minhoghaven

[minhoghaven]

Phantasmat: The Endless Night

Developer: Eipix Entertainment (third game, third developer)

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: January 10, 2015

Series: Phantasmat (3/13)

Plot: 3.5/5 This one had a much more interesting storyline compared to the second installment of the Phantasmat series and could have scored much higher but it felt like they didn’t make full use of the story that they had available.  If they’d pushed some of the concepts just a tiny bit more, they could have had something truly thrilling and unsettling.  Unfortunately they chose instead to water it down and draw it out by adding completely unnecessary areas like the amusement park.  Also a portion of it seemed confusing and tacked on at the end, as it is mentioned that the main character’s father was a part of the tragedy that happened in the past but throughout the whole game you get almost no clarification on how he was involved, only that it was because of him that she was there.  

Mechanics:  4/5 This one had good hidden object scenes and puzzles and it gave us a map (!), so all is good there.  I had to lower the score due to the finikiness of some of the interactions.  More than once there was a barrier that I had to get past to progress and I felt sure that I had solved it but my solution did not seem to work.  After running around and getting frustrated I would finally resort to a hint and it would turn out that my initial solution was correct after all by I hadn’t clicked in the exact, tiny spot necessary to trigger it.  Listen, I’ve played more than my fair share of HOGs so I’m not making this complaint lightly.  It was a little ridiculous.

Art: 2.5/5 Ok, granted, that score may be slightly harsh, but this game fell prey to one of my cardinal sins in HOG design, which is the weird amalgamation of photographed actors and art that never looks natural or appealing.  The scenery was fine but the awkwardness of the characters were far too distracting.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 4/5 Nothing to complain about but nothing to write home about either.  Voice acting was adequate and the music was unobtrusive.  It didn’t feel as if it built the suspense as well as it could have, but it didn’t get so loud it hurt my ears at weird times either, so I have to appreciate that.

Overall: 3.5/5 A good game that could have been so, so much better.  I wish that HOG weren’t afraid to really push the limit on their scariness factor because if they hadn’t glossed over some of the more horrifying aspects of the story, it could have been amazing.

Please.  Please don’t do this.

[minhoghaven]

Phantasmat: Crucible Creek

Developer: ERS Games

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: December 6, 2012

Series: Phantasmat (2/13)

I’m afraid that this sequel to Phantasmat was a disappointment for me.  It seemed to be trying to recreate the Phantasmat experience beat for beat but falling short in every aspect.

Plot: 3/5 On its own, the plot for this one would be on par with many HOGs but as a direct follow up to Phantasmat it was a little sad.  You start with almost the exact same scenario as the first game only this time instead of a town buried in water, it’s snow.  The characters are less compelling and their story resolutions are far less satisfying.  Worse yet, it relies on the tired and dangerous ‘insane character’ trope that ruin many HOGs for me.

Mechanics:  4/5 The one area where this game is a small step up from Phantasmat in that the hidden object scenes are a bit more dynamic and there seemed to be a few more puzzles.  Still lacking a map, which would have been nice when you have to cross all the way from one end of town to the other scene by scene and then realize that you forgot to do something back there and have to go all the way back.   

Art: 4/5 The art is definitely not bad.  It’s enjoyable to look at but the character designs are not as memorable and perhaps it’s just me but I can’t find soothing blues and icy whites nearly as spooky as dark forests and sunken ruins.  I suppose if you didn’t grow up in a very cold climate, you may disagree, but I found most of the locations in the game beautiful, which would be great if it weren’t supposed to be scary.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 Again we have a situation where the game is decent compared to other HOGs but falls short of its predecessor.  It shares the same problem with the music becoming loud and suspenseful at inappropriate times (something many of the HOGs intended to be scary share) and the voice acting was... well it was memorable but only for the rather poorly performed accents.  

Overall: 3/5 A decent game but a poor follow up to Phantasmat.  I sincerely hope that the next one will be more up to the high standard set by the premiere game in the series.

Honestly other than the downed power lines this just looks like a place I want to go hang out for a week or two.

[minhoghaven]

Phantasmat

Developer: Codeminion

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: January 6, 2011

Series: Phantasmat (1/13)

Decided to take another little breaky from Mystery Case Files because there’s only so much I can replay those games without my brain melting out my ears a little.  Since it’s getting on spooky season, I thought I’d pick up a ghosty series that I haven’t played before.  

Plot: 4.5/5 Not quite good enough for a five stars from me, but it’s close.  You are in a car wreck and seek help at an old, run down hotel by a lake.  Turns out the lake used to be a town that was flooded when a nearby dam burst.  Now you seem to be stuck there until you can solve the mysteries surrounding the residents of the hotel.

Mechanics:  3.5/5 Not quite a 4/5 because there just aren’t any of the bells and whistles that we’ve become used to in current HOGs.  No map, no interactive hidden object scenes, etc, but what we’ve got is intuitive and works well and that’s good enough in my book.  

Art:  5/5  I really like the art in this.  It’s that hand drawn goodness that I like with some nicely layered scenes and distinctive character art.  A few aspects (*cough* seaweed *cough*) look kind of silly at times but otherwise the art is readable and creates a very good atmosphere for the story.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 4/5  This game has some very good voice acting for an HOG.  I particularly adore the voice of the Old Lady.  I can’t go into detail without spoilers but she was exactly what she needed to be.  The sound effects were fine and the music was nicely tense. The only thing that keeps the game from getting a 5/5 here is that the music would often swell in volume and intensity at inappropriate times and could get obnoxiously loud.  I found myself having to juggle the volume up and down to keep from getting a headache (that said, I was wearing headphones and I’m sensitive to loud noises, so others may be totally fine with it.)

Overall: 4.5/5 This was a treat for me.  I wouldn’t call it scary by any stretch of the imagination but it had a nice spookiness that was just what I was looking for.  I really don’t have anything major to complain about.  Definitely a recommended game, if you’re into the genre.

The characters in this game are all well designed.  Distinctive and interesting to look at.  The backgrounds are lovely and ominous.

[minhoghaven]

Good question @crow14-raven​!  When I started this project there were only 20 but I had to take a long break since then and didn’t bother recounting when I picked it back up.  Thanks for the catch, I’ll go back and fix the recent reviews.  

[minhoghaven]

Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: November 26, 2008

Series: Mystery Case Files (5/22)

I have mixed feelings about Return to Ravenhearst.  It marks a change in the Mystery Case Files gameplay from finding clues at different locations to an actual continuing storyline with more environmental puzzles and hidden object scenes, which is a plus.  On the other hand, it is also where the Ravenhearst storyline gets a little cracked.  Each subsequent Ravenhearst game seems to try and be a little weirder and more unexpected than the last and it goes off the rails pretty quickly. 

Plot: 3/5 You return to Ravenhearst Manor to free more of the victims of Charles Dalimar, the antagonist from the original Ravenhearst game.  You must descend deep into the manor at the behest of some poorly acted ghosts.

Mechanics:  4/5 This game does not present you a static collection of locations that are only hidden object scenes.  Instead you actually move through the manor, finding hidden object locations and helpful items throughout the world.  I consider this a step up for the series in terms of immersion in the games (for what it’s worth).  

Art:  3/5  The scenes in this game are very nice, well rendered 2d artwork which is my preference.  The downfall comes in the form of the characters which are videos of actual human actors but are not very well portrayed.  Some of the actors overdo it, some underdo it and the poor child actress clearly doesn’t have any idea what she’s doing.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 The sounds are fine and the music ranges from quiet enjoyable with a slightly creepy air (I’m looking at you, piano piece) to trying really hard to build suspense and bordering on annoying.  For voice acting, see my complaints about the human actors.

Overall: 4/5 The game deserves credit because it sort of sets the standard for what future MCF games will be and it’s storyline hasn’t reached the ridiculously over-the-top weirdness that future Ravenhearst stories will become.  It introduces us to characters that will reappear frequently and is generally enjoyable and worth a play.

Some very pretty scenes and some very well drawn scenes, even when they’re not so pretty.

[minhoghaven]

Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: November 2007

Series: Mystery Case Files (4/22)

I thought I’d jump back into a couple more MCF games before finishing up the Azada series.  Madame Fate was one of my favorite MCF games and I was really looking forward to playing it again.  I like it enough that I actually own it both through the Big Fish Games website and through Steam.  

Neither of them worked.  I had varying technical difficulties with both versions to the point where I threw up my hands and gave up.  So I will review this based on my memory of the game but keep in mind that it’s old and you may have trouble running the danged thing.

Plot: 3/5 You have been summoned to Fate’s Carnival by the fortune teller Madame Fate.  She has predicted her own demise at the stroke of midnight and you have to investigate the other characters from her carnival to see who will commit the foul deed.  

Mechanics:  3/5 This one is much more reminiscent of the Huntsville and Prime Suspects MCF games in that you have to search through different set scenes to find a certain number of clues for each character to determine their fate at midnight.  The game suffers, as those ones did, from scenes with hidden objects that remain in the same spots no matter how many times you go back and so as you progress it becomes less about finding and more about remembering.  That said, when you’ve gathered enough clues you get to look into the crystal ball and solve strange puzzles that are similar to the door locks from Ravenhearst which I thoroughly praised.

Art:  3/5 The character art is again the ‘ugly on purpose’ look but far more successfully accomplished than in Prime Suspects and Huntsville.  They’re in fact rather charming in their strangeness.  The hidden object scenes are themselves well done but the hidden objects are a random mishmash of drawings, photographs and basic shapes which detracts from the appearance quite a bit in my book.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 4/5 Sound effects and music are decent here.  The music has a creepy carnival vibe which suits the setting.  Where it really shines is the voice acting.  There is only one speaking character, Madame Fate, but she really makes the game for me.  She acts as narrator as well as goading you on during the puzzles and she has a fantastic sort of spooky, sort of crazy old lady voice.

Overall: 4/5 This game doesn’t have the depth of plot that Ravenhearst did but the characters and especially Madame Fate herself make it a big favorite of mine across all HOGs, despite the previously mentioned issues with the hidden object scenes themselves.  If you can get it to work, Madame Fate is not to be missed.

Madame Fate, my beloved, why did you abandon me??

[minhoghaven]

Azada: Ancient Magic

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: August 29, 2008

Series: Azada (2/4)

Plot: 3/5 Titus, the character you rescued in the initial Azada game, calls upon your help again to help him defeat an ancient evil that resides in his uncle’s library of magical books.  The characters in the books are alive and consist of such recognizable faces as Dorothy, Captain Nemo and The Headless Horseman.  One of these characters is secretly the evil being and you must work your way through each book to determine who it is.

Mechanics:  4/5 I found this one actually rather interesting.  Each story book is a puzzle and you must work your way through the pages, finding useful objects and solving mini puzzles, to free the main character.  This gives you a nice mix of environment puzzles and mini puzzles.

Art:  2/5 Not a great step up from the original Azada, though the story book environments aren’t bad.  The characters are very old style 3d art and come across kind of creepy.  It’s not terribly off-putting, but these games always seem better when the developers stick to nice 2d art.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 There was no voice acting.  The music was nice and vaguely thematic to the story books.  The sound effects were minimal and unobtrusive other than the jarring clang when you dare to try and click on something while a dialogue box is still open!

Overall: 3/5 An improvement over Azada in plot and mechanics which leads this game to be more engaging.  The storybooks make for nice stopping points if you don’t tear through games in one sitting like yours truly and there is a relaxed mode without the timer, unlike Azada.

A very uncanny valley Wild Bill requires help fixing his carriage.

[minhoghaven]

Azada

(Stalled out on Mystery Case Files so I’m taking a little break from them.  We’ll get back to them soon enough.)

Publisher: Big Fish Games, Tulip Games

Date: June 29, 2007

Series: Azada (1/4)

Plot: 1/5 In Azada you awaken in a mysterious building without any idea how you got there.  You find a magic paper that tells you that you were brought here by someone named Titus because of your amazing puzzle skills in the hopes that you can free him.  As you make your way through the puzzles you get some backstory as to how Titus became trapped, but the story is almost an afterthought to the puzzles.

Mechanics:  3/5 You must assemble the magical book called Azada by solving the puzzles on each of its different pages.  Some of them are rather interesting, wherein you poke around a room to find items that will help you find the magic page hidden within.  Those pages have a sort of escape room quality to them.  Unfortunately most of the rest are extremely basic puzzles that you’ve encountered in every other puzzle game ever; slider puzzles, matching puzzles and the like.  They start laughably simple and ramp up slightly as you progress through the game.  One aspect that I found frustrating was that you had to solve each section within a time limit.  While I had no problem completing the game within the time limits given, I strongly dislike having a timer that you cannot turn off as I dislike the pressure, even if it’s minor, and it is always good to have accessibility options, such as being able to take as much time as needed.

Art:  2/5 Some of the art, particularly in the escape room puzzles, is fairly dated but not in a way that heavily distracts from the game.  The game doesn’t show you anything amazing, or even terribly interesting, in terms of art, but it reads well and is just fine.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 There was no voice acting.  The music was simple and unobtrusive and the sound effects were rewarding without being annoying.  Nothing awful but nothing to write home about.

Overall: 2/5 The concept of the game is fine and if it stuck with the more unique escape room style puzzles I would be all over it, but the basic puzzles which were rehashed over and over were repetitive and boring.  I was not invested enough in freeing Titus, who I didn’t know from Adam, to be very motivated to continue when the puzzles got tedious.  Not a game I’ll be going back to.

The game also lost points for making me match “butterflies” when half of them were moths.  :P

[minhoghaven]

Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst

Publisher: Big Fish Studios

Date: Dec 15, 2006

Series: Mystery Case Files (3/20)

Plot: 5/5 The first of the Ravenhearst storyline, a main staple of the Mystery Case Files games and also one of the first HOGs with an actual plot.  You are sent to mysterious Ravenhearst manor by the queen, yes really, to see if you can piece together the remains of a diary kept by Emma Ravenhearst.  What starts as a romantic tale turns into something dark and sinister.  The plot is predictable but very engaging and doesn’t rely on wild locations and crazy leaps to be interesting.  

Mechanics: 3/5 The hidden object scenes are much like previous MCF games, you are given a set of rooms in the manor which have set scenes with the same items each time you visit.  After finding a set number of items for each ‘chapter’, you piece together a jigsaw puzzle illustration from the next page of the diary.  

What really sets this game apart from predecessors and most other HOGs I’ve played, and what really stick in my mind when I think of this game, are the door locks.  About half of the rooms have a lock you must get through in order to access them.  They are puzzles that are quite unlike most HOG puzzles in that they are not explained and you must poke around to figure out exactly what it is you are intended to do to open the door.  Some of them have an almost Rube Goldberg machine quality to them.  

Art: 2/5 The hidden object scenes are only a slight step up from Huntsville and Primary Suspects, but only because they tend to have a generally creepy feel to them which matches the mood of the game.  Objects are still random junk and some of them are a little gross (like the pantry, I can’t stand ‘rotten food’ hidden objects).  The diary pages have a nice hand-drawn feel to them.  The door locks are off the wall but in an appealing sort of way.  You definitely feel that they were put together by a mad man.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting:  3/5 Still nothing that can really be deemed music, but a lot of background noise such as a clock ticking, cat yowling, footsteps and more that set a nice, creepy air.  Sometimes they got a little annoying, especially the clock ticking, but overall not bad.  The occasional ghostly whispers are a particularly nice touch.

Overall: 4/5 Despite its age, this is still a game I am willing to come back and play again and again.  The story line and the unique door locks make this one stand out above so many other cut and paste HOGs and is a good start for a long line of future Ravenhearst games.

Unique puzzle locks that make you ask ‘wait, what am I supposed to do?

[minhoghaven]

Mystery Case Files: Prime Suspects

Developer: Big Fish Studios

Date: April 6, 2006

Series: Mystery Case Files (2/20)

Plot: 1/5 Tried a little harder than Huntsville in that there was an overarching story: the queen’s diamond has been stolen and it is your job to investigate the suspects to determine what they were doing at the time of the robbery.  Still very bare-bones.  

Mechanics: 2/5 Basically identical to Huntsville with the map and repeating hidden object scenes but with a few additions.  One was a number of locations that could only be investigated by moving a small circle of visible area around the screen, which I found annoying and entirely unenjoyable.  They also added some variety to the Crime Solving Computer so now there are games like matching in addition to the scrambled picture grid.  This series seems to like to make use of tricky item descriptions (such as ‘find two clubs’ which leads you to find a deck-of-cards club and a golf club), which I have a love-hate relationship with, depending on how obscure they are.

Art: 1/5 Same as Huntsville in basically every regard.  Still ugly. 

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 1/5 Same as Huntsville. Like... Identical.

Overall: 1/5 It’s a good thing that I know these games get better over time, or I’d be really struggling here.

Very unappealing character art

[minhoghaven]

Mystery Case Files: Huntsville

Developer: Big Fish Studios

Date: Nov 14, 2005

Series: Mystery Case Files (1/20)

Plot: 1/5 - Barely there.  The basic premise is that you are a detective solving a series of mysteries.  You are provided a map and with each mystery you will have to search through a certain number of locations for clues.  Once you’ve found all the clues you put them into the ‘Crime Solving Computer’ which gives you a scrambled picture grid to solve which would reveal the answer to the mystery.  Every mystery was the same process only with progressively more clues to find.

Mechanics:  2/5  Each location had a set hidden object scene with unchanging objects.  Scenes were reused so frequently that it quickly became less a matter of searching and more a matter of remembering where the objects were.  The objects were a mishmash of some things that related to the location and some random objects that were just thrown in.  Lack of clarity made it hard to identify some objects but there were also some good and clever hides.

Art - 1/5 Objects were a random assortment of drawings and photos slapped together in the scene.  Character art was very unpleasant to look at.  It seemed like it was going for the ‘ugly on purpose’ style of art, which doesn’t usually work with me anyway, but wasn’t skilled enough to pull that off.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting:  2/5  The background sound could barely be considered music but was unobtrusive.  The sparkle sound effect when an object was found lasted too long and you could not click another object until it ended.

Overall: 1/5 - Suffered mostly from repetitiveness.  Probably would be ok if you played it a little at a time over a few days, but ain’t nobody got time for that.  As it was, I only got about halfway through before nearly falling asleep with boredom.  Lack of story means that if you want to play the MCF series, you can safely skip this one without missing out on more than ‘You are a detective that started in Huntsville’.  

Why is there a picture of Baby Donald Trump in this game?

[minhoghaven]

Hello, I am Min and I have a problem.  I am addicted to low quality hidden object games.  I have nearly 200 on my computer and I’ve only played a fraction of them, so before I waste money on any more, I’ve decided to play through all of my backlog (replaying some) and track them here.  I’ve sorted them all by publication date and intend to go through in order, except in the case of series, wherein I will just go through the whole series as soon as I reach the first one that I own.

Wish me luck!