As you enter the magical world, you are mesmerized by the surroundings and you explore and investigate things and the settings. Items sparkle and torches burn to your astonishment, but these are just to confuse and have nothing to do with the game. Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows is essentially a puzzle game and they are in the form of finding hidden objects, aligning awkwardly positioned pictures with slot machines and many other pattern puzzles.

For a while you get to take part in a small adventure, but for the most part the game has a lot of mini games inside for your fun. New feature in the game is the ability of the gamer to make use of mouse to simulate some actions like moving the cursor back and forth to simulate sawing action. There are no dialogues in the game and the creatures or shall I call them ghosts thank you when you complete their job in howls as they are set free and they hand over some precious antic item to you as a parting gesture as you free them.

Sound effects have been utilized well in the game. The sounds are used to create and eerie atmosphere, and for the most part the game developers have done a satisfying job. Coming back to the game, the princess who invites us to this eerie world tells us that the witch has created havoc and turned all the inhabitants into shadows. It is the job of the gamer to bring them all to life by doing their jobs, running errands and solving puzzles, which is enough to set them free from the curse of the witch. The puzzles are intriguing, and if you fail to solve a puzzle in two minutes, you get a chance to skip it for future. There are narratives and some interesting screen shots which sometimes provide the clue you are looking to solve the puzzle. When you solve all the puzzles, you get to solve bonus adventure that unlocks after the main story is finished.