Three Cards to Midnight (alternately typeset 3 Cards to Midnight) is a story-driven puzzle video game with elements of hidden object games and adventure games.
It was written and designed by Aaron Conners and Chris Jones

Chris Jones (Access Software)

Christopher Jones is a videogame designer and finance professional. He is most famous for his series of interactive movies starring the hard-boiled, out-of-his-time gumshoe Tex Murphy, played by Jones himself, a private investigator that lives in the San Francisco of the middle of the 21st...

 and is the debut release from independent developer Big Finish Games

Big Finish Games

Big Finish Productions is an American independent game developer formed by members of Access Software/Indie Built following the company's close in 2007. The company was founded with the goal of developing story-driven, interactive games...

.

Gameplay

While the game features a thick, complex narrative typical of adventure games, it does not follow the conventions that are typical to the point-and-click genre. Instead, the player is forced to draw connections between keywords and on-screen objects. Unlike a true hidden object game, the objects are in plain sight, and the challenge comes from deducing their relationship to the stage's keywords. How successful the player is affects their ranking, which in turn affects the ending of the story. Also, a player only has a limited opportunity to make the correct association between objects in the gaming environment and clues provided by the protagonist, Jess.

Story

According to the developer, the story revolves around the protagonist, Jess who has hires a tarot reader to assist her in retracing the memories of her past. Her only memory being that she had met with her boyfriend with the intention of celebrating her 30th Birthday, only to meet with her parents the day after in Florida. Everything apart from that is a memory blank. With the help of the stranger she has never met, Jess attempts to unlock the secrets in her mind that seem so forbidden and esoteric only to learn that she is at the heart of a very dangerous and personal conspiracy.

External links

• Official Three Cards to Midnight page at Big Finish Games