Game Review - Azkend, Azkend 2: The World Beneath

Game Review - Azkend and Azkend 2: The World Beneath
Score +2/-4 (Azkend), +3/-4 (Azkend 2)

Overview

A match-3 chain game, with occasional hidden object scenes. Nice but static artwork.
+ Very good artwork in background images. More so in Akzend 2, where they more frequently show the artwork, add a bit of animation, and you can review the scenes in your journal.
- /+Azkend story was not very well reflected in the gameplay. This was corrected in Azkend 2, which had a stronger correlation. For example, the "dynamite" powerup is found after you locate four sticks of dynamite in the story, and when you match them, they explode to clear tiles.
-- Too many symbols (especially in Azkend 2, where this situation happens quite early) means you frequently encounter no-moves and reshuffles. The game starts to become more chance than skill.
+- Challenging hidden object games, but you can't go back to redo them and your degree of success appears irrelevant -- you just get pushed through to the next chapter of the story.

Game Review - The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Game Review - The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Score +1/-7

Overview

A fairly typical hidden object game in gameplay, but featuring very good background artwork.

+ Very good artwork in background images and the cutscenes. The hidden object scenes are somewhat average, however. Some of the artwork does appear to be unfinished, however, such as the filigree or other details on some parts of the queen's clothes.
- The introduction movie cannot be skipped. Once you've seen it a couple of times, it's nice to be able to press [ESC] or something to skip it and go straight to the main menu.
- The hidden object scenes are filled with objects that are implausibly placed, often implausibly sized, and frequently anachronistic and inappropriate to the culture/geographic region of the story.
- Very poor attention to detail: For example, in the very first hidden object scene, one of the items to find was a "necklace". There were at least two necklaces, but they weren't the correct ones and could not be picked up. When we used a hint to discover the correct necklace, it was what appeared to be a flower wreath around a stone lion head carving on the wall. In a later market scene, there are two wagon wheels. One of the objects to find is a "wheel", but only one of the wagon wheels qualify.
- Inappropriately named objects: In a market scene, a large floor carpet on top of a tarp is a "rag". There are similar cloths or carpets on clotheslines, but they don't count.
- Clicking on an object does not always select it. For example, if you click a harp where the strings would be, it does not count -- you have to click the frame. Combined with duplicated items, this can lead to a lot of wrong clicks as you experiment with which object you are supposed to click.
- Spelling and grammatical mistakes. Just because English is not the developer's first language doesn't mean this can be excused, since it is a very popular language to being with that a proper translation shouldn't have been hard to outsource. If they did outsource to a translator, they should definitely get their money back.
- The immediate story needs more introduction and context. We start in a cluttered bedroom and ultimately find a golden dagger which we are told is a key and she is lucky to have found it. But why is the Queen there in the first place? Where is she going, or is she going to just stumble into adventure?

Game Review - Hodgepodge Hollow

Game Review - Hodgepodge Hollow
Score +2/-3

Overview

Hodgepodge Hollow is primarily a hidden object game, with a few puzzles in between. However, the main action is searching for hidden objects and following potion recipes.

The overall feel of the fantasy artwork in Hodgepodge Hollow is that of a child's fairy tale book, with harmless-looking characters. Even dragons are adorable looking. The gameplay is quite simple, and these two factors combined suggests a game for a very young child. BUT -- Parents should definitely play it first and pay attention to the tasks you perform.

• For example, you need "Eye of Newt" in the "Bright Idea" recipe, and to collect Eye of Newt, there is a hidden object scene where you look for 3-eyed newts. The implication, however, is that you go about grabbing defenceless animals and gouging out their eyes. Hopefully, your child won't try it in real life.
• Another ingredient is "Forget-Me-Not Tears". In the game, these are not just flowers, but fairy flowers with faces, etc... The recipe reads, "To make a Forget-Me-Not cry, hold her over a steaming cauldron". This more or less translates to torture.

+- Childish fantasy artwork. You may or may not like this style.
+- Gameplay is fairly easy. Depending on whether you want a relaxed game or not, this may or may not be a drawback.
- The similarity of the tasks wears thin quickly, especially the potion crafting, which is basically tedious and boring.

Game Review - Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast

Game Review - Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast (Collector's Edition)
Score +5/-1

Overview

Like the other Mystery Legends games (The Phantom of the Opera Collector's Edition, Sleepy Hollow), Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast picks up where the fairy tale leaves off and lets you play through a spin-off tale. As with the previous games in the series, the artwork in Beauty and the Beast is beautiful. Some animations result in poorly anti-aliased images, however, but for a casual game they cannot really rely on their target audience to have strong computers, and some scenes are already sluggish with the use of certain animations/FX (e.g., smoke, which is notoriously hard on graphics processing).

Definitely get the Collector's Edition for the bonus chapter. Everything else in the Collector's Edition is of little consequence, especially the strategy guide (walkthrough), which you can find online anyway.

+ Beautiful fantasy artwork.
+ Good use of cutscenes.
+ There is a good range of puzzles to the minigames. Also the minigames try to be strongly related to the story in the type of action you are performing, a bit more so than most story-driven hidden object games.
-+ The hidden object minigames typically use a jumble of implausibly placed items. The hidden objects in the game locations, however, are fairly well hidden without being overtly out of place.
+ The story is interesting with a range of environments and actions to perform.
+There is a very nice arcade game finale. It's not a "real" arcade game in that you can't lose, per se -- you just need to figure out what to do, just like any other minigame. But it adds an active and exciting element to what is otherwise a fairly typical game for its genre.

Game Review - Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom

Game Review - Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom (v1.0)

Score +3/-4

Overview


Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom is the third episode in a fairy tale story that began with Awakening: The Dreamless Castle and Awakening: Moonfell Wood. The artwork is beautiful and has many generic fairy tale elements and creatures. It is equal parts hidden object game and a series of minigames which you are allowed to skip.
+ Beautiful fantasy artwork and good music score.
+ The hidden object game action does not rely on objects scattered about other implausibly sized and positioned clutter.
+ There is a good range of puzzles to the minigames.
- Some of the puzzles don't work very well. For example, the draw-in-the-lines puzzle in the Fungal Forest has poor completion detection. Even the Strategy Guide mentions that it may be necessary to add more to the ends/corners in case the game doesn't detect it correctly. This should have been fixed instead of having to mention it as a hint.
- Some later areas need more playtesting. For example, in the Fungal Forest, there is a coin on the edge of a basin, and nothing preventing you from picking up except that the game is scripted to not allow it. This is highly counterintuitive since the coin is right there in plain view, and later in the game you can in fact pick it up. Another instance of bad playtesting/game choices is the clear-the-board match-3 game at the end of the GobHolme chapter are unnecessarily tedious because you are simply waiting for the correct pieces to appear so you can match them. If you wait long enough you will get what you need, but this can be a very long wait and it wastes the player's time with something that is not related to their skill at all. This should have been adjusted after playtesting. If it were deliberately kept, then this is a grossly bad design choice.
- The strategy guide for one of the clear-the-board puzzles in the Fungal Forest does not in fact work.
- The reasoning behind some actions is inconsistent. For example, at the icy train station you are not allowed to use your dragon to melt ice because it might burn down the train car. But later in the goblin palace, you can use your dragon on a small wooden panel without fear of burning up whatever is behind it.

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Game Review - Sphera

Game Review - Sphera

Score +3/-3

Overview
Sphera is a hidden object game light on puzzles. The story ends with a cliffhanger, and as Sphera was developed by SandLot Games, don't expect a sequel because SandLot Games has been bought by Digital Chocolate. Overall, there's nothing too special here, except a story that may intrigue you (but which may never be finished) and some interesting artwork.
+ The artwork is quite interesting in its surreal and dream-like quality. You can see our collection of Sphera screenshots here -- beware of SPOILERS.
+- The puzzles are trivially easy. That said, scaling puzzle difficulty is a tricky part of developing a hidden object game or any casual game, so you may or may not feel it is fair to take a point away here. If you're not a fan of them and don't like to get bogged down while retaining the game difficulty elsewhere, then this may be a plus for you.
+ You can skip puzzles. Always a nice feature to have, not that you really need it here.
- Needs more rigorous quality control and playtesting. While the game worked fine on version 1.000, some of the hidden object games had glaring errors. For example, some items mis-named: E.g., A cauldron was a "bowl", and a cufflink was a "button". Also, there was more than one eraser and key in the desk in the "Brother" room, so you could end up clicking on the wrong one futilely, especially if you thought you just weren't clicking close enough to the object.
- So far the story is vague and not very engaging.

Game Review: Drawn: Trail of Shadows

Game Review - Drawn: Trail of Shadows

Score +7/-1

Overview
Drawn: Trail of Shadows is a hidden object game and puzzle game set in the same world as the earlier Drawn games, The Painted Tower and Dark Flight. In the second game, the princess Iris is restored to the throne, so in many ways that story arc has ended. Trail of Shadows rewinds the clock to the action preceding the events in The Painted Tower.

+ It's a very beautiful game. Trail of Shadows continues the gorgeous artwork, and keeps the overall painted-scene fairy-tale storybook style that is very colourful.
+ It is very interactive, more so than most hidden object games. Even unimportant scenes (such as the main menu -- see screenshots below) has interactive elements. There's a strong sense of "lots to see and do", despite the fast pacing of the story and gameplay.
+ Unlike many hidden object games, you are not tasked to find meaningless items, nor items that are broken or disassembled so that each piece is difficult to pick out. Instead, you look for or interact with items that further the story.
+ The hidden object sequences are so easy that this game is really more of a puzzle game where you have to figure out what to do. While the difficulty may be a bit of a let-down for someone looking primarily for a hidden object game, it also gives the game a faster pacing so you are not bogged down with meaningless tasks.
+ Some of the puzzles are either really hard or really long (such as the croquet game in area 2, The Garden). Fortunately there is a "Skip" button if you want to keep moving ahead in the story -- thus catering to both player who want to experience the story, and players who want to play mini-games.
+ Although the scope of action is mundane enough at the start, it quickly expands to epic proportions, such as colossal caves and moving mountains. The story isn't so compelling, but the visuals and surprises are first class.
-+ It's a short game, as most casual games are. The pacing is good but if you skip some of the mini-games / puzzles that frustrate you, it can end up feeling like a very short game you can do in a few hours. However, for the asking price ($14, down from $20 -- prices in Canadian dollars, as of November 2nd, 2011), you can't expect 50-200 hours of gameplay, like a full-fledged game from a large studio like Bioware or Bethesda. While we took a point off for the shortness of the game, we also gave a point for its low cost, which will only get lower as time goes by. Wait a year or so and you might even get it for $3 -- Big Fish Games run frequent promotions.
? Early versions were reported to have had game-stopping bugs. It is probably all resolved now by version 1.2, but we never experienced an inability to complete the game, even at version 1.0.

Game Review - Stray Souls - A Dollhouse Story

Game Review - Stray Souls - A Dollhouse Story

Score: +2

Overview
Stray Souls: Dollhouse Story is a hidden object game set in a horror story. The player is quickly drawn into a surreal, haunted world and must find objects to help her complete tasks and overcome obstacles. More than most games, Stray Souls is a story driven adventure experience, more like watching a movie than playing a game.
Implausible elements such as complicated locking mechanisms are given plausibility by the warped, haunted version of the world. When the haunting is lifted, the action properly shifts back to the mundane. (Although this is less evident in the Stray Souls: Dollhouse Story Collector's Edition bonus story where you have highly implausible things such as jail cell doors installed backwards.)
The woven doll with the big zipper is clearly modelled after the dolls in the movie 9.

+ There are simple cinematics that nevertheless capture the horror-story atmosphere very well. Instead of the hidden object scenes and puzzles being the focus, the game firmly focusses on conveying the experience of the story, with the hidden object and puzzle components being supporting elements. The actions you take on behalf of the protagonist are reasonable and intuitive.
+ The hidden object scenes involve objects that are very much like just another piece of the scenery artwork (helped, of course, by the surreal look of the haunted locations). Nothing is outrageously sized too big or too small, or put in some implausible place -- both tricks that hidden object games sometimes use to increase the chaos you see and the difficulty of the game.

10 Tries to get past Samantha Swift and the Fountains of Fate

If you're a fan of hidden object games from Big Fish Games Homepage, you may have noticed that some of their third-party partnership games have been buggy. I have just done the match-2 crate puzzle in Samantha Swift and the Fountains of Fate about ten times. Each time, I encountered a "negative time delta" error message and crash to desktop. Finally, it seemed that switching to full screen fixed it.

Apprently the previous games were similarly buggy, although I did not experience it as severely as others have (possibly playing in full screen does help in general).

If you're not keen on struggling through intermittent crashes, you may want to hold off buying a game and instead keep an eye on the Big Fish Games forums. Here's the technical issues forum for Samantha Swift and the Fountains of Fate.