Reviews related to : Focus software

Mystery, darkness and hope come together in a triple pack from Focus Multimedia. Originally published by Big Fish Games, the three offerings making up this pack are Hidden Object Adventure games. The three titles are Tesla’s Tower: The Wardenclyffe Mystery, Fantastic Creations: House of Brass and Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope.
If you have seen the recent Dulux adverts on television then you will appreciate the idea behind the Tesla’s Tower game.  Due to an experiment that did not turn out as expected, the concept of colour has been banished.  The scientist responsible for this state of affairs was Nikolai Tesla who now only exists as a ghost in the Ether where he can communicate with you in the role of Maria Tesla, his great grand-daughter.
Redemption Cemetery is a series of Hidden Object Adventure games, currently standing at five, published originally by Big Fish Games. Focus Multimedia has taken two of these titles and bundled then together in a single package which is priced at the company’s usual £10.20 level.
Magic, stone statues, innovative mini games and spoken dialogue are mixed together with a dash of evil intent in this next two-game pack.
The latest two-game pack to arrive from Focus Multimedia features a couple of offerings from the Grim Tales series.  These titles are The Stone Queen and The Wishes.  Both titles have been developed by Elephant Games and belong to the Hidden Object Adventure genre. When setting up your game profile for either game you can adjust the volume levels for music, effects, environment and voice plus gamma, special effects, full screen, wide screen and custom cursor options.
And you thought the Red Riding Hood story ended with the death of the wolf at the hands of the woodman but that was only the start.
Drawn is a magical kingdom with mythical creatures and an on-going battle between the forces of Good and Evil. One defining factor of this land is that pictures play an important role in its existence.
Everything is not how it seems as this next game goes to prove as your investigations take you to Black Isle.
The life of an investigative journalist working for television might appear to be a glamorous role but that is not always the case.  Take, for example, the fate that befell Sarah Steplton.  She was investigating Black Isle, supposedly abandoned after an earthquake, when she was seemingly taken prisoner by a mysterious robbed figure with a beak-like nose.
Rather than let the “train take the strain”, you can take the train in this next Hidden Object Adventure game and not worry about being punctual because it is a Timeless experience.
Released on Focus Multimedia’s budget BlackLime Games label, Timeless: The Forgotten Town is a Hidden Object Adventure game.  It places you in the role of a train traveller who is mysteriously snatched from his normal reality and transported to a town that time forgot.
Focus Multimedia has brought together three titles described as “The Best of Big Fish Mysteries” in a triple pack entitled Mysteries, Secrets & Shadows. The three titles are Grim Façade Sinister Obsession, Secrets of the Dark Eclipse Mountain and The Theatre of Shadows As You Wish. All three games belong to the Hidden Object Adventure genre and will need to be installed individually from a basic front end.
Taking the titles in the order they appear on the 3-game packaging, Grim Façade Sinister Obsession places you in the role of a detective who is called upon when the Conti family maid finds a diary relating the mysterious deaths of three women.  The game gives you the options to adjust the volume levels for background music, sound effects and voice dialogue plus play in full or widescreen mode.  You have a choice of Casual, Advanced or Hard difficulty levels.
As part of its Hidden Mystery Collectives series, Focus Multimedia has come up with another 2-game pack. This time the two titles are Mystery of Another World and The Noise She Couldn’t Make from the Big Fish Games Surface series. In both cases the games belong to the popular Hidden Object Adventure genre and have their own installation procedure that is accessed from a basic front end module.
Taking the games in the order in which they are featured on this two-game pack, Mystery of Another World provides you with options to adjust the volume level for environment, sound effects, music and voices.  You can then select the difficulty level with a choice of three being available.  Casual mode offers sparkles for active areas plus a faster recharge of the Hint and Skip appearance features.  Advanced mode does away with sparkles and slows down the Hint and Skip features.
There is always a first time for everything. In this case it is a game that opens with a proposal of marriage by the character whose role you adopt. As things turn out, the proposal is not immediately accepted and thus we have the Hidden Object Adventure game entitled The Lake House Children of Silence. This Alawar game is now available from Focus Multimedia in Collector’s Edition format.
As usual with Collector’s Edition games you get some additional items that include bonus chapters, wallpaper, home movies from the game and concept art but you do need to have completed the main game before being granted access to the bonus area.  There is also an integrated Strategy Guide which is available immediately.
Unlike the dance of the same name, the Charleston Curse involves witches, ghosts and some suspicious deaths.
The Collector’s Edition of Witches’ Legacy The Charleston Curse, available from Focus Multimedia, is classified as a Hidden Object Adventure game.  As is usual with Collector’s Edition games, you get some bonus items that include an extra game chapter plus music soundtrack, wallpaper, screensavers and concept art but these items only become accessible once the main game has been completed successfully.
As the last surviving member of a secret society, you are cast in the role of tackling an evil force intent on preying on the city of Prague.
As part of its Hidden Mystery Collectives series, Focus Multimedia has bundled together a couple of Echoes of the Past titles. Belonging to the Hidden Object Adventure genre, these titles are entitled The Citadels of Time and The Revenge of the Witch.
In fairly standard fashion, The Citadels of Time allows you to adjust the volume levels of both the background music and sound effects which does include the spoken dialogue that occurs during the various cut-scenes linking together the various parts of the story line.  There are also options to play the game in full screen, wide screen and using a custom cursor.  Two modes of game play are available.
When a game has the title of Fairway then there is an excellent chance that golf will be involved in some way. In the case of this next title that involvement is based around the Solitaire card game that is known as Golf.
Over the years I have played, and enjoyed, a large number of games that belonged to the Match 3 genre. In the most part, these games took various approaches as they set out to make the playing experience as challenging and enjoyable as possible. Unfortunately sometimes there were exception and this next Match 3 title was one such offering as it failed to engender any semblance of enjoyment when I was checking out the product for this review.
Match 3 Mega Pack, as its titles indicates, brings together a collection of Match 3 titles.  In fact there are eleven games in total.  I almost wrote “eleven different games” but thought better of it. What the title of Match 3 Mega Pack does not make clear is that all the eleven titles making up this collection have all come from the same source.  The development team at Anawili Condento Medino were responsible for all these games.
Real characters, ghostly apparitions and live jigsaw type videos all come together in a Mystery Case File title.
Shadow Lake, part of the Mystery Case Files series, is a Hidden Object Adventure game.  Originally published by Big Fish Games, this title is now available from Focus Multimedia in Collector’s Edition format.  Usually when a game is released in this type of format, most of the bonus items, apart from the immediately available Strategy Guide, are locked until the main game has been completed.  Shadow Lake is, in some ways, an exception to this rule.
Ever received an invitation for an event that happened years ago? If so then you will feel at home with the opening of this next game.
Forty years ago the place to go to for your entertainment was the Nightingale Theatre.  But then this popular establishment was ravaged by a yet fully explained fire.  No one knows for sure who started the fire but a prime candidate was your grandfather who was the owner of the building.  His disappearance just after the fire helped feed the rumours that he was responsible for starting the blaze.
Witches never seem to rate highly on most people's popularity lists. Part of this unloved quality could be down to the actions of the Snow Queen, a central character in this next game.
Originally published by Big Fish Games, Dark Parables Rise of the Snow Queen is now available from Focus Multimedia in Collector's Edition format.  As is usual in such cases, the bonus items making up this title, apart from the Strategy Guide, only become available once the main game has been completed.
You probably do not know much about Grey Mist Lake. Not many do especially since the mysterious fog engulfed the town and when it disappears, so had the town. There were rumours of occasional reappearances of the town with ghost-like inhabitants but now you can check it out for yourself.
Available from Focus Multimedia's extensive catalogue of titles, Strange Cases The Secrets of Grey Mist Lake is a Hidden Object Adventure game.  With this Collector's Edition version, you get a number of bonus items.  As is the usual practice, items such as a bonus chapter, concept art, wallpaper and music soundtrack only become available when the main game has been completed.
Bringing together The Maze, Paranormal and the Guardians, Focus Multimedia has come up with a Haunting Mysteries Triple Pack. Originally published by Big Fish Games, these three titles of Urban Legends: The Maze, Paranormal Criminal Investigations: Brotherhood of the Crescent Snake and Guardians of Beyond: Witchville will need to be installed separately. Each title will add its own icon to your desktop.
When tackling Urban Legends: The Maze you are called into action to investigate the disappearance of the contestants who were taking part in the final of the televised The Maze.  Actually I thought that the whole idea of such televised reality programs was for the contestants to gradually be eliminated and disappear.  However in this case the disappearance was a wholesale vanishing and not part of a planned schedule.  As a result your skills are required.