Detective Notes: Lighthouse Mystery Solitaire

The Good
This is a decent, well made game that completely failed to capture my imagination. I downloaded the game from the Big Fish Games website, where they allow an hour's game time as a try-before-you-buy option. The download was very quick and the game did not take up a lot of space on my PC.

There was a short delay when the game started and I saw a "Please Wait" load screen a couple of times during the game - never for very long and so that's not a negative point. The music was OK - nothing special or memorable but pleasant enough. The artwork was OK too, though perhaps a little on the dark and dingy side.

As for the games, the solitaire games were standard, with just one game type that I know as Golf Solitaire. However, the game kept on introducing new twists, the last one was at level seventeen, and I've every reason to suspect there were more to come so the difficulty level continued to increase, which is good.
The hidden object scene worked and all the objects were clear and well drawn so overall the puzzles, which is what the game is about, worked.
Generally there's very little about the mechanics of the game that can be faulted, everything worked as it should, cards turned over and were cleared from the board as they should etc.

The Bad
Basically it's all about the pacing. I played for an hour, during which I stepped through the introduction, played ten hands of solitaire, had a hidden object scene, played seven more hands of solitaire and then the timer ran out. That's an hour and as far as plot progression goes the characters introduced themselves at the beginning and got a hotel room after ten hands of cards and that's about it. The next scene was to be in the police station but I never got there.
The full game promises two hundred hands of cards and twenty hidden object scenes. That's an awful lot of card playing for each advance in the plot which, based on my short experience, results in a very slow game.

The Bottom Line
Games that are pure solitaire games get me hooked by being bright, colourful and having some kind of progression system that makes me want to play 'just one more hand' before breakfast/lunch/dinner/coffee/bed or whatever. There are points to be earned in this game and upgrades to buy but the process is too slow to keep me playing, so as a solitaire game this is technically good and challenging but boring.

As a hidden object/adventure game this does not work for me because the way I play I get a minor plot update every half hour or so and that's just not enough.
On the plus side I played an hour and got through just seventeen hands of cards, there are two hundred hands in total, giving potentially ten or more hours of gameplay - if you try for a top score on every hand as I did.

In short, what the game does it does well but it failed to hold my interest and, based on an hour of game time, I won't be buying it.