Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials

Introduction

Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials has players investigating the ghost of Nathaniel Hawthorne's death through hidden-object scenes and point-and-click puzzles set around the Salem witch trials. Developed by MumboJumbo and published by Accelerate Games, it launched on Steam on 28 March 2012 at NZ$11.99. Its 117 English-language reviews sit at 67% positive, Mixed. This review read all 39 negative reviews in that sample alongside a range of the positive side.

Genuinely strong art and atmosphere

The core presentation draws consistent, real praise. "Great graphics and good casual gaming fun," reads one review, while a more detailed account credits "chilling visuals" and clear, fair puzzle design. Another reviewer, comparing it to the series' earlier entry, calls it "a big step up from the Edgar Allan Poe Conspiracy, being much more involved in the puzzle-solving aspect." Even several negative reviews concede the same ground before pivoting to their actual complaint: "the game is good, but for achievements to unlock you have to use the beta version," reads one.

A single, dominant, decade-old bug

What dominates this review's negative sample overwhelmingly is one specific, persistent technical failure. "The developers are too lazy to fix their game," reads the sample's most-upvoted review, describing broken Steam achievements. That complaint recurs with striking consistency across a decade of reviews: "achievements are broken... this seems to have been an issue since 2014," reads one from 2016; "achievements don't work unless you switch to a beta branch of the game," reads another from 2022; "Your average HO game but achievements are broken hence downvote," reads a third, dated November 2025 — over eleven years after the problem was first reported. This review checked the developer's own Steam news feed directly and found the last post dated March 2014, consistent with this bug, among others, never receiving an official fix.

Real display problems on modern hardware

A second, more practical complaint concerns compatibility. "Even in full screen mode, the resolution is set. It doesn't stretch or scale to the size of the screen. My monitor has a high resolution, so I couldn't see what I was doing," reads one review. A separate reviewer confirms the same limitation from a different angle: "the display ratio is like 1024x768 and blown up to fullscreen, it is hard to make out any objects in the search scenes."

Verdict

Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trials is a genuinely well-regarded hidden-object mystery with real strengths in its art, atmosphere, and historical premise, and this review's full sample confirms those hold up even for critical reviewers. But this review independently corroborated the single complaint that dominates its negative sample: a broken Steam achievement system, and a developer who never posted an update to fix it in the twelve years since launch. Worth it for genre fans focused on the story itself; achievement hunters should look elsewhere.