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Available on Avanquest’s GSP game label, Letters from Nowhere 2 is a Hidden Object game that spreads itself over 11 episodes. From the game’s opening menu, you can create your profile and make adjustments to the volume level for both the background music and various sound effects. This set of options also includes Help information for the game which you can check out. There is no choice of difficulty level when playing this game.
A comic book style opening sequence lays the groundwork for the underlining story. This sequence combines printed and voice dialogue as Audrey discovers that her husband is a descendant of a family cursed by a secret sect which could go some way towards explaining his disappearance. You can speed up this introductory sequence with a series of mouse clicks in order to reach Episode 1 which is entitled Welcome to Nowhere.
The town of Nowhere is presented in a stylised, illustrated map that is overlaid with thumbnail images of the available locations that you can visit. Each thumbnail shows the name of the location plus the number of items that remain for you to discover. You are allowed a free choice in the order in which you select the various locations to visit.
Along with the listed items that you are required to find, you need to be on the look out for black cats and postage stamps. I will leave you to come up with an explanation as to why these two types of items were chosen. Each location will contain one black cat and three stamps. As each location will need to be visited more than once, you are kept informed as to whether you have found the appropriate number of stamps but it is up to you to remember whether you have found the black cat for that particular location. I took the approach of never selecting a stamp until after I had found the black cat and so knew that if three stamps were still to be found then so was the black cat on any subsequent visits to a location.
Finding these two types of objects will add to your personal points’ total plus open up access to two additional modes of play when you can search for all the objects in a particular location or retry the various puzzles that appear in the game. Points will also be awarded for each of the listed 12 Hidden Objects you need to find in each location.
The listed items will be presented as one word descriptions or a cryptic clue. One item in the list will need to be combined with another object in the scene before it can be selected. To help you with this task your mouse cursor will change to a burning circle when it touches the item to be paired and then changes to a grasping hand when it touches the items needed to complete the pairing. Points that have been earned can be used to purchase hints, bonus items and pay for any bouts of excess random clicking in order to find an item. The Hint feature will not help find the black cats or stamps.
From time to time one of the listed items will involve a puzzle that can provide a break from a surfeit of Hidden Object searching. These puzzles vary in style and complexity. Solving the puzzle will bring the reward of an item from the current list. These rewards will be required to complete the game which, like the opening sequence, concludes with a comic book style sequence. In order to progress through this sequence you will need to place the relevant rewarded items in the appropriate picture frames.
Letters from Nowhere 2 is not a game that I really enjoyed playing. I would probably have abandoned the task if I had not been reviewing the product. Priced at £10.20, Letters from Nowhere 2 requires a1.0 GHz processor,1GB of RAM, 163MB of hard disk space with support for DirectX 9.0 running Windows XP and later.
http://www.avanquest.com/UK/software/letters-from-nowhere-2-169130
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