Recenzii recente de Karrolanth

tl;dr: Buy it - if only for the adorable kitty helper! Especially at the current sale price it's well worth it, and I would recommend it even at full price if you have the funds to spare. If you're still on the fence, go to artifexmundi.com and try the demo - then come back here and buy the game!

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Your sister is getting married today, and you're hurrying to get home in time for the ceremony. Suddenly, a bear spooks your horse and almost sends your carriage over a cliff! You must save the carriage, repair your wedding gift, rescue a cute helper, and get to the village before it's too late. But this is just the start of your bad luck... it's not long before things take a turn for the worse, and thus begins your quest to rescue the victims, expose the villain, and learn more about your own history in the process.

Although I was a fan of point-and-click adventure games back in the day, I'd never played a Hidden Object game and wasn't sure if I'd enjoy one. However, although there don't seem to be any demos on Steam, Artifex Mundi's own website allows you to try a demo of any of their games. I spent a few hours on those, and now I'm hooked and want all of them! :) All their games of this style employ the same type of interface, which is very easy to use, so once you've tried one you'll be fine for just about any other title.

I found this game to have an engaging story and enjoyable gameplay. The puzzles and hidden object scenes vary in difficulty and a few had me scratching my head for a while, but I only got frustrated once. My husband helped me with that one by pointing out something I hadn't thought of, and saved me from having to consult a walkthrough! Usually there will be some kind of hint in the dialogue or descriptions of a scene, and whenever I felt I couldn't progress it was generally because I'd missed something in a previous location. There is a map available in this game which allows you to go directly to any previous scene if you wish, eliminating backtracking frustration, and sometimes going back to a recent location will present you with a new hidden object game to allow you to progress further.

In my opinion the graphics are well done, and although the character animations in the cutscenes can seem a little bit stiff (and the lip-synching is usually off) I didn't feel that this detracted from the overall enjoyment. The hidden object scenes are highly detailed and beautifully drawn, and some objects in the scenes blend into the background so well that it takes quite a bit of hunting! (Hint for newcomers to these games: if an item in the list is in a different text colour, you'll need to interact with something(s) in the scene to find or create what you're looking for. Your cursor will provide clues!)

There is a hint option if you get stuck, and some (if not all) puzzles and hidden object scenes may be skipped if you wish. Puzzles can also be replaced with a game of dominoes if you find one too challenging. There are achievements related to completing puzzles and domino games, so if you like to collect them all you might wish to do one playthrough with puzzles and another with dominoes.

The music and sound effects fit the game well, with the music adding to the tension of the story at appropriate points. I generally turn background music way down or completely off in games as I find it distracting, but at a slightly lower volume I found the music in this game added to my enjoyment of the whole experience.

There are many additional things to find while playing, such as woodland spirits and 'elusive objects'. I missed one spirit somewhere, and only managed to spot three of the elusive objects. These are items in scenes which change or are hard to spot, such as a face in the moon. These objects work to translate text in a book in your Achievements screen, and once you find all the objects for a particular page there is an option to 'hear the story'. As I haven't completed any pages yet I can't really comment on this, but it's something for me to work towards on my next playthrough!

This being the Collector's Edition there is an additional episode, taking place after the main story, which is unlocked once you complete the main game. Although this is much shorter, it still added a couple more hours of fun!

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and will definitely replay it at some point to try for more achievements and elusive objects. I would recommend it even at full price, and I look forward to playing many more Artifex Mundi games in the future!

10/10 - would impersonate my twin again.