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piltdown_man

Reviews

6-Mon Adventure (Windows)

It is free, it looks good, it plays smoothly but it is not for me

The Good
Another good yet free game that I found on Steam. It is short, if the reviews I have read can be believed it can be completed well under an hour, but I suppose that it depends upon the player's skill level.

It does look good in a dingy industrial kind of way, the sound effects are fine and the back ground music isn't bad either. The game played smoothly and flawlessly in a window which was its default setting. I did not like the keyboard controls but they were easy to reset and there is a controller option too.

The Bad
I continue to be rubbish at games like this but I keep trying because I have the all the old Tomb Raider games stashed away somewhere.

The Bottom Line
A good little game but just not for me

By piltdown_man on March 23, 2024

The Emerald Maiden: Symphony of Dreams (Collector's Edition) (Windows)

Plenty to do. Good story. Well paced. I really enjoyed this one

The Good
There is almost nothing that I did not like about this game. I have just finished it and I have had a very good time playing it - I even kept my headphones on and listened to the music when I normally turn the sound off after a while because it all becomes a bit boring.

So, where to start? I suppose the first ting that struck me was the story. It started with the female protagonist, I think she had a name but it is not used that much in the game so I have already forgotten it, anyway she was abandoned at an orphanage when she was very young and she sets off to find out about her mother. Now that start and the cover image of the guy with googly eyes had me thinking this was going to be an iffy and probably a sentimental game. Not a bit of it. After the briefest of introductions that gets the woman into the Emerald Maiden the story takes off and it is a good story which I will not spoil.

The Emerald Maiden is quite large and parts have to be explored multiple times but the game has an excellent in-game map which can be used to fast travel as well as showing if an area has an uncompleted task. I did find that a couple of times I was at a loss to know where to go next but between the map and the hint option I was never in any difficulty.
The strategy guide is very good. I did use it once or twice, I think there were occasions where I had multiple actions to complete and I completed one out of sequence so I did not have the required item, a valve part or something similar, to do what I thought I needed to do next. The guide was helpful in getting me back on track. Unlike guides in some other games it does not show the solutions to hidden object puzzles which isn't really a problem because there are no in-game achievements to be forfeited by using a hint.

The game's music was good, it suited the game, it did not grate and it did not become boring even though I played the game all day. The voice acting throughout the game, apart from one notable exception, was also first rate and really added to the experience.

The puzzles fitted in well with the story, at no point did I feel that the developers had shoehorned a puzzle it just to make the game longer nor did I feel that there were vast spells of dialogue or times when I had nothing to do. The scope and the pacing were, for me, pretty much spot on. There are two main kinds of hidden object puzzle, one uses silhouettes - this is usually used when a device needs to be assembled from the found parts, and the standard kind which has items hidden in plain sight and others that require some assembly. The other puzzles/mini games included some logic puzzles, picture assembly, pipe puzzles, and at least one tile flipping puzzle all were clearly explained and all could be skipped.

Finally the artwork. This, I think, was a vey clever mix of drawn and photographed imagery blended together very well. There were a couple of times, mainly in the jungle where the trees and cliffs looked too like a modified photograph and seemed at odds with other scenes but overall everything was clear and easy on the eye.

The Bad
This is my contribution to the 'Bad Section'. It is going to be short, it is being very picky but there is one part of the game that kills the suspension of disbelief that swept me along with the story and that is in one of the jungle sections. Throughout the voice acting had been very good but this chap, who was supposed to be a native of an Amazon tribe, was wholly inappropriate. It sounded like the devs had realised they needed a bit of voice acting doing so they went down to the local pub and asked some random guy to read a few lines inti the microphone to help them out and that is what he did. No acting, no emotion, more a case of "I'll do this just to get rid of them so that I can get back to my pint". He could not have sounded more English or more disinterested.
OK that is more of a rant than I intended for such a piddling little thing but it irked me at the time.

The Bottom Line
I played on the Experienced difficulty setting and I started playing this morning at around 08:30 and I finished the full game and the bonus chapter at around 17:00 with the usual coffee, snack and comfort breaks. That's a full day and I feel that I have been entertained the whole time.
Will I play it again? No I will not because it is not my preferred kind of game. It is a good game and I enjoyed it but the only games I have ever replayed have been the early Thief games, some of the Lucas Arts adventure games and Fallout 3, 4 & New Vegas - games I can lose myself in for days.

By piltdown_man on February 25, 2024

Missile Command: Recharged (Windows)

The game has improved but I have not

The Good
It is a long time since I played this game or any of its variants and I like what I see. Somehow playing on a bigger screen makes it look fresher yet the absence of too much eye candy kept the game looking 'clean'. I liked the big 'black hole' effects that opened up when I successfully hit an incoming missile, not that it did me a whole lot of good.

Apologies to the composer of the games music are in order. When the game eventually loaded and the menu came up the music started, it was very noticeable because it was a sort of 80's synth sound - very bright - with a strong thumping base underneath it. My first though was that I did not like it and that if I was going to play for any length of time I would mute the game to avoid a headache. However, when I played the game it was, for me, so fast and so frantic that I did not notice the music. Who'd be a composer? All that work and I did not hear it but if I had been aware of the music I would have turned it off.

Gameplay was simple, flawless and needed no tutorial.



The Bad
This may be down to the way I acquired the game. It was free with Amazon Prime and when claimed it was added to my EPIC games account. That all went well. When I opened my EPIC app there was the game in my library so I installed and launched it. That seemed to go well too except that it didn't. The launcher started and then minimised so I maximised it again and it just sat there for a couple of minutes so I aborted and tried again. What I eventually worked out was happening was that when I launched the game a browser window was opening asking me if I would grant EPIC permissions for something or other and the game would not run until I said 'Yes'. This happened whether I launched from the desktop icon or from the Epic launcher and it happened every time I launched the game.

The Bottom Line
Often when a classic game is relaunched someone somewhere has to put their stamp on it and introduce a load of new, clever, whizz-bang features. This does not seem to be the case here. Yes there are missions which I do not remember coming across in other variants but the gameplay is the same.

There is a multiplayer mode which I did not try because, well, I do not play well with others.
There is an Arcade mode which, if it is like some of the variants I have played, may have various levels, if that is the case I will probably never know because I am just not good enough to get that far.

I was never very good at the original game and I am not very good at this either so for me this is not a keeper. However this is down to me and not a fault of the game which is good, fun, and is something I would recommend to anyone who liked the original.

By piltdown_man on February 10, 2024

Dragonheir: Silent Gods (Windows)

I played for three hours r more and I think I am still working through the tutor

The Good
So far this seems like a well polished game. I am still getting to grips with it but there is a lot in here and even more that I have not come across yet. Combat seems straightforward though at the moment I am losing regularly as the opponents are all much stronger than my party which probably means I've missed something. At this early stage the game is helpful too, for example I started a fight and it told me that I should put a particular character at the front because they could take the most damage - tbh it didn't help because they still died but I appreciated the assistance. However the fights at this stage are quickly resolved and easy to manage. The artwork is good. Initially I'd thought that this kind of third person point of view would make the characters difficult to see but that is not the case at all. The music is good and it is suitably epic, there must be plenty of it so far I have not got bored with it repeating the same tune over and over. As for the gameplay, well the game manages to put all the key elements into a tutorial and still tell the big story along with lots of little ones. This reminded me of the Fallout games where I could be on a big quest but along the way I'd come across a relic that told the story of someone who died long ago.

The Bad
I have no real criticisms of this game at all, however I don't see it as a game that I could pick up, play for ten - fifteen minutes and then put down. For me it is not a coffee break game.

I picked up the from the EPIC store recently but with Christmas being imminent and a few other things I did not get to play it. When I did I was thwarted by the need to install a chunky update to the game and that was followed by four more resource updates. I do not think this is normal but if it were then it could become a problem

The Bottom Line
I am still learning about this game but so far it has just about everything. It has a story and since I got the game additional content has been released. In the game I can make potions, craft weapons and armour, equip my party, manage my inventory, but & sell stuff, scavenge items from the land, steal from dragons, recruit extra heroes, and there's a strategy to the placement of my party when fighting.

So having tried it will I continue to play it? No, I will not. This is a good game and I have enjoyed playing it but it is an MMO/Co-Op game without a single player mode, something I missed when I downloaded the game, and I really do not play well with others.

By piltdown_man on February 6, 2024

Yahtzee Girl (Windows)

I'm sure it cheats but it is beatable

The Good
This is a decent game of Yahtzee. When I won there was a real feeling of satisfaction. I started playing mid afternoon and I kept playing until around eight or nine pm. The controls are easy and I could just keep playing ignoring the NSFW stuff and enjoying the game. I also found myself watching the strategy the game used and I picked up a few pointers to improve my game.

I don't think it really mattered whether I won or lost to be honest. There's a status bar in the top right of the screen and the more I played the more the bar filled up unlocking the NSFW stuff as it did so. At the end of each match there are two heart symbols on the screen, When these were active they took me to the sex scenes but once I'd worked out what they were for I left them alone and just played.



The Bad
Perhaps it is just me being miffed at being beaten so often but in real life I have never been in a game where a player scored five Yahtzees, two of them back to back. I lost that game heavily.

The Bottom Line
Ultimately this is a short game. There are just two characters to beat and allowing for interruptions I guess I finished it in three, maybe three and a half hours. I could probably have finished it sooner if I'd paid attention to the status bar.

By piltdown_man on December 7, 2023

Not An Angels (Windows)

Free, lots of images, limited options.

The Good
First of all this is free so that gets a thumbs up. On Steam the description says that there are in-game purchases but I have not come across any so far and I have played it quite a bit.

There are lots of pictures available and the quality of the renders is, in my opinion, very good. When I say 'lots' I do mean lots, I have unlocked and played one hundred and fifty eight images and there is a Steam achievement for players who have played over two hundred and fifty.

Some of the puzzles do present a bit of a challenge, two sets in particular spring to mind one where the background was a plain wall with the shadows of a Venetian blind forming the pattern and another where the character was reflected in three mirrors. Making sure to finish the puzzle quickly and with as few moves as possible is also a challenge - I have a habit of rotating clockwise three times instead of rotating counter clockwise once.

The developers are adding more features and content, this always seems to me to be a good sign.

The Bad
This puzzle has very few player aids, in fact I can think of only one and that is the autorotation of the pieces. There are no trays to sort pieces into so I found that ninety-six pieces was the maximum I could comfortably play with.

Most characters have a set of ten base images and additional sets which cost five thousand points to unlock. Getting the required number of points was not a problem for me, finishing a forty eight piece puzzle quickly could score into the mid to high hundreds while finishing a ninety-six piece puzzle occasionally scored over a thousand. The problem with unlocking these additional image sets is that they do not stay unlocked. This caught me out when I unlocked a set and was called away. I shut down the game and when I returned that set and all other previously unlocked sets had disappeared from the gallery and I had to pay again to unlock the set I'd part completed. I also found that I was not looking at the pictures because they were erotic, I was looking for patterns, colours, where the light and shade was placed so that I could complete the puzzle faster - after all I thought I could always view them later in the gallery, except I couldn't.

The Bottom Line
You play a puzzle and score points. If you do well enough you unlock the next image in the set. Eventually you'll get enough points to unlock another set of images and so on.

When it comes down to it the puzzles are all the same it's just the picture that changes.

By piltdown_man on November 18, 2023

Tentacle Girl (Windows)

Fun with pretty pictures but it's not enough

The Good
This is a good game. I suppose the main attraction are the pictures and they do not disappoint. They are bright, pretty and the NSFW pictures are animated and are accompanied by appropriate moans and whimpers.

There is music too, I remember it is being something between elevator music and a music box, and it is quite a contrast to see a lady being ravished by tentacles thicker than her arm while listening to something so delicate.

When two or more adjacent tiles are placed correctly they snap together and can be moved about as a single piece which makes an easy game a lot easier.

The Bad
I cannot think of a single fault with it apart from it is so short and so easy.

There are twelve puzzles, twenty four if you play through in both vanilla and NSFW modes and all the puzzles are the same. I finished each puzzle in around a minute or less. That gives half an hour's gameplay at the most which, when ogling time is factored in means that the game is over in under an hour.

The Bottom Line
With this game what you see is what you get.
It does everything it is supposed to do but it does not last long and I see no replay value.

By piltdown_man on October 6, 2023

Secrets of the Dark: Eclipse Mountain (Windows)

Surprisingly good

The Good
When I bought this game at a car boot sale it looked like it was just another old game that was probably another short, run of the mill title with nothing new to offer and I was pleased and surprised to be proved wrong.

This is the second game in the series, the first was set in Mexico, and this title referenced the previous game in an unusual way. After solving various puzzles in three, maybe four, locations I was able to turn on a lamp or something similar. That action morphed the current location in Thailand into another location in Mexico and back again.
Why did it do this? I've no idea but it is something I've not seen in a game recently and it helped keep the game compact by which I mean there were plenty of locations but there was less running around between them.

There were two types of hidden object puzzle that I remember. There is the standard puzzle where most of the objects are hidden in plain sight but in most, possibly all, there was always one item that had to be made by combining two component parts, for example to find a 'cup and saucer' I had to find the cup and drag it to the saucer.
The variation on this kind of puzzle was called a 'Misplaced Objects' puzzle. It used the same basic kind of scene as a hidden object puzzle but I was not given a list of objects to find, instead I was given a set of objects to drag and place back in the scene, for example there could be a handle to put onto a basket; place one shoe next to another etc.

The music is nice but not memorable and there was a bit of voice acting too.

There is also a good range of puzzles. At the start I found them quite easy which is what I'd expect for a short casual game but as I played through the game they definitely got harder, not impossibly hard, but some were certainly challenging.

The Bad
There's nothing really bad about this title at all. My main problem while playing was remembering where I had to be next, I'd find a key/tile/button and I'd run around for a while looking for the right place to use it. There is no in-game map and the hint system just says 'There is nothing to do in this location - try somewhere else' it does not dive directions.
That was a little frustrating at times but its more of a problem with my memory than the game.

The only other niggle is that the ending is rather abrupt.

The Bottom Line
I thought it was going to be a short game so I played on the easy setting expecting to get some screenshots and be finished by teatime. I got interrupted a few times but I reckon it must have taken around six hours to complete the game and I skipped a couple of puzzles because I wanted to finish it before getting to bed.

Another pretty solid title, I'd recommend this game.

By piltdown_man on September 18, 2023

Time Tenshi Paradox: Episode 1 (Windows)

Disappointing

The Good
It is good to try new things and the idea to make the story episodic is certainly brave but it did not work for me.

The Bad
The art style has changed and, in my opinion, it has changed for the worse

This game refers to the first two games in the series and gives away a few spoilers so play Time Tenshi 1 & 2 before playing this one.

The first two games did not have a conversation log, something I occasionally find useful. I'd sort of expected that this new game would have that feature but it did not. I can still step backwards to find what I want but sometimes a scrollable log is useful

The Bottom Line
The game mechanics are the same as Time Tenshi 1 & 2 but the overall look has changed so it feels like I am playing a different game. On top of that I finished it in around twenty minutes which just isn't enough.

By piltdown_man on September 13, 2023

PuppetShow: Souls of the Innocent (Windows)

An improvement over the first game but ...

The Good
As with the first game in the Puppetshow series this is a decent game. It follows the same format. In all hidden object scenes the items are hidden in plain sight though in a couple of scenes I had to open a drawer or cupboard door. I did not have to combine items in these scenes at all. Apart from personal pride there is no penalty for using the HINT option in a hidden object scene

There are some decent puzzles in this game too. In my opinion some were definitely harder than the first game.

The Bad
I did not finish the game. At the end of the game I needed four runes to unlock a door and I only had three. I remember collecting all four runes. I read through the strategy guide and revisited all locations but I hade done something with the first one and lost it. Consequently I was locked out of the game.

There is no journal in this game but there are codes. This meant that when, for example, I needed to know a code or the correct sequence in which a set of buttons had to be pressed I had to retrace my steps and hopefully find the original clue. In the end I skipped one puzzle when I was stuck and from that point onwards I played with a pen and paper by my side.

The HINT option is only available in the hidden object scenes. This meant that when I reached a point where I did not know where to go next the game gave me no clues whatsoever.

The Bottom Line
I'd had around four hours game time before I had to abandon the game. I did skip a couple of puzzles, one because I could not relocate the required information and a couple because today is a very hot day and I lost patience.

Despite my problems this is a decent game and is a pleasant way to pass an afternoon or an evening, just have either a pen & paper or the strategy guide handy

By piltdown_man on September 10, 2023

PuppetShow: Mystery of Joyville (Windows)

Short and not that challenging

The Good
This is a fairly standard hidden object puzzle. All of the items are hidden in plain sight though I did have to open the odd drawer or move a curtain aside for a few of them.

The artwork is good and the items could all be found with patience, I do not remember any occasion when anything was misnamed or badly obscured by something in the foreground.

The music was good too though after a while I found it a little repetitive and listened to the radio. There is no voice acting.

The Bad
This game has no difficulty settings and I found most of the puzzles a bit easy tough I do admit to skipping one because I found it tedious.

The Bottom Line
I finished the game in around three hours which is not that long. If I had paid full price for the game I would have been disappointed, it's not bad but there's just not enough to it.

By piltdown_man on September 9, 2023

Voodoo Whisperer: Curse of a Legend (Platinum Edition) (Windows)

OK game, lousy ending

The Good
This is pretty standard hidden object game with a couple of features that I liked and one or two things that I was not keen on. The story was reasonable, someone has placed a curse on New Orleans and Lillian, a trainee voodoo practitioner, has to wander around talking to the dead and lifting curses to find out who is responsible.

With a hidden object game the artwork in the hidden object scenes is important and here the artwork is generally very good. All hidden objects are hidden in plain sight, I did not have to open any drawers, move things to one side or combine items to discover an item. In some scenes the task of finding items was made harder by the overall greyness of the scene but the game has a magnifying glass that makes finding things much easier so I can forgive that.

The music is OK. I did not find the puzzles that hard but as they can be skipped with no penalty the difficulty is pretty irrelevant.

Unusually the bonus chapter comes in the middle of the game. I think I prefer this to the general rule of tacking something onto the end which feels a bit artificial at times.

The Bad
One of my pet hates in games like this is the misnaming of items, for example a * is NOT a wallet and I've never called a *** a domino in my life and I'm pretty old.

In all chapters of the game there is a natural progression from one to the next. There was either a NPC to say 'You should go to ...' or the main character would announce it or something like that. That's how I ended up in the bonus chapter, however when I had completed everything in the bonus chapter and I had the 'Area Clear' message showing in all locations there was no clue at all.

No spoilers but I did not like the ending at all.

The Bottom Line
This is a decent game that took me around seven hours to complete. There were a couple of paces where I had no idea where to go next but between the HINT spell and the strategy guide, which I found a bit patchy, I was able to muddle through.

By piltdown_man on September 8, 2023

69 Penny Hot (Windows)

Quite boring

The Good
This is a simple game that is based on a classic tile matching format. The artwork is bright and clear and it is easy to play. There is music but it is not that memorable.

The Bad
Before playing this game I played another game from the same developer, '69 Iris Hot'. I found that game to be ridiculously hard because the levels are timed and on some levels the timer seemed to expire after a single error. It was very hard but it was a challenge.
In this game the levels are not timed. There are many more tiles to match but no skill is required just patience and persistence., consequently there is no challenge and I did not enjoy it,

The Bottom Line
No challenge at all, just keep clicking on pairs of tiles and eventually all will be unlocked

By piltdown_man on September 3, 2023

Worlds (Windows)

Looks good, I enjoyed it but I still abandoned it

The Good
This is a free game but it has more content than some games I have paid for.

There is a good tutorial bit at the beginning where my character was a trainee agent and had to go through a series of virtual rooms, this was very like the training bit at the beginning of Deus Ex.

Then there's the idea that missions generate money which can be used to buy better weapons, clothing and equipment. and finally the missions themselves, I think there were at least a dozen, certainly plenty to do.

There's decent music, not the sort I'd sit and listen to but it did complement the game quite well. The dialogue is decent too and it changed as the game progressed, for example I'd talk to a NPC and exhaust all possibilities then later when I picked up a quest or some more information there'd be additional dialogue when I chatted to the same NPC later on.

The Bad
The save game system spoils this for me.
Now I played this game for nearly three hours. I'd finished the training and I'd wandered around quite aimlessly in the first mission wondering what to do. I'd picked up point bonuses, weapons, ammo, and a couple of additional lives. Then I made progress, I knew what I needed to do but I made a mistake and I died.
Now I'd been through what I thought were checkpoints during that mission but when I was resurrected I was back in The Order's HQ and I had to play it all through he mission again. To be fair now I had an idea what I was supposed to do I made progress a lot faster but as I did so I looked for places to save and I found none.
I'm pretty certain that if I found a bed I could sleep in that would save my game and maybe if I earned more points I could rent a room and make that happen but instead I abandoned the game. My reason for doing so is this. There are probably around a dozen missions in the game and repeatedly dying and losing all progress would begin to annoy me a great deal. Rather than play any further and get frustrated I decided to call it a day.

The Bottom Line
From what I played of this game I think it is a good game with a lot going for it. Unfortunately the idea of regularly losing all progress spoils it for me.

By piltdown_man on August 28, 2023

69 Iris Hot (Windows)

Impossibly hard

The Good
It is cheap, the gameplay is simple and it is a challenge.

The Bad
Each game is timed and the timing system seemed to be broken. On some games I could play to completion while on others the first mismatched pair gave me the 'You Lose' message.

The Bottom Line
The artwork is OK-ish but there is better out there
The music is forgettable, I played it yesterday and I have already forgotten it.
I ended up cheating. I played in a windowed mode and took a screenshot of the tiles before they were hidden and used this as a cheat sheet. Even then I often failed to match the pairs within the allotted time, especially on the later levels.

By piltdown_man on August 28, 2023

Hentai Mosaique Puzzle (Windows)

Surprisingly good

The Good
Currently, Aug 2023, this is available on Steam for £0.79p and it passed a good few hours.

The Bad
If you don'y like / approve of naked ladies and explicit artwork then this is not for you

The Bottom Line
This game surprised me. I've tried some of these so-called puzzle games before and they often have a cheat button that reveals the image straight away, this did not. I had to work at this if I wanted to see the artwork.
I also expected the puzzles to be really really simple, I mean it's just rotating tiles so how hard can it be. I have to say that it was harder than I expected in places and I did need to use the help feature on a couple of occasions to find the last tile or two that I'd not got right.
The final surprise was that I didn't care about the explicit naked ladies in the level four puzzles, I was more interested in completing the puzzle than I in what they were doing or how they were posed. I could put that down to advancing years but I prefer to think of it as good game design.

By piltdown_man on August 26, 2023

Haunted Legends: The Queen of Spades (Collector's Edition) (Windows)

Decent enough, short bonus chapter

The Good
This is a decent game. It is not earth shattering and does nothing that I haven't seen before. The puzzles are generally good, challenging without being horrible and although I skipped a couple it was mainly because I needed to be doing something else rather than they were impossible.

The Bad
My main problem with the game was the load time. It loads via the Big Fish Games: Game Manager and it took ages. I had to break my game playing into four or five sessions and in the end I'd fire up the game and go and do something else for a while, like putting the kettle on and making a coffee.

Other than that there is nothing really wrong with the game at all. I did note a few minor niggles as I played but These would not stop me recommending the game to anyone, albeit with caveats.

There may be no penalties for skipping a puzzle but usually, when there is a strategy guide, I have no need to. It was therefore a bit of a shock to turn to the strategy guide and find text saying something like 'This puzzle is different every time so we cannot give you a solution!" There are a couple of puzzle like this and because they could all be skipped it did not spoil the game.

The hidden object puzzles are generally very good but there are three, maybe four, such puzzles in the game where the sought item was hidden inside another item and at least one instance where I had to make an item (I had to fill a cup with hot water). In the games I have been playing recently these items are indicated by a different colour text but not so in this game.

There are fifty two cards to collect throughout the main game. I got them all and was left wondering why I bothered because there was no reward for doing it.

The Bottom Line
This is an older game and allowances have to be made. I guess I've been spoiled by the game's I have played recently. I missed a mini map and the fast travel options some games have. The HINT option only works in the hidden object scenes so when I lost track of where I should be going the helpful "You have nothing to do in this area" message or the arrow telling me where to go next was missing.

By piltdown_man on August 23, 2023

Robinson Crusoe and the Cursed Pirates (Windows)

Good for an afternoon

The Good
I don't play hidden object games very often but having played this one last week and then another awful one this week it seemed important to make positive comments where they are due.

I played this game all the way through. In all it took between five and six hours to complete on the hard setting. Apart from a few puzzles it wasn't that taxing but it was interesting. There is a decent selection of puzzles to be had here, some I have not come across before.

The game had a standard format to each location which was solve a puzzle to unlock the door, find all instances of a specific item before the character will help, then find a list of specific items. However this wasn't adhered to so much that the game became repetitive. Sometimes the initial lock solving puzzle was omitted or in other cases the location was a treasure chest and that was the only puzzle there was. In one instance before the player could enter the 'find the object' phase they had to assemble the pirate from his bones and re-animate him first. Plenty of variety so the game was not boring.

The music wasn't bad, it consisted of a decent orchestral piece that would have been at home in a 50's pirate movie, and although that was the only 'big' piece it wasn't repeated to the point where I turned the sound off.

The drawing was first rate. The pictures were crisp, sharp, stuffed with items and were a pleasure to look at. I did get stuck a couple of times, once I could not find a cat because all that could be seen was a piece of it's tail poking out from behind the scenery, but that's about par for the course and certainly not something I'd hold against the game

The Bad
Not much wrong with this game really, for me they ticked all the right boxes and produced a game that I enjoyed playing. My only gripe is that it was a little bit too easy and a bit too short.

The Bottom Line
This is fun and it's well made. It's short but it will fill a dark night or a wet afternoon quite nicely

By piltdown_man on April 17, 2023

Montezuma's Revenge (ZX Spectrum)

This gets very hard, very fast

The Good
I liked the way the levels are designed. This is not a form of game I'm familiar with and I found that the levels got very hard very fast. This is not a game I could rush into, I had to stop and think my way through them and plan ahead.



The Bad
The penalty for getting something wrong is losing a life. You start with five but it's very easy to lose them all and be put back to the beginning. This is typical of an old game of this type but it's very frustrating nevertheless



The Bottom Line
I haven't played many games of this type and, after a while I remembered why. The puzzle element sucks you in and it's fun for a while, but having to continually replay the early levels because you mistimed a jump in a later level turns the game into an exercise in endurance and perseverance.

By piltdown_man on February 7, 2023

Urban Legends: The Maze (Windows)

Good puzzles and lots to do

The Good
This is a standard hidden object / adventure game that installs and runs perfectly under Windows 10 - well, it did for me - that's just a bit better than most I've played recently.
Let's get the basics out of the way first.
Is there sound?
Yes there is. There's music which is actually quite good in places and there are sound effects which are also good, however there is no voice acting.
Is there a story?
Yes there is and like a lot of these games it is paper thin and contrived but it works.
What is it like to play?
All the hidden object scenes play the same. Though well hidden I don't recall anything being obscured by another object nor are items hidden inside boxes or behind movable pieces of scenery. I played the game all the way through and I counted twenty-eight hidden object scenes across all six levels. It seems like an odd number so I guess I may have missed a couple.
There are plenty of puzzles too and by a puzzle I mean something which has its own screen where things have to be manipulated, basically if it had a SKIP button I counted it as a puzzle and I counted forty of these. There are the usual sliding block puzzles, a couple of Simon Says type puzzles, arrange things in the right sequence puzzles, all standard fare. There were no jigsaw puzzles and the game had a few variations that I had not seen before such as combining a sliding block puzzle with gears that turned a cog that opened a lock.
Other than the above there is a lot of activity finding bits of locks, tools etc. to open cases, chests and what have you to get more bits and so on.

The Bad
If I have any quibble about the game it's about the in-game journal and the in-game map. Now this may be me not paying attention but there were a couple of times when I got stuck and I found that there was information in my journal that I don't remember collecting.
I'm also a bit unsure about whether I like the in-game map. Now for me there are two kinds of being stuck, there's the "I have several things that I've partially completed but I can't move on any of them - have I forgotten anything?" kind of stuck and there's the "Been everywhere, done everything - twice, what have I missed?" kind of stuck. Now in the first case I'd look at the journal to remind myself of the story and the unresolved issues or I'd look at the map to remind myself of the locations on the current level and mentally run through what they contained. However in this game the rooms on the map are colour coded and a green room showed me where I could find the next action to do/puzzle to complete. This is good but personally I'd like to exhaust all possibilities myself before resorting to that kind of aid.
When I did get completely stuck the game's help system was excellent, it told me to "Get the xxxx from the xxxx in the xxxx room." and I found that in one zoom screen I'd picked up one object but missed the second.

The Bottom Line
There is plenty to do in this game. Hidden object scenes are only part of the game's content, far more time is spent running around finding 'stuff'.
I played this game over two days. On the first day I solved every puzzle and avoided using the map and the journal as much as possible, however on the second day I wasn't so enthusiastic for some reason and I skipped some of the trickier puzzles that didn't appeal to me. Overall my total play time was still well over five hours, which is around double the play time of some other hidden object adventure games, and could have been longer if I'd played to solve everything.

By piltdown_man on February 5, 2023

The History Channel: Lost Worlds (Windows)

This kind of edutainment does not work, at least not for me.

The Good
I got this game in a three game compilation, it was old and I did not have high hopes but they installed under Windows 10 and ran flawlessly.

The game consists of rounds of spot the difference games, hidden object games and jigsaw puzzles each of which is preceded by a screen of text and followed by a trivia question. These games are all timed with the speed of completion contributing to the player's bonus score.
Overall the games were pretty good. I found the spot the difference games were really tricky with, for example, tiny differences in the size of an object being the hardest kind of difference to spot.
The jigsaws are all similar where the player has to assemble a photographic image, sounds easy but really it's not.
Finally the spot-the-difference puzzles are a challenge because they are well designed and, to be honest, because the resolution is not as good as in modern games.

The Bad
There was educational text content but it was, well in my opinion, patchy. For example there is a lot of material on the Mesoamerican empires but less for the Roman empire which the game itself describes as the greatest and longest lasting empire of all.
For me what is worse is that when the game is replayed all this text is skipped and the player is presented with just a series of puzzles they have already completed. Great for getting a high score but, I think, a missed educational opportunity.

At the end of a round is a multiple choice question that also contributes to the player's bonus. I got a few of these wrong and I swear the question had not been covered in the text.

The Bottom Line
I played this game a day or so ago and, being honest once again, I can remember nothing about the educational content. I do remember that when I played the game I was conscious that the content was stuff I either learned at school sixty years ago or stuff I just absorbed. There is really very little content and what there is is very high level - think summarising five hundred years of history into a single screen. There were some new names, the odd pharaoh or an Aztec/Mayan leader that I hadn't heard of but most of the 'new' content did not register. Bizarrely what I do remember are the jigsaw puzzles, the Roman arrow slinging thing, the Mayan temple, the Egyptian tomb and others.

TLDR: Decent puzzles, play this game for them.

By piltdown_man on January 29, 2023

Witch Hunters: Stolen Beauty (Collector's Edition) (Windows)

As much an adventure game as a hidden object game

The Good
This is a hidden object game. I have the keep case and it says in big letters on the front that this is a hidden object game but there's more to it than that.
Now lots of hidden object games have other content but Witch Hunters: Stolen Beauty played more like an adventure game hybrid than a game that just skipped from one hidden object scene to another. I tried to record the content as I played the game and I counted at least twenty 'proper' puzzles and a similar number of hidden object scenes.* In-between these there's a lot of finding bits of this to open that inventory action so there's plenty to do, in fact I found the main puzzle of this game was remembering what actions remained to be completed.

There is music and there are sound effects but there is no voice acting. The story is better than other games I have played recently and it seemed to go on and on and on, just as I thought I was about to finish the game it threw some more at me.

The hidden object puzzles all use the same format where the object to be found is named, some games use silhouettes, and where the object is hidden inside or behind something else the name is shown in a different colour. There are the usual tricks, for example a QUEEN could be a picture of royalty, a playing card, a statue or a chess piece but in all the puzzles the objects, though well disguised, were visible if I looked hard enough.

By 'proper' puzzle I mean the scene where I had to, say, manipulate objects to open a lock as in rotating dials to form a pattern. Finding the magnet that allows me to get the key that opens the toolbox thus giving me the screwdriver with which I can unfasten the grating to get the missing dial to complete the lock so that I had the dials to rotate is not something I counted as a puzzle. This is the first time I've tried to record content and I give no guarantee of any kind about my accuracy.

The Bad
The game's strategy guide is a web link on the main menu screen and, for me, this gave the standard "404 Not Found" error. Also my game is a Black Lime release of the Big Fish game and it uses the Big Fish game manager - while this is not a problem for me because I have many of their games I'd prefer to manage the installation, launching and uninstallation myself.

The Bottom Line*
There are three modes of difficulty to this game. I used the middle 'Advanced' setting and finished the game in around four and a half hours. I did use the hint option to point me towards the next location where something needed to be done quite a bit - not because there was a problem with the game, it's just that I was so caught up in the story I wanted to get to the next bit quickly. If I'd diligently searched all locations for the next action then I'd probably have taken well over five hours.

Just when I was thinking that I was getting good at hidden object games and that they were easy peasy I hit this one which was harder and much more fun than many others. Recommended.

By piltdown_man on January 25, 2023

Treasure Seekers II: The Enchanted Canvases (Windows)

Solid, colourful and fun

The Good
This is the second game in the series and in it Nelly and Tom have grown up. Tom's gone off on his own somewhere and Nelly, knowing that he's in trouble, goes after him.
The game is set in six pictures, each of which has a completely different story and they are all self-contained, nothing is carried from one to another.

There are two difficulty settings and a good range of puzzles in this game. In addition to the hidden object scenes I remember playing a painting puzzle, a spot the difference puzzle, a gear puzzle where cogs had to be correctly positioned, a sliding block puzzle, various sequence puzzles, a connect the pipe puzzle, jigsaw puzzles and more.
All puzzles begin with clear instructions and in the lower right of the screen there's a list of the current tasks so the player is never left wondering what to do.

As with the first game in the series the artwork is good and objects are visible but well disguised. There is no spoken dialogue.

The Bad
This is another good, solid casual game that doesn't really have any bad points. It has interesting puzzles and, while it does not set the gaming world alight, it does what it does very well.

The Bottom Line
I finished this game in two sittings and estimate the time it took to finish the game at around four hours, that's on the easy mode and I was not trying to rush through it.
Overall I enjoyed this game more than Treasure Seekers: Visions of Gold.

By piltdown_man on January 22, 2023

Treasure Seekers: Visions of Gold (Windows)

Don't try this at home kids

The Good
A fairly standard hidden object game with a flimsy storyline and a glorious disregard for health and safety.
I grew up in the 50's and 60's where most of the fun things we did are now either banned or illegal but here we have a heroine who does stuff even I would never have attempted. Early on in the game she gathers tools to fix the mains wiring, then she fixes the fuse box, collects her brother and off they go. They build a raft, learn to fish and cook their catch, explore a mine, go underwater, find treasure and still get home before tea. Somewhere along the way they also fire a canon and I think they use dynamite too.

There's no voice acting in this game, the music and the sound effects are OK though I ended up listening to the radio while I played. The artwork is good and the objects to be found, though well disguised, are not hidden behind something else - a pet hate of mine from another game where I was looking for an elephant or something similar and only its tail was visible. None of that here.

The Bad
There's nothing really to dislike here, this is a good solid game. If I had to pick up on anything it would be that the dialogue of the characters is very twee. Phrases like "You brave and clever children..." are not uncommon, it's as though the game is trying too hard to be wholesome.

The Bottom Line
I completed this game in one sitting, play time was around three hours. To be honest I finished it because I do not like giving up on a game and not because I was enjoying it. For some reason, for me, it just did not feel fun to play.

By piltdown_man on January 22, 2023

Mystic Diary: Haunted Island (Windows)

Better than Mystic Diary: Lost Brother

The Good
The game installed and ran flawlessly under Windows 10 in both full screen and windowed modes. There's a good range of puzzles and all of them could be skipped. Everything else was OK with neither the music, the artwork or the story being especially outstanding.

The Bad
No major issues with this game, just a few minor observations.

I have this game as part of a two game compilation. The first game of the series installed as a freestanding game but this game installed as an entry in the Big Fish Games manager. Not really a problem but it may be a bit disconcerting to some.

The game starts in a magician's cottage and later moves to the haunted island. After solving many puzzles in the cottage the time comes to assemble the magician's balloon and head off to the eponymous island. I gathered various missing parts and assembled the balloon mainly to see what had yet to be found and was surprised when the balloon took off because I still had some cottagey items in my inventory and I was leaving unsolved puzzles behind. Later in the game it was possible to return to the cottage so all was as it should have been but at the time I was anticipating running into a dead end at some point. A line or two of dialogue confirming all was well would have been appreciated.

The last puzzle in the game is a 'Simon Says' type of musical sequence puzzle, I think I did three or four rounds of this and reached a point where I was faced with an eight note sequence with more to follow when I chose to skip the puzzle. Once I'd skipped the puzzle there was a very short sequence that ended the game, so short that I missed it, and there was no way to view it again without replaying the entire game.

The Bottom Line
Another hidden object game which, like the first game in the series, is pretty standard for the genre and therefore doesn't really do anything wrong yet doesn't manage to stand out from the crowd either.

The puzzles are good but not impossible, the artwork is OK, and the game was fun to play but for me there's no replay value and nothing that makes this game memorable.

Time to complete: three and a half hours.

By piltdown_man on January 20, 2023

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