic the game closes and you lose your spot! I did search “Adventure Company” and that worked to well!

Why I gave it 3 Star’s:
Not much to really do except have your hand held most of the way and follow them around.
Not a challenge the few puzzles in here were either easy or you could skip them. Never should skipping a puzzles be in an adventure game!!
Very clumsy and the most awkward inventory usage ever.. I mean to the point you accidentally close the scene way to often!
A lot of dialogue that can not be skipped!

I would have preferred cuts scenes to just suddenly being somewhere or that awful Map!
My picture of the island was a model on the developers table nothing like the screen shots I’ve see on the web!

Some of it did seem more like an unfinished game they just put out and It did crash and freeze numerous times!

Cathryn’s relationship with her Dad was left to up in the air for me! Hope they make a 15 Day's part 2

Am I unhappy I bought it? NOPE!

Highly unstable. Game crashes randomly and frequently to desktop, with a dubious pop up message inviting you to send an error report to the developer. Had to rely on a game walkthrough video on youtube for an explanation of the plot at that one point towards the end of the game, at the cells, as I could never get a proper explanation of the plot by the characters without the game crashing. Had to save the game at every single stage, after every major plot sequence or dialogue, to avoid having to repeat the segment. The game feels unfinished - like they had never worked out how to fix the bugs.

The character models only wear one outfit throughout the entire game, even though the story takes place over several locations and several days. The female protagonist has the most awful outfit. Minor characters all look alike (guards and soldiers). A couple of the high tech puzzles have instruction that make no sense - at least there was an option to skip the puzzles, otherwise I wouldn't know how I could have got through the game, regardless of the game crashes.

The only things nice about this game are the story, the characters, the textures, the location graphics, the movie sequences and the dialogue.

Only buy this game as part of the Publisher bundle as they do have nice adventure games.

First of all I'm not a person who normally enjoys point and click adventures as I find them rather slow developing and cumbersome story wise and this game is by no means any different. Also I agree with those who highlight that there are a string of nasty game crashes which most people will get to experience especially in the Paris/catacomb region. While there is an inbuilt crash reporter in game, one would wonder if this actually works since those crashes have been existent since the games release back in 2010. So how does one report a bug if the bug is actually the bug reporter? Any ideas? Email the developer you say. Good idea! One problem though, the German Developer known as 'House of Tales' doesn't seem to exist anymore, at least there is no easy to find web site to contact him on. Hence the answer so far is to simply save game constantly and reload after crash and work through the matter that way.

The game is a simple point and click adventure dressed up to look like a movie rip off like 'Entrapment' with a cheeky wink here and there to the James Bond Franchise especially to its evil character lore’s. You play various parts of a trio group who have vowed to make the world a better place by stealing expensive works of art from the rich and then give the proceeds to charity by selling them on the black market, earning this trio a Robin Hood image.

While the game eventually explores this notion more in depth exposing the blaring weakness behind the group’s logic, it also explores a whole range of loose end stories. For one thing the members of your group may have independent hidden motives that you are not aware of, the estranged relationship between a member of your group called Cathryn and her father may have more to it than what she is admitting and finally the paranoia and the sickness of a comrade who paints illegal copies for you, may have more foundation in truth than make-believe.

You also spasmodically get to witness and be involved in the investigation of international police who is investigating a bizarre string of deaths regarding political figures and how there seems to be a nonsensical art stealing connection behind it all.

The game after treating your eyes to a sexy animation at the beginning quickly falls flat thanks to a slow informative development which at the time really seems to be going nowhere. You really don't get too appreciate that ALL things in this game are relevant till the very end when the villain invites you back into his lair so that he can tell you about his entire diabolical plot. While this comically reminds us of Albert Broccoli’s James Bond formula, they really do a decent job of this in game and it really does make sense for once why the villain would invite you in and why the villain would want to tell you everything. In fact maybe Albert Broccoli could take out a pen and paper and make a note here and there for upcoming Bond movies.

However unlike Bond movies the down side is that the concluding animation is nowhere near as sexy as what the game begins with and with the constant build up to a final big explosion, it eventually falls flat with a small fizzle display which wouldn't even raise an eyebrow to Michael Bay.

So why do I wave an Olympic sized thumbs up in the faces of angered customers and glaringly bad design choices?

Well for one thing I really appreciate how they tie in all the loose ends at the end. It’s an idea they chose to follow which I haven't seen in any other form of media. You see the person the trio is working for is a genocidal maniac whose belief system is expressed in a secret room in his mansion which I can only describe as 'messed up'. It’s the uniqueness of the story itself and the way it is presented that I have a deep respect for. It didn't just feel like I was playing a cheaply made rip off. There was just more to it than that. In fact his back story was so real that I had to do a quick google search after playing this game to see if Elengi of Surinawa was in fact a real person or not. He isn't, but you can easily see how he could have been.

Secondly while the beginning is seriously missing a musical score to get you in the mood, when it does eventually cut in, it really does make you feel that you’re a part of the heist. Accompanied with this is the fact that the voice dubbing was pretty flawless in my books. I could easily envision the characters being that way and saying the things they did. Granted the stereotypes were frustrating especially with Mike. In fact I have never seen a more annoying game character in game than this one. His constant guffawing’s of his own greatness was enough for me to wish that the other two would pick him up by the ankles and use his head as a toilet brush. He is seriously more annoying than Jar Jar Binks in Star wars. Mike the most annoying and out of character in any medium I have ever seen, would probably be more in character and give George Lucas a wet dream if he was to appear in an Alien pub covered in fur. It’s just something you have to experience to BELIEVE. However on the flip side Mike does have one of the best lines in the game. It's the very last line he does with the villain. Classic!

While they spend 5 days to steal one painting and 10 days to steal another, the title '15 days' has a double meaning as revealed at the end and kind of leaves the story open to an upcoming sequel. If they do make a sequel and I hope they do, I really hope that they finish that one off with a sexier animation than what they begin the game with. Something that would make Manga people fall to the floor and do obeisance too. Also if you hint to an explosion in the end, don't give me a fizzle. I want a BANG. I want a Kaboom which would rupture my ear drums and wake up Godzilla at the same time and finally any chance you can kill Mike? How about we call the sequel '15 days to die'? Mike gets sick and Cathryn's forced to get that baseball bat with barbwire out of the closet.

In final a really unique story idea which nicely ties up all loose ends at the conclusion. A game which at several parts both grabs a gamers interest and loses it just as quickly. A game which has one of the most annoying game characters I have ever witnessed now placed on my hit list. A game with its current crashing issues is simply not worth the price they are asking, but is worth at least a gander when it does go on sale and if you’re a point and click enthusiast.

Below is me playing the game through the slow part when you finally meet up with your Nigerian Scammer wannabe. It should be enough of an example for you to work out if this is a game for you.... Thanks for Reading.

https://youtu.be/ew2mT6wWYe8

I can't beleive this game has so many negative reviews. To be fair, I agree with the following flaws: The game crashes, a lot. I was a bit worried I wasn't going to make it through to the end becuase sometimes it would crash in the same spot, but I did. Just keep re-loading till it works and save often. The other major flaw is that there really aren't very many puzzles at all. Mostly you click on things and the story progresses (this was minor for me though, cuz I wanted something easy).

On the plus side I found the story interesting, and kept wanting to come back to it. Sure it has some plotholes and a few too many coincidences, but overall not bad. This is the 2nd time that House of Tales has entertained me. Overall I'd say give it a play, its a few hours of fun.

It's not a bad adventure game. It's not a good game either, more of a "meh" experience, but it doesn't entirely deserve the negative rating here.

Pros:
- Interesting story.
- Decent graphics.
- Very good voice acting.
- Great movement controls - you can walk, run, fast travel between rooms and teleport on the map.
- Skippable cutscenes and dialogues!

Cons:
- During the 9 hours of my playtime the game crashed 15+ time. That's a lot. It's even worse that the game doesn't have autosave so you have to save a lot. Thankfully, all cutscenes can be skipped so you can quickly catch up from an older save. Also, one cutscene at the end of the game crashes every single time. After many tries I had to skip the cutscene and watch it on YouTube.
- The game has no journal and the protagonists give you no clues on what you are supposed to do next. So if you don't remember everything everyone said you will be lost all the time. This is especially bad if your playthrough is split between several days.
- Bad audio balance in dialogues. Often the background noise was so loud I couldn't hear the dialogue. Thankfully the game has subtitles.
- Bad minigames. Fortunately skippable.

[pro]
- Graphics are not too bad
- The story was OK
- Running and shortcuts with double click

[neutral]
- Most of the puzzles are easy but sometimes annoying . For example if you have to search the web for a name but don't remember it (there is no journal)

[contra]
- Lip sync is horrible or not existent
- I didnt't like the control
- Wooden character animation
- Game chrashes sometimes (for me first time after two minutes of playing)


Got the game in a bundle but would definitely not buy it for 9,99 €

Very nice adventure game from 2010, but it is quite different from current flagships of genre like Deponia, Syberia and even The New Beginning. Its strong part is story dynamic - it flows continously. Actions which are required for progression are grouped in small sets of locations to minimize the frustration of pixelhunting. Actually, I haven't noticed any major 'how-to-progress' gameplay stalling.

Pros:
1)Graphics is quite pleasing even for 2010
2)Continous story progression due to smart areas segmentation(it behaves more like interactive movie than brainbreaker)
3)Story is quite positive with its own dark twists(If you played The New Beginning you may notice similar character motives and EVEN GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS in puzzles)
4)Puzzles are grotesque, but simple enough to take just enough time to be fun instead of PITA
5)The Cop Character is powered by mild metagaming. It is hard to explain. You need to play the game to get the idea. Maybe it was intentional to give player that 'cop intuition' feel xD
6)Able to create tension and suspence without ugly timers on screen and 'game over' messages. Just the wild ways of the story and you.
Cons:
1)Crashbugs! Tonns of it. Save often, but nothing gamebreaking.
2)Characters are stereotypes. Actually it helps the story, but some people don't like when it is that way.
3)Game beginning is a bit chaotic and has no backstory except on need-to-know basis
4)A bit hardcore: it doesn't have 'journals' or task indicators, but it is mostly straightforward
5)One ending. But, you know, movies have only one ending too ;)

Highly recommended. I love it.