Empress of the Deep: The Darkest Secret
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At the bottom of the sea, in a deep underwater complex, a woman wakes up inside a cryogenic sarcophagus without any memories. She is greeted by the voice of Jacob, a mysterious guide that reveals bits of information about her situation, communicating through a device set on a journal. He tells that her name is Anna, and that she slept for over a century inside the chamber. She soon starts to explore outside, discovering the crumbling remains of the Ark of Humanity, created to store the greatest achievements of humankind. She must explore the surroundings, solving all the puzzles to open new avenues and uncover all the secrets of the place, as well as details about her past.
Empress of the Deep: The Darkest Secret is a traditional point-and-click adventure in the vein of Myst and other games, but with hidden object challenges and simple puzzles tailored for the casual market. The player moves between scenes by clicking on the exit hotspots, usually placed on the edges of the screen or on obvious places like doors and other openings. The context-sensitive cursor changes to an arrow when over exits, into a hand to pick objects and a magnifying glass when over a place with a zoom view showing another angle of the scene. Useful tools can be found scattered around the locations, and are automatically stored inside one of the inventory slots at the bottom after being collected, from where they can be dragged and dropped on logical portions of the scenery to perform an action or complete a task. Scenes where everything was collected and completed are marked with an "Area Complete" golden star at the top-left corner.
In some places, the scene has seek-and-find sections where the objective is to find and click on all the objects listed at the bottom, on screens filled with assorted items scattered around the area. After collecting all the items, one of the objects is stored in the inventory to be used later when solving puzzles. Mini-games appear when clicking certain places, appearing inside interactive windows where a mechanism has to be manipulated to solve a myriad of challenges, like a Tower of Hanoi variation with gears, jigsaw puzzles, a puzzle with light beams and deflecting mirrors, and other similar games.
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Average score: 80% (based on 1 ratings)
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Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 11 ratings with 1 reviews)
An average game that looks a bit dated now
The Good
This is not a new game by any means so I was pleased to find that it installed and played under Windows 10 with no problem.
Playing the game was very easy. Apart from using the keyboard to enter a player id everything else was done with the mouse. There's a decent help system which, for puzzles, gives you one hint and then the option to skip which I confess to using.
There's the usual journal that records the story etc as the player progresses through the game, it also has an in-game map but you cannot use it to travel between locations.
As for the puzzles, well there's a good mix of hidden object scenes and other puzzles, often solved puzzles rewarded me with items I needed to unlock another puzzle. I did not keep a record as I played through but I remember
Nowhere in the game was there a timed puzzle though there are parts where the game tries to create a sense of urgency, nor are there any 'Simon says' or sound based puzzles.
The Bad
This puzzle has just about all of the things I hate to find in a hidden object game though, thankfully, not too many of them. The main irritations were:
Other irritations were the voice acting which, though clear, seemed to lack emotion and inflection, and the artwork in general which was not as sharp or as crisp as it needed to be which is probably due to the game's age.
The Bottom Line
I played through this game in around three and a half hours, this was not an attempt at a speed run or anything, it's just how long it took me. Yes I did skip two puzzles but I also wasted time looking for bats and so on.
The music is good but not memorable, the writing is good English - I don't remember any spelling or grammatical mistakes, and the story hangs together well. However, though a pleasant way to pass the time it never really drew me in or gave me any 'I wonder what happens next?' moments.
Windows · by piltdown_man (232741) · 2022
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Macs Black.
iPhone added by Sciere. Android added by Kabushi. iPad added by me3D31337.
Additional contributors: jean-louis, formercontrib, Rainer S, Victor Vance, ZeTomes.
Game added March 27, 2010. Last modified July 16, 2023.