All Shades of Black
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Grim Tale - All Shades of Black is a Hidden Object Adventure game from Elephant Games. Available in Collector's Edition format, this product comes with a number of bonus items to supplement the main game involving paranormal activities and delving into matters best left undisturbed. Your role will be that of Anna Gray, the central character in this adventure, who sets out to save her family. As usual with such titles from Elephant Games, this game allows you to make adjustments to the gaming environment as you complete the tasks placed before you in a choice of Casual, Advanced, Hardware or Custom difficulty.
The game starts as Anna, her husband Dorian and daughter Alice sit down for a meal. However before a morsel of food has been consumed, paranormal activities interrupt matters and cause the husband and daughter to disappear. At the same time, a special portrait of Dorian, which has mystical power, also disappears. These events leave Anna little choice little choice but to take over the necessary action to discover the reason for the disappearance and put matters back to normal.
The fairly standard practice of carrying out a number of tasks will allow you to add various tools to assist you in helping Anna in her search for answers. Various search tasks will be rewarded with a Map, Task and an Inventory which can be locked in position or left to disappear when not required. Items in the Inventory accompanied with a plus sign will require some work before use. You will also collect a Camera device which will glow when it has information to impart and provide useful items.
As usual the game's mouse pointer will change shape to indicate when it is in close proximinty to areas requiring examination, when other characters will have something to impart or an item needs collecting. As a result of your investigation, you discover various items and the fact that a relative of your husband is responsible for your family's disappearance, You also discover that you will need to find a supply of magic paint to restore the portrait which should restore your family.
Multiple tasks will be required during your investigation and these tasks will not be helped by the appearance of wandering spirits and your husband's devious relatives. Mixed in with these tasks will be Hidden Object scenes and mini game puzzles. In the accepted fashion Hidden Object game play will be announced by the appearance of sparkles.
Using a mixture of scene types, you will be asked to find items presented in different ways. When text is used then a different colour will give the clue that some additional work will be required. You will also be presented with a list of silhouettes, part of the scene or the need to select pairs for your task. In some cases, rather than just find items, you might need to place objects.
A variety of mini game puzzles are featured throughout the game. You might be asked to plat a Solitaire peg game, block a spirit attack using a shield, plot a navigation route for the passage of a character or apply the correct colours to a painting. The game could also challenge you to move, adjust the size and position of sections of a scene using slider controls.
Spread over four chapters plus a bonus chapter, All Shades of Black is worth considering. Some might be disappointed by a lack of an opportunity to replay Hidden Object and mini game action but it is not too great a handicap.
This title can be downloaded from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $19.99 or from Big Fish Games priced at £15.51. The game requires a 2.5 GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM with 947MB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.
Grim Tales - All Shades of Black Collector's Edition | GameHouse
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