Rusty Lake Paradise
TL;DR: A good creepy escape puzzle game. If you like the genre and like dark and macabre, this is well worth the $2.99.
If you haven't played a game in the 'escape' genre of puzzle game it's actually pretty straightforward. You've got an environment. Say a really creepy deserted island full of spiders and people in pig masks. You tap to move around this environment and tap to interact with various pieces of it. Maybe you click on a rock to flip it over and find a hand under it, then tap the hand to slide off the wedding ring on it.
Are you getting how the theming of Rusty Lake Paradise is set up yet?
Just Right Difficulty
The thing that's great about RLP and the escape genre in general is that the difficulty tends to be "Just Right" if not a hair on the easy side. Often in puzzle games you can get stuck for a long time scratching your head and wondering what the hell to do next. RLP does a good job of giving you a small and recurring area to explore (the island) and puts things in familiar places on that island to look through.
Additionally, if you do find yourself getting stuck, there's a handy Walkthrough link right in the menu that'll take you directly to a YouTube video that'll show you how to solve whatever part of the game you might happen to be stuck on. While this is a bit 0-60, and can be a bit spoilery, showing you parts of the puzzles you potentially haven't interacted with much, in the end it's a great tool to avoid googling around when you get stuck.
Personally I think I checked the walkthrough about 3 times, twice for just being stuck and not really sure where to even begin looking, and once because I was pretty sure I had the right answer to a puzzle and for some reason things just weren't progressing.
Achievements and Replay Value
RLP features a series of 50 achievements that are unlockable by doing weird exploratory things on the island that don't necessarily advance the main story or help you move on, but often times add grimly humorous elements to the game. After finishing the game I didn't feel much of a desire to go back and find the 20 or so that I missed, but if that's your thing there's probably some decent replay value here as well.
Length-wise the game felt pretty good. There are 10 levels to play through and each one takes probably 20-40 minutes depending on how quick you get the puzzles. The average walkthrough on YouTube is about 10 minutes per level.
The Verdict
The dark humor and grim weirdness definitely add an element of delight to the game. The ending leaves a little to be desired, but in the dark corners of the internet there's also talk of a secret ending (maybe from collecting all the achievements?). If you go a-hunting and find something exciting definitely let us know.
Edit: I went back and got A secret ending (from unlocking all the achievements) which modified the ending by 1 frame. Unsure if this is the full story or not, and not entirely sure that it's worth it. If you're wanting to go this route I'd highly recommend leveraging a walkthrough to help find the hints as some things are very timing based and will require replaying the whole level if you miss them or advance too far without the achievement.
Reviewed Version: 1.7
AppStore Rating at time of review: #31 in Puzzle (4.7 Stars, 608 Reviews)