Oberon Media - Hidden object games Page 12

To express my growing dislike of the compulsory nature of seasonal festivities (Easter: Thou shalt hide horridly discoloured eggs, Christmas: Thou shalt torture a betinselled conifer to death in thine sitting room, Halloween: Thou shalt harrass citizens for tooth-rotting inedibles...) I chose to redeem and play a "Christmas" game in the "Halloween" season, with the idea of doing the reverse in December. Moreover, a game in which Christmas is jeopardized by the presents-transporting vehicle turning into candy, so that all good children will sit crying as they wait for presents that never come, while bad children devour the candytruck, har-dee-har-har! It is a pretty game, suitable for any part of the cold season when darkness falls early, and like most of the games I've reviewed, made by a Russian team, which means that the Christmas imagery is less the commercialized veneration of Santa Christ (term borrowed from film reviewer That Guy With The Glasses) and more snuggling by the fireside with a good glass of eggnog.

It appears to be an old-fashioned game: simple visuals, no voice-over and a Profiles option that seems to be there largely for show, as I can start a game without creating a profile: the game automatically makes one for me. I have to delete it or create a new one when breaking off the game to start over, as when, due to a bug possibly caused by the laptop going into hibernation mid-game (the screen went black, and the only way to get it back was to access the Task Manager and shut down the game process), the cup on the table was not grabbable; without the cup, the game was stuck. (It's a good idea to keep no more than two profiles anyway; I made a third, and it mysteriously deleted itself.) Another option is to mute the music, which is mostly bits of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, possibly because the nutcracker's tale plays at Christmas, but more likely because classical music isn't copyrighted. Delighted by hearing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy played over the first search screen, I couldn't see at first why anyone would want to mute the music, but after a while, I understood. A young woman and a nutcracker are again involved, but the young woman is Santa's niece, who is driving a truckload of presents over a snowy road until suddenly her truck turns into an assortment of sweets, and the nutcracker is one of the many props needed to solve little puzzles. The tutorial, which is as candy-coloured as the truck, the scenery, the find screens and the pretty custom cursors, points me to a good spirit who explains that three witches are responsible for this, and the niece should go knock on their door. Thus begins a text-adventure-like game of collecting items to use in different rooms, four different rooms to be exact: the three rooms of the witches' house, and outdoors.

To stop this from getting boring, there are scenes (like the interior of the candified truck) that can be zoomed in on with a magnifing glass. Tiny sparkles will alert the player to these zoom-in areas, while furious sparkling signifies a hidden object scene, which is activated by the player's progress and will reward the player with a new item when all objects are found. The items, mostly Christmas yummies, presents and decorations - all of which look good enough to eat - are not disguised, but it's still amazing how many of them are crammed into one scene. Every item found disappears from the screen, but, I discovered by mistake, if I leave the search screen halfway through and then return to it, the found items will be visible again. There is a snowman-shaped hint button permanently present in the bottom left corner, but I haven't needed it for search screens, except when the descriptions were too strange to guess. For instance, "conservatives" had me searching in vain for Mitt Romney: it referred to a can of conserves. A "plummet" is a weight, a "moneybox" is a piggybank and "dool" is a misspelling of doll. The dialogue accompanying the making of a chocolate Easter Bunny constantly speaks of "chocolade". These errors can be corrected in the ASCII file "ChristmasAdventureBuild_Full\Locale_EN\Texts.xml", as can the name of the item "?ocoa".

In Russian folklore, witches are not necessarily evil; in this game they are not even very competent, as the candy spell was an accident and they need huge amounts of help - to water their plants, make apple jam, and knit sweaters for the poor birds - while working on a counterspell. A few very simple, skippable minigames open some doors and a chest; there is no timer anywhere. Each witch is in a different room: the cosy living room, the dimmer but warm kitchen and the very dim (but the player is expected to do something about that) attic where plants are grown. The unrolled scroll at the bottom left is a rudimentary task list which pops up the main tasks still unfinished, but not all the little subtasks like "put antlers back on deer" or "make music box play". The game doesn't seem to play well with my laptop's touchpad, because I'm constantly getting error messages like "that doesn't fit" for items that have just been correctly applied and produced the right result. But those niggles melt like snow in the face of the lights glimmering in the decorated tree outside (no conifer torture in this game!), the gently falling snowflakes and rocking chair, and the pastel-bright hues in the house's decorations and find screens, that seem to give off a warm glow as if illuminated by the flames of a hearth-fire. Each found object in the search screens - which are the same for every game - gives off a tinkling doorbell sound, while using the hint button encircles the object in white light accompanied by distant sleigh bells.

After all this talk of pretty visuals, I found that screen capture was impossible! Rather than breaking out the camera to snap an undoubtedly poor-quality image, I increased the game's icon in the Game Explorer - which is more complex and detailed than the tinsel-like desktop icon - to maximum size and made a copy of that; it's fairly representative of what the game looks like.

Apothecarium: The Renaissance of Evil CE

While shopping, I saw two 3-packs of hidden object games, four of them the Collector's Editions, from what appears to be a new player on the market: Denda Games. The titles included were Sacra Terra: Kiss of Death CE, this game, and all games below it on this page. Already cheap for being bundles, they were being sold at a reduced price, and since Collector's Editions can't be redeemed with membership tokens, I couldn't resist. Having installed the first game, I saw that they weren't real bundles with a "bundler" screen, so much as different games burned together on the same CD. The installer nicely asked me what drive to install to, and didn't include crap like the Games Manager, putting a new icon in the Game Explorer or adding "licence" registry keys that remain behind a after an uninstall. That's how it's done! Still, I prefer buying from CasualGames because the Denda Games are Dutch translations, adding another level of stiltedness to an English version obviously made by non-native speakers. The creative talents behind this game are again Russian, although that didn't stop them from packing the game with foreign couleur locale: it has more medieval Italian imagery than you can shake a Tower of Pisa at.

Presumbly because it was a Collector's Edition with "bonus content", the install took up around a gigabyte. The install directory was sloppily called "Apothecarium - The Renaissane of Evil". Since translations always multiply the number of errors in the source text, here are some from the to-find lists, that may or may not have existed in the original: "pipe" is flute, "bow" is ribbon, "scarf" is handkerchief, "pan flute" is a pipe and, a mistake that was absolutely the result of translation, "briefje" (written note) should have been "muzieknoot" (musical note). The game is, sadly, voiced, and the dead girl has what is supposed to be a ghostly voice but is in fact an anemic-sounding American drawl. The game crashes while this ghost is drawling, and later during the puzzle of the bronze roses, presumably because the RAM or a swapfile is filling up with temporary data, and I should have saved the game to clear this data, but the only way to save is to "stop" by going to the menu, and to start the game again from there. The menu allows me to create different profiles, but apparently it's not safe to make more than two, because after one crash, the third profile had disappeared. Okay, those were my complaints.

The main menu is designed like a library, with doors, shelves and a chest (of bonus content) to change the options, make a profile, start a game, or go to the shop to buy items that will make the game easier. The game has the same three modes as Twisted Lands: Shadow Town: easy (any important part of the scenery sparkles), normal and difficult (any items or search screens must be found by mousing all over the screen, hint button takes longer to recharge). The intro reminds of E. A. Poe's "The Red Death": a plague is sweeping through Italy, and the rich take refuge in a city-slash-fortress. In this case, their refuge is called the Apothecarium, and the greatest minds in science are gathered there to find a cure. But something has gone wrong. Lucia, the daughter of the Duke de Medici, has been sent there, but just before the gates, the carriage was stopped by a masked man with strange powers. This man will try to abduct her, and it's up to you to save her and thwart his devilish plans.

The tutorial with which the game starts is unclear, probably because it was translated, but it tells me that in every scene, I should look for two medallions, which will change into coins and help me buy stuff or get extra hints. Later in the game, I will find "puzzle boxes", minigames that also give me coins. In the to-find list, the tutorial explains, any items in orange lettering are hidden (in a drawer, bag etc.) or change shape, for instance, an apple that's constantly morphing into a mushroom and back, and I should click it when it's the right shape. This is both original and economical in that more objects can be hidden in the screen, but what's even more original: when a search screen opens, click on the button with three circles on it and the search screen is replaced by a match-3 session. The match-3 session can win you coins, but the search screen is good for one to three coins depending how quickly all objects are found. All minigames and search screens can be replayed from the diary, which is also a fast-travel map and hint book. Despite the hints, I was stumped a few times, so here's my hint: when in doubt, apply the alchemical glove. The game has a gallery that's really easy to fill, because it just adds trophies for "achievements" that are necessary to progress in the game.

Given the morphing objects that may lose their shape the moment I click on them, it's just as well that misclicks are punished by nothing worse than a sigh. I tried the match-3 game and even used the coins in the shop to buy enhancements for the game, but after I bought the "unicorn", the match-3 game became a saccharine affair with horrible muzak playing in the background, that was quite incongruous with the game's atmosphere. The background music reminds me of Deadtime Stories: first, around the hospital and cemetery, spooky with pseudo-Gregorian chanting, then, past the toy shop and in the town centre, festive-melancholy. One of the musical tracks smacks of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", although the bonus chest lets me know it's from "Peer Gynt" by Edvard Grieg. But it's the visuals that make the game shine: the many crows/doctors' masks and symbols of disease, like the rats and fleas; details like the snarling sun and moon in the cemetery; the carnival costume shop, and the innocent, yet creepy toy shop; and in the bonus part of the game, where I finally get to rescue Lucia, an inventor's mansion and a large conservatory, see rightmost screenshot. Even the cursor is ornate, and speaking of inventors, the flying machine from Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbook makes an appearance. Apart from this extra gameplay, the bonus content isn't much use to me: wallpapers (as if I can't make screenshots!), screensavers and sound tracks from the game, but there's no point to the screensavers, as they don't come with sound. In addition, I can watch the cutscenes again (no thanks) or redo the bonus search screens.

This game is also sold bundled with Deadtime Stories, but the game in the bundle would of course not be the collector's edition.