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Subtitled and developed by Happy Artist, Deadly Holiday: Mexicana places you, as its title might suggest, in Mexico for a Hidden Object Adventure game that involves you in trying to rescue a loved one from the world of the dead. With options to create profiles for individual players, you can adjust volume levels for music and sound effects plus opt for full screen viewing and a custom cursor, the game can be played in either Casual or Expert level. The former has a 90 second Hint recharge process and sparkles to identify interactive areas while the latter quadruples the recharge time and does not identify interactive areas.
Your role in the game is that of Maria who is taken by her fiancé to the Day of the Dead celebrations at Veracruz. Following the event, your fiancé Victor is whisked off to the Afterworld and you must set out to rescue him. This task will involve travelling through different locations, meeting and helping an assortment of characters, solving a variety of challenging puzzles plus completing a series of Hidden Object scenes using silhouettes and text lists of items to find.
Once free of the influence of the Afterworld you can tackle The Gift, a Hidden Object Adventure game developed by Anino Games. Featuring the usual options of creating profiles, adjusting volume levels and viewing the game in full screen mode with an aspect setting and custom cursor, the game offers the opportunity to play the game in either Casual or Expert difficulty. The only difference between the two modes is that the faster rate of Hint recharging is found in Casual mode.
The Gift casts you in the role of Sarah Mieville, a former police detective with the ability to tap into people's memory to solve crimes. However, after a bad mistake, she lost her lob and is now set up as a psychic detective who is often assisted by her old police partner Jack Sawyer. The game starts as Sarah hears about a crime committed in a hotel and decides to investigate. It quickly becomes obvious that the crime might be the work of the Nothingman who had been responsible for several murders over the past 25 years but had never been caught.
Sarah's investigation will involve several locations, meetings with other involving dialogue delivered by voice actors, puzzle solving, potion creation and Hidden Object scenes with items listed in text format. Some scenes are used more than once for Hidden Object action although the items to find show some variety. There are also a number of psychic incidents dotted throughout the game which I felt did not really help the storyline.
The third title in this pack is Love Alchemy - A Heart in Winter developed by iLiving Studio. This Hidden Object Adventure game offers the usual options to adjust volume levels, play in full screen mode and use a custom cursor. The game can be played in Casual or Expert difficulty mode with the former delivering a faster recharge of the Hint feature and highlighted interactive areas. When playing this game, you are cast in the role of Ellie who becomes involved in a romance that began on-line until you are whisked off to a castle in France to meet your fiancé Charles.
However it isn't long before you are parted as Charles has to leave on a business trip. Ellie decides to explore her new home. Arranged around the castle are several paintings featuring different young women whose beauty has been tainted in various ways. As it turned out these young women were being held prisoner in the castle. Ellie has the task of rescuing these women and removing their disfigurement. Puzzles will need to be solved, Hidden Object scenes will need to be completed and potions created. In this way Ellie will be able to defeat the demon responsible for the paintings and the imprisonment of the women. Apart from the disappointing ending, I enjoyed playing this game.
Entitled Twisted Lands - Origin, the next title making up this 5-game pack is a Hidden Object Adventure game developed by Stargaze. Adding to the usual collection of options to adjust the audio levels for music and sound plus play in full screen mode with a custom cursor, you can also adjust voice volume for dialogue delivered by voice actors. The game can be played in a choice of Regular or Expert difficulty. The former has a faster Hint recharge speed and identifies interactive areas with sparkles while the latter does not identify interactive areas and is slower when recharging the Hint feature.
You are cast in the role of a detective hired to search for the daughter of Joaquim Huerta who has gone missing. The search conducted on the Twisted Lands, where this adventure is placed, consists of a great deal of travelling backwards and forwards between various locations. Along with meeting other characters, whose dialogue is delivered by voice actors, you will need to solve a variety of puzzles plus complete Hidden Object scenes with the required items listed in text format with a red colour being used to indicate when an additional action would be necessary At various times during the search you will need to purchase tools with coins found in the game plus collect figures that can be positioned on a map to help complete a journey on an island where mysterious figures are seen as shadows.
Completing this 5-game pack is Forest Legends - The Call of Love. Unlike the other titles in this pack, this Stargaze developed game is in Collector's Edition which features a number of bonus items that include a Strategy Guide, bonus chapter, wallpaper, concept art and a series of stories relating the history of the creation of this world and the development of the conflict between humans and that of magic and its Felises advocates.
When playing The Call of Love, which is spread over six chapters plus the bonus offering, you can create profiles and adjust settings such as audio levels, full screen viewing and the use of a custom cursor. The game can be played in a choice of Regular or Expert mode with the former providing a faster recharge Hint and sparkles to identify interactive areas. Unlike the other games in the pack, Call of Love does not have any Hidden Object game play. Instead it concentrates on Adventure action with puzzle solving and the creation of magic potions.
Your role in the game is that of Eveline, a young woman who falls in love with Aurelio, a Felise, who had been attacked with a silver bullet. To aid Eveline as she sets about discovering about the truth of her birth and easing the conflict between humans and the Felise race are tools arranged across the bottom of the screen. Running from left to right are a map, task list, diary, inventory, potion workshop, hint feature in the form of a young dragon and a Strategy Guide. While I missed the Hidden Object aspect of this game, I found the game to be challenging and enjoyable to play.
A quick Internet search should reveal this 5-game pack available for £7.69. Specifications for this product require a 2.5 GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM and 4960MB of hard disk space for a full install running Windows XP and later.
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