Buy Now...

It is not the first time that an invitation to a wedding has opened the door for a series of mishaps and trouble to form a computer game.  In this case the invitation came from your sister who has just married a Baron and wanted you, in the role of her brother Alex Meijer, to visit her in her new home of Bird's Nest Castle.  This is the opening of Living Legends - The Blue Chamber Hidden Object Adventure game from the Friendly Fox stable.

As usual with games of this genre, you can make a number of adjustments to the gaming environment so that it suits your playing style.  Different volume levels can be set for background music, sound effects and voice dialogue.  There is a choice of viewing the game in full or wide screen mode with a special cursor that changes shape when over areas that might benefit from further inspection.  The game can be played in one of four different difficulty levels as you select from Casual, Advanced, Expert or Custom choices.  These offer different rates of Hint/Skip charging, recognition of active areas, use of sparkles and indicating possible tasks in scenes and on a map feature.

On arriving at the appropriately named Bird's Nest Castle (birds are featured throughout the game) you quickly start to encounter the problems you will need to face as you discover your sister is missing and staff are leaving in a hurry.  Assisting you, as you delve further into the mysteries of this residence, are tools arranged across the bottom of the screen. 

See also: Games

more

A centrally positioned Inventory is sandwiched between the Hint and Strategy Guide features on the right with a Map and special Music Box on the left.  Rather than play music, the Music Box will relate the story of the castle and the legend attached to it when it is fed a series of special feathers that are your reward for completing certain tasks.  A pop-out indicator on the left of the screen will inform you of any collectibles in the form of birds and morphing objects, available in the current scene.

As you travel around the castle and its surroundings, searching for useful items, solving issues and clearing blockages, you will encounter various ghost-like characters with wings.  While scary in appearance, these characters are looking for help which you are meant to provide.   In return you gain additional knowledge regarding the story and how best to defeat the curse affecting the castle with its various rooms and hidden secrets.

While there are numerous special effects and dramatic appearances of some characters, these figures tend to be rather static.  They do show some facial movement when delivering their dialogue but there is no body movement which is a little disappointing.

Along with exploring the castle and helping various ghostly figures, you will need to complete a number of mini games and Hidden Object tasks.  Generally you are given a choice of Easy or Hard with mini game action that could include building a wheel, matching birds with their food, playing peg solitaire and recreating split images.  In some cases one puzzle will lead to another.

Hidden Object game play is presented in a variety of formats.  Sometimes you will be required to find a text list of items, search for herbs among vegetation or find pairs of items.  As well as finding items, you will often need to place them in scenes or link words in a story to images.  There is also one scene where you will need to slide two overlays to create required items from parts of an image.

I have been looking at the Collector's Edition of this game which comes with a number of bonus items.  Once the main game has been completed then you gain access to a bonus chapter.  You can also replay any of the mini games and Hidden Object scenes once tackled in the main game.

While not as scary as I initially expected, Living Legend - The Blue Chamber is worth considering.  I downloaded my copy of the game from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $19.99.  The game is also available from Big Fish Games priced at £15.86  The game requires a 1.8 GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM and 2.02GB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.

Living Legends - The Blue Chamber Collector's Edition | GameHouse

Living Legends - The Blue Chamber Collector's Edition | Big Fish