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Developed by Grey Wizard Innovation, Deadly Puzzles: Toymaker pits you against a serial killer terrorising a quiet town by murdering women.  You are cast in the role of a female detective assigned to solve the case and bring to justice a killer who enjoys setting puzzles in the form of clues.

Allowing different people to play the game, this title supports the use of profiles to record the progress of those tackling the case.  Adjustments can be made to the volume levels of music and sound effects while other options allow you to turn on/off voice-overs for your character and that of the playful killer plus view the game in full screen mode with aspect correction.  When playing the game there is a choice of Casual or Expert difficulty.  Depending upon your chosen difficulty you will get a fast or slow charging of the Hint feature, more or less sparkles indicating possible target areas and whether or not there is a penalty for mis-clicking in Hidden Object game play.

Supplied with your own office, which is where you try to solve puzzles and the games set by the killer, you have access to tools consisting of your note book, an inventory and the Hint feature.  You also have access to a television with video player attached.

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This latter device can proves extremely useful as the serial killer seems to regard you as a friend.  The killer regularly sends you an update on his activities on a VHS cassette.  Presumably he is not a fan of email or texting for his messaging but then a video does give him a more pronounced profile for his deeds.

One tool to which you have access that I failed to mention earlier, is a map of the town area.  This map is the type that will automatically transport you to a particular location for searching after providing you with some basic information about it.  Following standard procedure, the searching of the location will consist entirely of a Hidden Object session.  A fairly cluttered scene will be paired with a text list of 12 required items.  An additional action will be necessary if an item in the list is coloured cyan.  Your reward for completing the scene generally forms part of a riddle or clue set  by the killer.

Often the item will be a container or a required element needed to open the box.  Whatever it is, it will need to be examined back at your office.  In some cases the container will reveal a VHS cassette or part of a map overlay which can be placed over the top of the main map in order to reveal the next group of locations to visit.

As you gather the necessary items from Hidden Object game play, they will need to be used either as the base module or a required element required to solve a puzzle.  You might need to rearrange the signs of the Zodiac in a star shape using connected lines or arrange a group of picture cubes to tell a story.   Other puzzles include matching heads with appropriate bodies, positioning a puppet's limbs, create an image using linked bands of a circle, rearrange blocks, repeat music note sequences or set up batteries to suit power requirements.

Arriving at the final challenge, you encounter a change in the style of Hidden Object game play.  Silhouettes replace the text list.  You will need to use each item found in order to discover the next item,  The eventual aim will be to disarm a time tomb.

While I enjoyed playing this game, some more variety in the type of game play would have been appreciated to help hold my attention.  The game requires a 2.0 GHz processor with 1.0GB of Ram running Windows Vista and later.

Deadly Puzzles: ToyMaker (PC CD). | Amazon