Casual Collection - November 2010 releases page 2

Written by
AG Staff — December 10, 2010

November was another busy month in the casual game realm, as developers increasingly realize what we've known all along: games are better with more adventuring! Here's a look at the most adventure-oriented casual titles of last month, plus a peek ahead and what's to come.

Note: Neither Mystery Case Files: 13th Skull, the latest installment of the groundbreaking hidden object hybrid series, or [game=]Crime Lab: Body of Evidence[/game], the casualized reimaging of Art of Murder: Cards of Destiny for the Nintendo DS, is included in this feature, as both will receive full reviews shortly.

Lite Adventures

Avenue Flo: Special Delivery

A year ago, PlayFirst’s popular Diner Dash series broke free of the restaurant for a whimsical lite adventure called Avenue Flo, and this year the gang from DinerTown are back in Avenue Flo: Special Delivery. Having saved the big day for Miss Big’s wedding the last time out, this time Flo must rescue a baby shower, as a pack of “pampered puppies” have destroyed everything at the last minute, and only our resourceful waitress can put it all right again in time. It’s another trite premise, to be sure, but really it’s just an excuse to get players out into the neighbourhood, talking to everyone she meets, collecting items, and solving all kinds of puzzles and minigames along the way.

Apart from the premise, just about everything in the sequel is a carbon copy of the original game. A rare third-person casual adventure, you’ll guide Flo through the same three distinct parts of town, performing an ever-expanding variety of different tasks, from exercising dogs in the park to cutting and decorating cookies to fetching keys from a playful alligator. Of course, nothing is ever straightforward. Often one project requires solving several other problems first, so you’ll frequently be on the move to meet smaller conditions in order to proceed. Cleaning some dirty tablecloths in a laundromat may sound easy, but the washing machine is on the fritz, Flo’s out of tokens, and the dryer is already in use, and resolving these dilemmas will take her all across town.

There are familiar faces everywhere you go, like Bernie the bookworm and the Scrub Brothers, and everyone’s got something to say – literally, as the surprisingly large cast is all fully voiced. Most townsfolk are willing to help in your quest, but often have needs of their own in return. Fortunately, as you try to juggle numerous goals at once, Flo’s task list “napkin” is constantly updated, always making it perfectly clear what your objectives are at any given time. The map is equally helpful, not only showing you the various locations in town, but highlighting who you’ve met and what you’ve accomplished at each place, whether it’s the Dessert (don’t-spell-it-desert) Oasis, Fantasy Eye-Land, or the Baby Chic Boutique, to name just a few.

Obstacles run the gamut from super-simple inventory application to a diverse array of standalone puzzles and minigames. Assuming you’ve fully explored your current area, it’s unlikely you’ll ever be at a loss for what object to try where, so the lack of any kind of blatant hint feature shouldn’t be a concern. The other puzzles can be far more challenging, whether it’s choosing baby outfits from strict criteria, memorizing orders to help wait tables, wending your way through maze-like traffic jams, or sorting books on rapidly moving conveyor belts at the library. Each starts out simply, but almost all of them overstay their welcome by forcing a series of five straight, increasingly difficult versions of the same activity. As with the first game, better spacing of repeat tasks would have been far preferable, if at all, but they do all offer the option to skip entirely. There are no hidden object tasks in the conventional sense, but throughout each neighbourhood are scattered items to collect, including shower balloons and recyclable bottles to trade in for subway access to new areas. All this is wrapped in the same bright, cheerful graphics as before, once again accompanied by a jazzy soundtrack that really makes the game feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. If you’re in the mood for a few hours of breezy, lighthearted gameplay, then, you’ll probably find just what you’re looking for being served on Avenue Flo.

Hidden Object/Adventure hybrids

Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes is once again moonlighting in the casual realm between full-fledged adventures. For the first time, however, the great detective’s newest case is based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself – although only barely. Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles is only very loosely based on the famed novel of the same name, as Holmes and Dr. Watson head to the posh Baskerville Hall to investigate an alleged family curse. For generations, the Baskerville heirs have been murdered, apparently by a great mythical beast, and now the latest family descendent has asked for help. Ever the skeptic, Holmes agrees to the challenge, but what he discovers defies rational thought, as the sleuth must travel back and forth through time to the scenes of each Baskerville’s death for clues to the mystery.

The game’s basic format is similar to most other casual adventures. You’ll move between ever-increasing rooms of the grand manor, collecting inventory items, scouring occasional hidden object scenes, and solving a wide variety of puzzles. Many of the objects needed to advance come in scattered sets, whether coats of arms fragments, candles, or code symbols. This can feel a little random at times, as often you’ll begin acquiring object pieces that have no apparent use, but it does ensure that every scene is packed full of items to scavenge. Inventory puzzles are intuitive to a degree, like starting a fire or etching an engraving, and objectives are plainly clued through hotspot comments, though many of the results are mystical in nature and require leaps of logics to accept. Continuing that theme is a medallion you’ll fill with jewels that empower Holmes with special abilities like extra strength, speeding up time, or seeing in dark areas. This is entirely contrived for a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but it adds a nice layer of interactivity and puzzle solving to the adventure.

Hidden object scenes have a tendency to pop up out of nowhere, but they’re very fairly infrequent and nicely designed, with easily identifiable items, at least on the casual difficulty setting. The harder mode makes items more challenging to find and lengthens the rechargeable hint feature for highlighting missing objects on the list. The tougher setting also impacts the many standalone puzzles, a nice mix ranging from sliders to tile-swapping to diverse jigsaw variations. The bypass option is still present, but it takes longer to access and the puzzles themselves are sometimes more challenging. The easier mode at times makes things a bit too “elementary”, as it rather quickly highlights interactive objects in the main environments that you probably won’t wish it to. That’s about the only blemish on an extremely user-friendly interface, however. A minimap not only shows you what rooms have current objectives, but you can instantly transport with just a click, removing much of the common lite adventure backtracking. When finished collecting a set of items, a popup window also asks if you wish to go straight to its source, which is usually a welcome convenience.

All this does cut into the play time, of course, but the game will still provide a few solid hours. The Collector’s Edition adds a substantial amount of bonus content with tougher puzzles that could take as much as a couple hours to work through. The extra segment challenges you to investigate another few deaths in a new area outside the manor, and only then is there any real attempt to resolve the actual mystery behind the killer hound, the original “ending” being rather anti-climactic in itself. Both versions contain the same crisp graphics and clever use of both past and present versions of the manor’s interior locations, each filled with eerie touches that emphasize a noble but troubled family, from stuffed mythical beasts to lab-experimented canine corpses to haunting portraits visibly distorted by death. Apart from item comments, the game is fully voiced with quality acting as well, and Holmes’ adventure fans will be pleased to know that the same actor reprises his role here. The orchestral music is also impressive, though at least one repeated piece is a bit overwhelming for the quieter onscreen events. Even so, it’s an attractive, polished presentation overall, and though much of the game bears very little resemblance to Doyle’s original classic, it’s an entertaining investigation in its own right that any casual adventure fan can enjoy.

Nightmare on the Pacific

Step aside, Titanic. Move over, Poseidon. Make way for the Neptune. In most respects, Little Games Company’s Nightmare on the Pacific is a fairly standard hidden object adventure: you’ll progress through an expanding series of environments, collect inventory to get past obstacles, solve the occasional puzzle, and scour the odd screen for lists of random junk. The difference is, here you’re doing it on a sinking ship. And what a difference that makes! While not adding any actual time pressure or tangible danger, the decision to set the game aboard the ill-fated Neptune luxury liner still trapped in a deadly storm at sea makes this one of the more dramatic and richly atmospheric casual adventures around. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there’s a solid game built around its disastrous (in a good way) premise along the way.

Playing as a young woman frantically looking for her husband and children, you’ll need to make your way past a variety of environmental barriers on this doomed, deteriorating ship. Hallways are flooding, walls and ceilings are collapsing, and regular passages are obstructed by debris and door locks. To overcome them, you’ll need to collect tools for such things as pulleys, rope slides, and other makeshift equipment. Some of these you’ll find simply by exploring, while others come only from completing the hidden object tasks. These screens are fairly cluttered and the list items are arbitrary, but a rechargeable hint feature will help you past any rough spots. There is no such feature during the standard adventuring segments, but objectives are clearly displayed in pictures along the top of the screen, and any interactive hotspots sparkle to alert you to their presence. The same isn’t always true of screen exits, which occasionally makes it difficult to know where you can and can’t go, though a minimap will show your position in the ship’s layout. You’ll encounter a few traditional puzzles as well, from door lock sliders to quizzes on sea creatures. These feel a little forced under the circumstances, but any can be skipped.

Visually the game doesn’t stand out, but it offers decent hand-drawn images of the ship, from private compartments to the dining hall and casino, even out onto the wind- and rain-lashed decks, though usually the circumstances dictate these scenes look more ruinous than opulent. Strangely, the display occupies only a thin middle section of the screen, the rest reserved for your inventory and objectives, which is a bit excessive. There are a few impressive cinematics of the ship’s ongoing demise, but the low resolution of these cutscenes makes them regrettably hazy. Where the mood is really cranked up is the sound department. Often forsaking music altogether, the sounds of the storm are omnipresent and foreboding, and a wide range of water effects are thoroughly convincing, as are the echoed pleas for help spurring you on. Some of the voice acting is a bit stilted, but you’re usually alone and the protagonist rarely speaks, and there aren’t any non-interactive hotspots to click on merely for observation. Rather than feeling like an omission, the lack of music perfectly suits the situation, as the dramatic tension comes from the desperation of the scenario itself. This sucker’s going down, time’s running out, and your kids are still missing. How it all turns out depends on which version you buy, as the Collector’s Edition includes and alternate ending, along with a bonus prequel chapter and strategy guide. You really can’t go wrong with either version, so really it’s whatever floats your boat. (Or sinks it, in this case.)

Mystery Age: The Dark Priests

In Digital Quarter’s Mystery Age: The Imperial Staff, the young, innocent Amber vanquished the Chaos Gods along with her shaman mother and father. Thirty years later and no longer a child, can Amber defeat the Chaos Gods’ evil followers who now threaten Westwind Village in Mystery Age: The Dark Priests? To answer that question, you’ll need to explore fantastical sets, meet a menagerie of animals, and play through a large swath of puzzles. The village is overrun with the Chaos God’s dark priests, and the task will be yours alone as all of the townsfolk have been turned into stone. Fortunately, before they were entrapped, the villagers left behind various clues about a great power that may help you overcome this menace.

The original game was a straightforward series of hidden object scenes with a slight twist: Each of the displayed objects were made up of multiple pieces to find. The Dark Priests adds another layer of complexity by increasing exploration significantly and introducing traditional inventory puzzles. It does continue the fragment searches, but streamlines the process a bit. The component parts for each object are broken up and neatly arranged so it’s easy to see what pieces are left to find, though you’ll frequently have to use completed objects to find more object fragments within the same scene. The sequel also sprinkles in some typical hidden object lists, as well as set searches, like searching for a variety of buckets or tools in an area.

Packed in between are a few slider, jigsaw, and logic puzzles, and even a somewhat frustrating fishing minigame that requires some dexterity to complete. There is a helpful skip option for all standalone puzzles in the game, and the hint feature highlights hidden objects and lets you know if there is something else left to do in a particular scene. There aren’t many such puzzles and not much variety, so whenever you’re stuck, chances are there’s a hidden object area that you’ve missed. And it’s easy to miss them, as many scenes only appear (often in places where you had already solved one) after you’ve viewed a critical object or solved a new puzzle.

While the tasks may get repetitive, you’ll explore a nice collection of colorful locales as you go. You’ll wander through several houses in Westwood Village and branch out across a cavernous gorge to a mysterious castle with suits of armor and book-bound libraries. You’ll make your way through mystical gardens and even catch a ride on a griffin to a floating castle with ghosts and lasers. In fact, you’ll meet so many different creatures, from dragons to three-headed dogs to winged demons, and view so many different scenes that the initial shamanic theme can become muddled and diluted. It's as if the creators tried to pack in as much imagery, puzzles, and creatures into one game in an effort to improve upon the first. Fortunately, while this introduces some tedious backtracking at times, it generally provides a lot of entertaining gameplay. The series has grown right along with Amber, and you’ll have a fun time exploring this sequel as a result.

Hidden Mysteries: Salem Secrets

The Hidden Mysteries series continues this month in Massachusetts, circa 1692. In Salem Secrets, players assume the role of Constable Hawthorne, whose first case is the investigation of four young girls who experienced strange tantrums and mysterious fits, then disappeared entirely from Salem. Local residents believe they have been influenced by witchcraft, and your task is to prove or refute the claims. To accomplish this, the Constable must explore the seemingly deserted town, looking for clues and items that may help him locate the missing children.

The village is quite large, but a map helps keep track of locations and point to active puzzles. A journal also records your discoveries and thoughts, as well as a task list that’s continually updated. Gameplay comes in three different varieties: hidden object tasks, standalone puzzles, and inventory-based obstacles. The HOG elements are fairly perfunctory, highlighted within the natural environments with a cluster of flashing stars. Some objects can be very well-hidden, but a recharging hint system is always available. As you progress, you will return to the same locations to look for different items, which makes them start to feel repetitive. The standalone puzzles are quite straightforward, and some can be completed through trial and error if necessary, though there is a skip option to bypass them as well. Among the sliders and other traditional puzzles, there is one cipher-style puzzle that stands out, but this inspiration doesn’t carry through to the rest of the game.

Inventory items are collected from completed HOG areas or while exploring the village itself. Some are automatically combined in your inventory to make a final object before use, while others are as simple as using a key on a door. Puzzles such as these are usually marked by a glowing white star, as are other items of interest such as notes and clues. There is a huge amount of backtracking involved, as items to be used together are often at opposing ends of the map, and sometimes new puzzles will appear at previously visited locations without any notice or explanation. This is frustrating, and results in the constant need to retrace your steps, as something new may have become available since you visited last.

The graphics lack much in the way of crisp detail or animation, but the dreary, cloudy village setting does successfully create an eerie atmosphere. The music is foreboding, though it’s somewhat over-used and becomes repetitive and monotonous over time. Hidden object hybrids often don’t feature many human characters, and this game is no different, so voices are used sparingly. At first this feels unnatural, but the emptiness does add to the creepy mood, creating a feeling of isolation that suits the story perfectly. In fact, given the underwhelming presentation and bog-standard gameplay, the thick, even unnerving atmosphere is perhaps the strongest feature of the game. That alone may be enough to make it worth a look, though for a game about witchcraft, there just isn’t much magic to be found in this version of Salem.

Upcoming Releases

Detective Voodoo

Although not yet available, it won’t be long until we’re seeing more of SMI Games’ Detective Voodoo. In this ambitious combination of film noir mystery, supernatural thriller, and a dash of cyberpunk high adventure, players assume the role of detective James Voodoo, who receives a written demand to return something in his possession or fear reprisal, though the warning note is anonymous and the threat doesn’t specify what’s been taken. But there are more immediate concerns to attend to in the meantime, as you’ve been asked to investigate a bank robbery in Richtown. This seemingly ordinary mystery proves to be much more, however, as you soon begin seeing mystical rune markings and red-eyed shadowy creatures lurking around you as you investigate.

In terms of gameplay, Detective Voodoo is a fairly straightforward mix of lite adventuring and hidden object gameplay. You’ll move between a handful of areas in each location, scour the odd screen for lists of items (only one of which is necessary), collect inventory and solve the occasional puzzle. All the usual helps are here, like sparkles indicating interactive points of interest, a rechargeable hint feature, and a journal, though the latter wasn’t yet implemented in the demo. Puzzles in the early going are a fairly standard mix of challenges as well, from aligning pipes to flipping switches to operating a crane from overhead. The preview version included only a small fraction to sample, but the full game promises more than 50 distinct locations, 15 minigames and an equal number of hidden object sequences.

Where the game looks to stand out is in its stylish presentation and surprising scope. It starts out quietly enough in Voodoo’s office, lingering there just long to collect a few things and feed his peculiar black cat. With dust particles floating in the moody lighting, and a light, jazzy score playing in the background, it feels like the start of another dark, gritty mystery for a hard-boiled private eye. From there, however, it’s off to the train station, where securing a ticket means overcoming some unexpected obstacles, then onto the ritzy Coins Express, where an act of sabotage forces you up onto the roof for a little derring-do as the nighttime scenery whizzes by. All this is presented in a lovely alternate-reality, 1920s-era style, with classic cars and flapper-fashioned women and coal-operated steam engines mixed with robot police. Richtown clearly lives up to its name, with deluxe skyscrapers, zeppelins flying overhead, and a giant statue in the middle of the central plaza. By this point you’ll have long forgotten about the game’s humble beginnings and feel like you’re involved in a grand adventure that’s hurtling along at a breakneck speed. And all that’s before you even get to the crime scene! Whether it’s able to sustain its momentum remains to be seen, but Detective Voodoo clearly shows promise in the lead-up to its targeted year-end completion.

Other Games of Interest

Mystery of Mortlake Manor

At first glance, Stella Games’ Mystery of Mortlake Manor is much like the other lite adventure/hidden object hybrids discussed this month. Probably at second glance, too, as it’s rather too alike, right down to the now familiar premise: you arrive alone at a large, eerie mansion, where you must discover clues and solve puzzles while travelling through portals to alternate versions of the same manor to expose a dark, ancient secret recorded in the mysterious Book of Shadows. Where this game differs from the other games is largely in its distribution of gameplay, as you can expect to spend more of your time scouring screens for listed objects than roaming freely. There is some exploration, and a mini-map not only records new rooms, but marks active objectives and allows instant travel as well. Knowing what your goals are is not as obvious, as the clues are sparse and the journal is fairly unhelpful.

Progress is typically blocked by the occasional standalone puzzle involving such things as rune-matching and symbol-rotation, with the occasional inventory task thrown in for good measure. Another distinct feature of this game is its more stylized artwork, with thick, bold outlines highlighting its often dark, gritty environments (especially in the shadow realm). There’s some nice atmospheric music and voice acting as well, though the latter is rather spotty in quality, particularly the talking raven that urges you along. The elements are all here for a solid hidden object adventure, just with a lighter emphasis on puzzles and exploration, but don’t be surprised if it feels like you’ve been here, done all this before.

Fear for Sale: Mystery of McInroy Manor

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: you’re a reporter arriving at a stately old mansion that’s now haunted by an “evil presence”, and only you can uncover its terrible secrets and free the ghosts from the demonic curse that binds them. Yes, EleFun’s Fear for Sale: Mystery of McInroy Manor is anything but original. It’s the latest in the growing number of hidden object/lite adventuring hybrids, though this game leans heavily towards the scavenger hunting side. As you open up new rooms and areas of the manor grounds, you’ll collect inventory items and solve the occasional puzzle. There are only 15 total standalone puzzles in total, some of which are exclusive to the Collector’s Edition, and several are repeated, like arranging simple chronology patterns and lockpicking tasks that require mere seconds of trial-and-error. Inventory puzzles are similarly straightforward, the only real challenge being the contrived nature of finding the items you’ll need.

Many of these will come from hidden object searches, and the only variation from the norm here is that such screens are actually part of the main environments and may require further interaction afterwards. That sounds good in theory, but it’s a bad idea in practice since the screens are so cluttered. Twinkles will alert you to any interactive hotspot, which may be the only way you’d notice them otherwise. The rather murky nature of the graphics don’t help, making the object hunts rather difficult, though of course there’s a rechargeable hint feature to help. The underwhelming production values extend to the complete lack of voice acting and a repetitive soundtrack that can become overbearing at times. The bonus gameplay in the extended version provides a few new underground locations and another hour or so of game time, though more of the same still just isn’t much to write home about.

Fiction Fixers: The Curse of Oz

While its gameplay leans heavily towards the hidden object end of the spectrum, some light exploration and a variety of late-game puzzles just might make Fugazo’s Fiction Fixers: The Curse of Oz worth a look for casual adventure gamers. Well, that and the fun little storyline, which is twisted take on the L. Frank Baum classic. After mucking things up for Alice in Wonderland, the evil Illiterati agent Victor Vile is now sucking all the life and energy from the not-so-merry ol’ land of Oz. The gang’s all here, as players will meet, rescue, and team up with Dorothy (and her little dog, too!), the tin man, scarecrow, and the cowardly lion, each contributing a unique talent to the cause with the click of an icon.

There are numerous hidden object searches to complete, all done in traditional list-style with rechargeable hints, including one delightful sequence while caught up in a twister. Between these, you’ll roam freely while following the yellow brick road in search of “construct” (read: inventory) items needed to progress, whether repairing a hayless scarecrow or moving a sleepy lion. Towards the end of the game, the standalone puzzles come fast and furious: sliders and jigsaws and codes, oh my! Plus others like marble-swapping, “lights out” switch puzzles, and even math problems while you’re at it. A more even distribution would have been preferable, but there’s variety enough for those who see the adventure through to the end, and any can be skipped. The hotspot-twinkling feature on the easier setting is a little too helpful, but playing on the harder setting feels more like a natural adventure. Events are only loosely based on the original story, but there are enough familiar people and places to make this a welcome adaptation. All dialogues are fully voiced, and the environments are simply but nicely drawn, with heavy use of purples reflecting the distorted state of the land giving way to bright golds and blues and greens as you restore it. It’s a fairly breezy adventure that you can probably finish in under three hours, but it’s charming and fully engaging while it lasts.

The Mystery of the Dragon Prince

Nevosoft has a long and fairly accomplished track record in the casual realm, with popular games like Mushroom Age and Vampireville to its credit. That’s what makes The Mystery of the Dragon Prince such a surprise, as it’s a badly dated, poorly executed hidden object hybrid adventure that doesn’t come close to the company’s own highest standards. The premise is simple enough: A woman named Anna receives a letter imploring her to come to an old castle to save it, but the letter is 200 years old. Intrigued, she heads off to this castle (apparently she knows where it is from only a picture, because its location is never otherwise specified) and discovers that it’s fallen under a dark magic spell that has mystically preserved it, empty and unchanged for two centuries. At the urging of the old gardener who calls her “Countess”, Anna’s challenge is to explore the castle, solve its puzzles, and try to undo its curse.

This is easier said than done, as the original spell distorted some castle functions, including simple door locks. That sets up the convenient opportunity to roam around looking for crystals, keys, and practical items like matches and water faucets. Some are found in the main environments and others in hidden object screens that feature an annoying amount of shuffling items around to see what’s behind them. Apart from that, it’s a very traditional casual adventure hybrid, really, but there’s just nothing to support it. The hazy graphics would have looked bad years ago, there is no voicework of any kind, and the music is eminently forgettable. The presentation isn’t the only shoddy element, however. Though interative areas sparkle, it’s very difficult to find exits in the castle’s meandering layout, making it easy to overlook new areas. The hint option charges glacially and is totally useless for most of the standalone puzzles. When confronted with a tiled jigsaw or pipe alignment task, it brilliantly highlights one square, as if that’s supposed to mean something. That’s it for help, too, as there’s no skip option at all, no hints whatsoever for the adventuring segments… and no notebook, no map, no objective list, or any of the other modern conveniences casual gamers have come to expect. There are a few promising encounters with a dwarf, troll, and dragon, but these quickly fizzle out. With no compelling story or gameplay driving you forward, then, in the end there’s really no reason for players to bother.