Last updated on December 8th, 2025 at 11:49 am
Mystery of Ancients: Dagger – Adventure Game Review
Mystery of Ancients: Dagger is a Adventure/Puzzle/Entertainment game from Big Fish Premium, LLC, first launched in 9th August 2018.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 2,962+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Mystery of Ancients: Dagger Stand Out
Can you solve the exciting mystery of "Mystery of the Ancients: Black Dagger" in time? Use your skills to unravel challenging hidden object puzzles, explore beautiful locations and reveal the truth before it is too late!
When a police station is attacked leaving an officer dead, Detective Duncan calls you in to investigate a suspected supernatural crime. After arriving at the scene, everything is in shambles and several witnesses report that the perpetrator had superhuman strength and speed. Things take an unexpected turn when the clues point to an ancient dagger and the spectre that wields it! Explore interactive hidden object scenes and play fun mini-games as you uncover the mysterious history behind this artifact! Can you defeat the Dark Lord and save the day in this spine-tingling adventure?
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This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Mystery of Ancients: Dagger is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 9th August 2018
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
Download & Availability
Mystery of Ancients: Dagger is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Mystery of Ancients: Dagger on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We tried this game a while ago and quit because we did not like the first scene. Then we went back and am playing it now. It is a really fun game. The puzzles make sense and are not the types that are too hard and that we have to skip. Im only half way through but this game will become one of our favorites, if at the end, it allows one to go back to find the stuff we missed.
We really enjoyed the storyline and imagery in the game. The storyline is fairly straightforward, but we were really enveloped in this one.
We are enjoying this game so far, we do enjoy more hidden object scenes though.
We love this games graphics, puzzles and storyline. We highly recommend it.
About time a game was made for adult gamers. Greta game more difficult than the usual. Well done.
We should have read the reviews! This came is so unorganized that we cant get the keys to work in the locks on a hidden object game. Poor planning on the part of the developers. Please check it before you buy it. Total waste of money.
Great game- lots of very interesting and different puzzles, as well as the usual HOP, and intriguing storyline. Great directions for the puzzles, and very logical as to what to search for next. Thoroughly enjoyed this game. Played it twice all the way through.
We really enjoyed this game. First and foremost, we could actually read everything! First HOS in a long time that wringing was large enough without squinting. The story was also easy to follow and a nice smattering of different games and hidden objects. Sure wish more games were like this one.
Wonderful game keeps you interested the full game.
A very fun game challenging but keeps you thinking.
Gorgeous graphics, unique mini games or at least a solid attempt, interesting story. Decent length too.
We loved the crisp visuals and the effects! We hope there are many more games like this made in future.
Complex but easy to solve most mini games. Some gruesome scenes but good graphics. Opening scenes seem below animation standards but as the story unfolds the animation gets better.
We play A LOT of these games and get sick of all of the medieval themes. We have been looking for a good game that had a more modern storyline. Although this does have some medieval parts the basic story is set in modern day. The puzzles and HO games were different, challenging and fun! We see people mention how short this game is, and we agree, but we believe it was probably because its so much fun the time flies by quickly.
The developers did a nice job of being creative with HOGs. Most enjoyable game we've played from Big Fish in a while.
A good game, we enjoyed it. As usual, the bonus game was excellent, perhaps better than the regular game.
It was good all the way through with no glitches.
This was the best game by far out of any of its kind. All new HOPs that we havent seen in any of the others. Would give it more stars if we could. We do wish it were a bit longer but thats a given.
We love the Maria Glorum games and purchase them all. Never disappointed. Key West Jessa.
Highly recommend this game. One of the better games we have purchased in a while. Great job to all the personal who worked on this game.
This is only our partial review, but BF gives us a terrific one with this game. We didn't want to stop playing, even for these few words. If you have been desperate for a great game, this one is immensely playable, immersive, rich–with innovative, multi-layered puzzles. More later! After completing the game and the bonus, we must unfortunately subtract a 1/2 star. The game was very brief, but perhaps we only enjoyed it too much? Our verdict is still to buy–especially at reduced price of 3.99. It is quite enjoyable and well thought out, particularly the multilayered puzzles. HOGs can become very repetitive but this game avoided that trap. Thank you developers! Now please give us more great games and we will buy them.
Really enjoyed this game! Very interactive during hidden object scenes, which we . Although the graphics were grainy, this did not affect gameplay in our view. There were too many enjoyable and cleverly done scenes, along with some great special effects. There were your collectibles, crowns and character dolls. Voiceovers were very nicely done as well. Teleporting map was provided (which wasnt a whole lot of help) but thats the challenge right? Highly recommend picking this one up as it is very entertaining and a huge step up from the other new releases as of late. We had contacted Big Fish regarding our lack of New Releases for us IPad users and they were passing the info on to the mobile team. Voices need to be heard if you want more games. So fellow gamers, please dont hesitate to write them and let them know. They actually stated, that our feedback was appreciated. We certainly want to see more games (like the olden days) dont you? Play & Enjoy Looking forward to our next release as it is hard to make these shorter games last. KdBoots.
We enjoyed every aspect of this game! Many collectible crowns and coronets to find. Click on the crown logo to see which collectibles and individuals to find. Very creative interactive HOPs and puzzles. Our favorite puzzle was trying to free a raccoon inside a maze – lots of fun!! Bright colors. A cluster of buttons located on the bottom right-hand side, giving access to the interactive map, hint button, difficulty level (very convenient). Bright, bold colors. And…a very fast 5 second refresh rate. Long-playing. Ill start to play the Bonus section shortly! More of this same high-quality games, please.
Im not very good at these but am getting better. Some we cant stick with because they arent user friendly. This is not one of those. Its challenging, interesting and great graphics. The mini games are explained briefly but with the information you need and a arent too small to read or navigate. The only reason for a four is how low the inventory is placed, which causes the game to pause sometimes instead of placing item. We very much enjoyed the game and hope there are more in the series.
Wasn't charged for initial game / then charged for game bonus??????? Games are slurry money but who, when, where, how, what, concerning how to buy game is concerning.
Enjoyed this game but it ended way to soon.
Easy way to spend a few hours. Challenging without frustration. Long enough so we didnt feel cheated. We love the Big Fish games Ive played.
We wrote a review earlier before we finished playing the game but it seems to have disappeared. Just wanted to correct ourselves on finding the crowns. If you can not find one you can come back later to look for it ONLY WHEN YOU ARE STLL PLAYING THE MAIN GAME. We realized this when we finished the bonus round and was trying to go back and find the 3 that we missed during the game. It was upsetting because we like to achieve everything in the game, makes it more cha. Other than that and the game was short, this game was extremely awesome and lots of fun. Also all the puzzles are self explanatory so you dont have to stress out trying to figure out what the instructions mean. We hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.
Note to KimTwilight: You didnt miss out on anything with Puppet Show; it was a disaster and a waste of money. In this game, Duncan was a total HOTTIE! In addition, there was a labyrinth and we know you love those as well as we do! Although we have certain quibbles with this game, at least Mariaglorum gave us enjoyable and entertaining gameplay. Yes, the storyline (resurrection of an evil entity) was extremely redundant. The graphics lacked clarity and were devoid of much color. It was an extremely brief game. However, there were many positive aspects that we expect to see in all of our adventures, such as a customizable game, a marked teleport map which indicated collectibles (crowns and character figurines), instantaneous loading between locations, plus items, a back button, and a plethora of tasks at each location. Objectives were regularly updated. The HO scenes had no alternative puzzle but at least there was a decent variety, and there were quite a few of the use one item to unlock another item type with embedded micro-puzzles. Inventory usage was a breeze because you need not drag items; click on the tool you wanted to use and the area in which to use it and it worked perfectly first time around. Unlike AMAX Interactive, Mariaglorum gave us an excellent level of quality assurance, so we would say BigFish redeemed themselves this week. The game contained many puzzles/mini-games. Many of them were of the rotational genre, but others were games of dexterity and skill, there were codes and even the aforementioned labyrinth, which was a puzzle that one could not skip. Although many were simplistic we believe most gamers will still find them enjoyable. Our main issues with this game were the length, the poor quality of the graphics, and the teleport map (it worked fine but we had set it up to show available actions and it kept shutting the action marks to the off position). Our final review will stand at 4 stars. Happy gaming to all.
We liked that usually we were able to figure out what we needed to do, and even looking for items was usually logical, and we rarely had to use the help guide. The HOPs were ones we had not encountered before, although we would have liked to have alternative puzzles to do instead. It was fairly short. Graphics and voice overs were good.
So far Im intrigued by game…not entertained yet. Still playing demo.
MariaGlorum's Black Dagger is much better than most of Big Fish's recent offerings. It may truly be a new game! There is no journal, but the map enables teleportation and is beautifully rendered in 3D. The map also indicates when you have collectibles to find in each scene. You can customize difficulty. The HOPs are very creative and each one is structured differently. The mini games were moderately challenging — not too easy, but you can work most of them out with time. The storyline was fresh, and the graphics and soundtrack make you feel like you're actually fighting evil! Black Dagger has one of the best bonus chapters we've ever played, in terms of both engagement and challenge; it followed naturally from the main story. Collectibles consist of crowns in each scene and 8 statues of characters. If you collect all 23 crowns, you can complete a jigsaw puzzle. Collecting the statues just gives you glory. :-D Cons? Gameplay is too short (23 scenes, about 3-4 hours), which is why we have already finished and can write this review. The back button is awkwardly placed in the lower left corner, while all the other icons are squished together in the lower right. You must manually update the map constantly if you want it to flag areas where action is needed. These are minor issues, however. We didn't experience any glitches. Our rating is 4.5, and while we'd love to give this game a 5, we've lowered it to 4 due to brevity.
Not finished yet, but so far we can only say this is much better than the last offering by BF. Minor complaint is that in the map the legend does not indicate where current activity is available without refreshing request. Enjoying this game for a change after the last disaster.
It seems when you hit the hint button, it directs you to the website. Not as helpful as their other games.
We paid to unlock the game, but It is stuck wont go further! Has anyone else had this problem?? We do like the game if we can get to the hunting room.
This game is short and there arent many hidden object puzzles. Otherwise it was fun to play.
Very good game, but really brief. They need to put less effort into annoying videos and more into the substance of the game.
Played on expert and finished in a few hours. Dont pay full price.
We usually like this series, but we didnt like this one. We didnt like the finding shapes puzzles, we didnt like the battles. We didnt like the map. There were MANY "didn't likes" and few "did likes." How it got 4+ stars is beyond us.
Expert level. A decent game, probably overpriced at $6.99. The puzzles are of medium/low difficulty, but the game is engaging enough. You will see the same sort of puzzle over and over: that rusty thing needs oil. Duh. The graphics on the cut scenes and the dialog are pretty horrible, but the rest of the graphics are decent. Decent. 2.5 stars.
The title screen would not open to play. Would acknowledge when pressed but that is all. Would have loved to play. Such a shame.
Its possible to get stuck. Also, you end up carrying too many items in the inventory to be seen without scrolling. Makes you listen to the characters talk and talk you cant always skip them.
So we paid but the game wont let us play! How come, and what do we do now.
We just started how can we rate it. Sick of darn pop ups after a scene. If we want to rate it Ill do it after. What we do know is the game isnt smooth. Cant fast forward dialogue to read at our pace. Skip. Cut scenes too long. Skip. No explanation on hidden things like crowns. If you didnt look at strategic guide you wont know to collect them. Have to wait for things like hammering all 12 nails in. Thats what we know so far.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.0
- Size: 1,052.88 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, JA
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Big Fish Premium, LLC
Last updated: 9th August 2018 | Genre: Adventure, Puzzle | Developer: Big Fish Premium, LLC