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The game, entitled Travel to Australia, belongs to the Hidden Object genre with its various scenes spread through the antipodeans continent that, I'm reliable informed, were not featured in Neighbours. Profiles can be set up to record the progress of individual players. Adjustments can be made to the volume level for background music and sound effects. There are options to select full screen viewing and use a custom cursor. When playing the game you have a choice of not being bothered by a time limit or needing to complete each scene within 3 or 10 minutes. I joined the tortoise club and opted for relaxed game play.
In this game you join a group of tourists who have been offered the chance of a guided tour of some of Australia's famous landmarks and popular locations. The various members of the touring party and the guide are presented by comic or story book characters who are superimposed over the current scene and are totally static in appearance. Any dialogue uttered by the different characters appears just in text format across the bottom of the screen.
The tour of Australia visits 15 different locations that can be tackled in any order that you prefer. You start off with Melbourne Railway station, where people tend to meet under the clock, before venturing to other locations. These locations include Luna Park, Uluru, Great Barrier Reef, Gold Coast, and the Brisbane Koala Sanctuary to mention just some that might appeal to the would-be tourist.
Each location, which is depicted with a photographic image, will need to be unlocked before you can enter it. Unlocking a location will require stars which, depending upon the location, could be as many as four stars. You will need to earn stars by completing the task set for the different location.
Once a location has been unlocked by handing over the required amount of stars, you will be able to read some general information regarding the location. You then have free access to that location for as many times as you wish. In the first 15 locations this will mean playing a Hidden Object scene as you locate the requested objects.
Various items will be scattered around the scene and you will be required to find a designated 12 of them. As there is only space to fit six of the required items to be found in the available space, the initial items located will be replaced by others until they have all been found. Only those items displayed in the list can be found. You will be rewarded with one star for completing a scene. Replaying a scene will earn another star.
To open all the Hidden Object locations plus an additional five puzzle locations that are tagged on to the end, you will need to collect more than 50 stars. This does mean than some locations will need to be revisited several times. In the case of Hidden Object scenes, the scene will remain the same but there will be some variety in the requested list of items to be found. On your three and fourth visits to the same location, the list will feature silhouettes while on your fifth and sixth visits you will need to decipher jumbled words before reverting back to plain text on your next visit.
As mentioned earlier, the game have five additional puzzle levels that will need to be unlocked with a three-star payment. These levels are made up of 6 x 4 jigsaws, puzzles revealing matching pairs of Australian animals, match-3 grids, mah-jong and finding the names of Australia animals running vertically or horizontally in a word grid. None of the levels in this game, whether of the Hidden Object or puzzle variety, could be considered difficulty. The hardest part of the game is collecting the necessary stars to unlock all the locations.
I downloaded my copy of this game from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $9.99. The game requires a 1.0 GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and 119MB of hard disk space running Window 7 and later.
Travel to Australia | GameHouse
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