Secrets of Velendar Castle - Escape Room Review

A Fantasy Castle Escape Room Built On The Bones Of A Loved Predecessor

Secrets of Velendar Castle - Escape Room, developed by Biri Biri and published by mc2games, released on Steam on May 28, 2026, at $12.99. It casts the player as a prisoner of a cruel king, stripped of home and family, who must explore the majestic rooms of an elvish castle, solve a string of environmental puzzles, and uncover why the king wants them specifically, all the way to a choice between two endings. Across the 26 English reviews read in full here, comfortably past this review's minimum sample, out of an all-language pool of 40 sitting at 85% positive, "Positive" on Steam's own scale, this is a follow-up to the developer's earlier Secrets of Blackrock Manor, and the pool's reaction reads exactly like a sequel judged against a beloved original: genuine affection for the atmosphere and observation-based puzzle design, set against real, specific frustration with how poorly the game signals what to do next.

Reviewers Who Loved The Studio's Previous Game Find Plenty To Like Here Too

A significant share of this pool frames its opinion explicitly in relation to Biri Biri's earlier work, and most of that comparison lands favorably. "Another solid puzzler game from mc2games. It follows the same line as their other escape room titles: explore a room, solve puzzles and repeat! It doesn't try to reinvent the genre, but it doesn't need to. The game does what it sets out to do very well, with a good atmosphere and clear puzzle design," wrote one reviewer. Another was even more enthusiastic about the studio's track record: "Played the first game these guys made with my gf and we loved it! We are always looking for a good escape room / mystery game to play at nights and on the weekends... Really really fun and the puzzles are very engaging and well thought-out without being too hard (but tricky at times!!). 10/10 hope this developer makes more like this." A third reviewer wishlisted the game specifically after enjoying "BiriBiri's last escape room game" and came away happy with "another interesting game with an intriguing style. Nice animation too." Not every comparison was kind, one reviewer opens their negative review with "After Blackrock Manor, I expected something better," but the overall pattern among returning fans leans warm rather than disappointed.

The Castle's Atmosphere And Observation-Driven Puzzles Draw Real Praise

Independent of any comparison to the developer's prior game, reviewers repeatedly single out the medieval castle setting and the game's insistence on close observation as its strongest features. "As a huge fan of escape rooms, I absolutely loved playing Secrets of Velendar Castle. The game instantly draws you into its mysterious medieval atmosphere, making you feel like a real adventurer uncovering secrets hidden deep within the castle walls," wrote one detailed reviewer, adding that "the graphics are immersive enough to pull you deep into the story, and the lighting and visual effects are quite well-done." Another reviewer praised the puzzle style specifically for avoiding padding: "No 'puzzles' that try to hide their lack of depth by giving you extra things to do, like actually turning the knob of a door or turning a crank around and around to open a cabinet or pointless little tasks like that." A third called the puzzles "challenging, yet fair, and quite original relaying a lot in observation," useful for players "tired of solving the same old puzzles every game has." At an estimated 4 to 5 hours of playtime for most reviewers who finished it, and a choice between two endings tied to tracking down the story's antagonist, the pool broadly agrees the core adventure delivers.

The Pool's Most Corroborated Complaint: The Game Rarely Signals Which Puzzle To Solve Next

Set against that praise, a clear majority of this pool's harsher reviews converge on the same specific structural problem: within a given room, several puzzles sit unlocked simultaneously, but only one or two are actually solvable at any given time, and the game gives little indication of which. "You enter a chamber, which contains like 5 disconnected puzzles, all of which you can fiddle with. But you can solve only one or two of them right out of the gate, but you don't know which one, so you are just screwing around all of them trying to figure out which one you are supposed to solve next, often times wasting time on puzzles you literally can't solve yet," wrote the pool's most detailed critical review, adding that solved puzzles unlock the next step in a way that "doesn't follow any logical or intuitive sequence." A separate reviewer described the exact same friction from a different angle: "If a puzzle can only be solved with information gained from the answer to another puzzle, the game doesn't tell you, leading you to spending a lot of time working on a puzzle you can't solve yet." A third, more sympathetic reviewer still flagged the same backtracking cost: "some puzzles require trotting backwards and forwards between clue and puzzle, which can be wearing." This isn't one player's impatience, it's a specific, repeatedly named design gap around sequencing and signaling.

A Second, Closely Related Complaint: The In-Game Hint System Doesn't Actually Help

Compounding the sequencing problem, reviewers across the pool separately and consistently describe the built-in hint system as ineffective at the exact moments players need it most. "The hint system is pretty useless, it will show fragments of clues gleaned from other puzzles, but without knowing in which order to solve them (and in some cases where they are) it doesn't help much," wrote one reviewer. Another agreed in far blunter terms: "I rate this a 5 out of 10. I am borderline negative, Game was okay but I found several puzzles to be overly obtuse. The hint system is useless." A third reviewer who otherwise praised the puzzle variety still ran into the same wall: "There's only one [hint] per puzzle, and it's not detailed text, just visual hints... I think the hint for one of those in the game was wrong or extremely misleading." Even a reviewer who ultimately gave up early cited the same specific issue: "reading the guide / walkthrough I am confused and worst the in game hints are BAD." Between the vague hint text and the unsignaled puzzle order, several otherwise-positive reviewers report resorting to outside walkthroughs just to keep moving.

Smaller, Isolated Complaints Worth Naming But Not Overstating

A handful of additional gripes appear in this pool, though each comes from only a single reviewer and shouldn't be read as broadly corroborated the way the sequencing and hint issues are. One reviewer reported the voice acting felt like "someone was just reading a script." Another reported a specific and severe personal reaction to the game's camera movement: "I've discovered it gives me horrible motion sickness... You can't change the FOV to try and correct it either." A third flagged a UI inconsistency, being able to zoom in with a left-click but needing a separate key to zoom back out, plus inventory open and close bound to two different buttons rather than one toggle. A fourth simply noted that "cloud saving doesn't work." None of these were repeated by other reviewers in this sample, but they're worth flagging individually for anyone particularly sensitive to any one of them.

Verdict

Secrets of Velendar Castle - Escape Room delivers exactly what fans of Biri Biri's prior Secrets of Blackrock Manor came for: a moody, well-observed fantasy castle stuffed with puzzles that reward close attention to the environment rather than brute-force clicking. Where it stumbles, and stumbles consistently enough across this review pool to take seriously, is in failing to signal which of a room's several unlocked puzzles the player can actually solve at any given moment, a problem made worse by a hint system that multiple reviewers independently describe as vague to the point of uselessness. At $12.99 for 4 to 5 hours of play, it's a reasonable value for genre fans willing to lean on an outside walkthrough when the game's own guidance falls short, but newcomers hoping for a smoothly signposted puzzle experience should adjust expectations, or start with the developer's earlier game first.