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Restoring Harmony
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The Harmony Chronicles - Chaos Realms is a Hidden Object Adventure game that places you in the middle of a conflict between the powers of Harmony and Chaos. Developed by Jet Dogs Studio, this excursion into a magical world is available in Collector's Edition format which forms the basis for this review. Supporting the main game, the Collector's Edition version comes with extra puzzles, music playback features and wallpaper images.
The game casts you in the role of Mona a young office worker who, when bored one day at work, falls asleep and find herself in a strange dream-like world. Mona's initial starting point in this magical world is the Castle of the Goddess Harmony who is the keeper of order across thousands of worlds and is currently under attack from her brother the Lord Chaos. This information is revealed to Mona by a talking book which makes frequent appearances to deliver more details throughout the game.
In order to help the Goddess Harmony, Mona must first find a red book. When this discovery happens, she finds that several pages are missing and need to be found. While searching for the missing pages, Mona must also be on the lookout for six amulets belonging to the Goddess. These amulets have been made to look like ordinary items so until you find them you will not know what they are.
Mona's search will involve visiting different locations that include the Dark Werewolf Forest, Dragon Mountain, a Ghost Town protected by the spirit of a dead sheriff, the shifting World of Sand and an underwater palace. As part of het journeys, Mona will meet and assist characters such as a werewolf author, a mermaid called Undine and her sister Ariel, a gentleman dragon and the guardian of the tomb of the Pharaoh Athenaten. In return for assisting these individuals, Mona will be granted permission to search through the numerous items they have collected and stored in Hidden Object type scenes.
Often using a cluttered appearance these scenes of scattered objects will be accompanied by different ways of indicating the required items. Generally the list will be displayed in text format. You could be asked to find a list of specific items or a set number of a particular type of object. Sometimes you could be asked to identify items represented by silhouettes or items that can somehow be paired in different ways.
As you move around the different locations, you may also be faced by a number of mini game puzzles. These will need to be completed in order to make progress. In some cases you may need to work out the correct sequence to unlock the code blocking access to a door by rotating wheels. Other puzzles could involve turning out lights in sequence, solving a Tower of Hanoi type swap, rearranging images to their correct positions and cover all the squares on a chess board using a single knight piece.
The game is let down a little by its disappointing ending as Mona completes her tasks spread over 42 levels of game play. Once the main game has been completed then you gain access to a series of bonus games. These extra items tend to feature scenes from the main game that have been cut into 42 rectangles and jumbled up leaving you to replace them so the scene is recreated.
I downloaded my copy of this game from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $9.99. It can also be downloaded from Big Fish Games priced at £7.61. The game requires a 1.0 GHz processor with 512MB of RAM and 886MB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.
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