The Fog

The Good
I've been playing a few of Alawar's hidden object games recently and, while this is not the best in my opinion it certainly does not deserve the criticism it's had on some reviews.

OK it's standard casual gaming fare, Alawar seem to have developed a formula for this kind of game around 2012 and they added quite a few new games to their catalogue around this time. The artwork's fine, the music's fine, and the game mechanics are excellent.

The game received criticism in many gaming reviews because the in-game map does not allow the player to jump from location to location. It's a minor point but it is sort of expected in this kind of game. What I found when I was playing it is that by clicking on the hint system I was told that either there was something to do in the current location or I was directed to exit that location. repeated use of the hint system thus directed me to the location of the next action/puzzle. For me this was just as good, I had the option to do things in the order I wanted or I could let the game guide me.

The real treat however was the number and variety of puzzles in the game. There were locked doors and chests galore with some creative puzzles that were new to me as well as many old favourites. You want a maze, they put one in here. You like a logic puzzles, well there's a few of those too some of which I don't remember seeing before, I especially liked the one that reminded me of minesweeper. There are puzzles that involve rotating coloured wheels, assembling shredded documents, combination locks and even a 'spot the difference' puzzle. Thoroughly entertaining stuff. No player need be stuck in this game because in both Novice and Expert modes there is a 'skip' option that allows the player to bypass any puzzle that's too difficult.

There are sound effects and some pleasant background music, long low chords with a tinkling piano, that's fairly standard in this kind of game but there's absolutely no narration whatsoever, no voice acting, nothing. While this may be an issue for some it's not a problem for me, I enjoyed being able to play in relative peace and quiet

The Bad
The game tries to be scary and has some appropriate sound effects but these appear only at the beginning. Towards the end when the heroine is dealing with ancient artifacts the ghosts and ghoulies have disappeared along with their sound effects, I felt it should have been the other way around.

There are a couple of places where the player solves a puzzle to reveal a code but the code is not recorded in the journal. This caught me out because I wasn't playing with a pen & paper beside me and I had to retrace my steps and find the code before I could proceed.

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The Bottom Line
This is a pretty standard casual game with a nice combination of both point and click & hidden object elements. However the designers seem to have taken every opportunity to stick in a puzzle of one sort or another.

It's the kind of game that can be completed in a day. The puzzles seem to be the same when the game is replayed so there's not a lot of short term replay value so leave it a year or so before dusting it off.