Adventure Gamers - Forums
You are here: Home → Forum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread
New posts
No new postsCasual Games Thread
Colpet - Don’t know if you are aware, but we’ve started a new casual games playthrough thread. You might wasn’t to take a look to see if there’s anything there that you would be interested in playing as a group.
Totally off thread, but I meant to ask you whether you’ve seen much of the canine flu virus in your practice. We’ve had some bad outbreaks here in the Chicago area. My dog, Lacey, looks a mess because I wouldn’t take her to the groomer until she was vaccinated. She had her booster this past Saturday so she should be good to go.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
Colpet - Don’t know if you are aware, but we’ve started a new casual games playthrough thread. You might wasn’t to take a look to see if there’s anything there that you would be interested in playing as a group.
Totally off thread, but I meant to ask you whether you’ve seen much of the canine flu virus in your practice. We’ve had some bad outbreaks here in the Chicago area. My dog, Lacey, looks a mess because I wouldn’t take her to the groomer until she was vaccinated. She had her booster this past Saturday so she should be good to go.
I voted for the Mystery Case Files duo. The only problem is that I have the CE versions.
Thankfully, no canine flu here. Hopefully we will never see it. I’m glad to here you were able to get Lacey protected.
I played and enjoyed Eternal Journey: New Atlantis several months ago and did a mini review here. I liked the extra gameplay in the CE version especially because you played the fiancee doing a lot of “male type” things like assembling machines and the like to find his captured love.
Don’t forget to vote in the Casual Community Playthrough thread.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
Man! This is hard. I’m commenting on a great game Becky reviewed, Peril of Man. (It’s available on Amazon. I bought it, but haven’t had a chance to play it yet.) I’m also playing the AGCPT, Scratches. And I’m playing/leading the Casual Community playthrough, Dire Grove as well.
As a result, this thread slipped to Page3, which is unacceptable.
Oh! by the way. I volunteered to post one casual game screenshot/week on the AGSOTD thread. I thought that would be a good way to promote the fact that we are a genre within the genre of adventure games.
But in doing all this “stuff” this thread is being neglected.
I’m not sure what to do. I am committed to casual games. But I seem to be spreading myself a bit thin these days.
Today, I dl’d the demo of Myths of the World - The Heart of Desolation Collectors Edition. Not sure when I will get around to playing it. I got it because I absolutely loved Myths of the World - Of Fiends and Fairies. It was my nomination for the 2014 game of the year. We will see how the latest incarnation measures up.
But I need some help here.
If you are playing games, tell us about them. If you don’t feel comfortable writing a review, give it a shot anyway. We are not critics here, except when it comes to our impression of a game we just played. We don’t criticize each others tastes in games. Nor do we criticize the way our fellow players express their opinions.
There is only one Casual Game thread on Adventure Gamers. This is it.
I think it should be our mutual objective to see that the Casual Games thread never leaves the front page again.
Please help me make sure that happens.
Thanks to you all,
Tim
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
I played the MotW - Heart of Desolation CE demo. It’s also available in SE. It was good, but not as good as Fiends and Fairies. Good enough for a purchase, though.
I bought the SE version. I played the CE version of Fiends and Fairies, and did not think the bonus material was worth the extra cost. Inasmuch as this game is part of the franchise, and also developed by EIPIX, I had no reason to think the outcome would be different.
The graphics are quite good, but the voice acting is nowhere near the Fiends and Fairies quality. (Which I think I mentioned in my review was, in my opinion, the best voice acting I’ve ever heard in a casual game.) I did not have to use the Skip button on any of the demo puzzles. That’s not to say that the puzzles are easy. Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it are two different things. I finished the 90-minute demo with 6 minutes to spare. A lot of my gameplay time was on puzzles. And a lot of my puzzle time was spent hitting the Reset button.
The story is supposedly based on the Legend of the Five Dragons. (I have not heard of this legend.) It is set in China where you have crashed your airplane. (I have seen a few airplane crashes, including two or three small airplane crashes.) It is very, very rare that a pilot walks away from one. But this pilot does. Thereby raising a credibility red flag. Anyway, you, the “miracle pilot” is tasked with putting an evil dragon back in its place. You are aided by four good dragons. The demo ends when your quest has been abetted by the water dragon. (Just a guess here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the other three dragons represent wind, earth and fire.)
If you play the demo, I think you, too, will find it purchase worthy. Buy the SE. I’ll try to put a lenghlier review together once I’ve finished the entire game.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
I’m playing The Emptiness. This is a tough game. While there are no hidden object scenes, you do end up searching the house for clues and letters hidden in the surroundings. It is also a game filled with ‘scary moments’. There are flashes of images and sudden noises that will make you jump. The developers worked them into the game when you are looking closely for clue, sometimes with just a 4cm flashlight beam. The basic premise is:
Find a warded door. The spirit (FMV) then gives you a spell to open it. This spell is a word, and the letters are hidden in the rooms. There are written clues that help you find the letters, and these are hidden as well. If you don’t like searching every screen for small details, then stop right here. The hint book will keep track of the clues you find and give more detail should you need it. Once you get the whole spell, the warded door will open and you have access to more of the house. Each door also has an additional puzzle to solve, and put your thinking cap on for these. I.particularly liked the first one (the red cube maze). Interspersed though the game are opportunities to pick words and symbols that are either good or evil, depending on your mood. I’m not sure how or if this info will be used, but it is an interesting twist.
Each new door resets the scenes so new items appear in previously checked places, so there is lots of backtracking. Despite that, I would recommend the game to someone looking for a challenge, and doesn’t mind searching for often very well hidden items. I’m up to my 5th word, and I think there are 7. The game is taking longer to play now that I have more house to explore.
I looked at The Emptiness. It had a lot of things going for it, but ultimately I passed it up (for now) because I don’t like “jump scares” from loud noises when I’m trying to concentrate on solving a puzzle. I wish there was an option to turn the “jump scares” off. Playing with no sound at all isn’t optimal either.
I wish there was a way to replay the original 1997 Safecracker. But solving the problem with the inventory scrolling by too fast proved impossible on my quad core computer. I also wish there were some way to turn off the timer. I’m not sure if Safecracker 1997 counts as a “casual” since it was made long before Big Fish appeared, but it has some characteristics in common with them.
Colpet - I think I have played this game, or at least a demo of it. I think I liked the premise of it, but didn’t like the mechanics. I remember making it through three or four doors before giving up. I’m not a big fan of 3D motion games. But you’re right. I recall it being a very interesting and fairly hard game.
There was another game I played recently. It was a pure puzzle-solving game. There were hidden items you had to find, like parts to a machine, but there were no Hidden Object scenes. I’ll look up the name. It was talked about earlier in this thread. It was quite difficult, which probably means it didn’t sell well. Which was the topic of my rant on the possible demise of casual games as we know them.
Edit: The other game was Big Secret.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
I wish there was a way to replay the original 1997 Safecracker. But solving the problem with the inventory scrolling by too fast proved impossible on my quad core computer. I also wish there were some way to turn off the timer. I’m not sure if Safecracker 1997 counts as a “casual” since it was made long before Big Fish appeared, but it has some characteristics in common with them.
I can still play it on my old Mac laptop, and I’ve never had a problem with the timing of it. It’s really very generous.
“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” -Bill Watterson
I can still play it on my old Mac laptop, and I’ve never had a problem with the timing of it. It’s really very generous.
Really? You’ve never been called away from the game, forgot it was running, and come back to find out you’d lost and had to restart because you couldn’t remember what had been done at the time of your last save? If it were really all that “generous” there was no point in a time limit at all.
No, fortunately, that’s never happened to me. If I remember correctly, the time limit for the original Safecracker is 12 hours, which is usually enough time barring the distractions you mentioned. Since I usually play at night, there’s not much to take my attention away from the game. In fact, the place could be falling around my ears and I probably wouldn’t notice. 
“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.” -Bill Watterson
No, fortunately, that’s never happened to me. If I remember correctly, the time limit for the original Safecracker is 12 hours, which is usually enough time barring the distractions you mentioned.
Well if it’s only 12 hours it’s no wonder I ran out of time.
I’ve left games running for far longer than that, and not just when I’ve been called away.
I often leave puzzles and come back to them 2 or 3 hours later without closing down the game.
I finished Myths of the World - Heart of Desolation SE.
There isn’t a whole lot to add to what I said about the demo. Except ....
Even though the prior Myths of the World games did not, this game plays very much like a “portal” game, but without the portals. Sometimes that made the game more understandable. I.e. instead of walking through a portal to enter a temple, you simply walked up the street, and then up a flight of stairs.
On the other hand, each area is ruled by one of the five dragons. So not having some kind of demarcation between the various territories made their specific talents less significant.
I also didn’t care for the occasional infighting that occurred between the dragons. (Side note: I should also say that each of the dragons has a “human” persona, and that is the entity you interact with when you are dealing with the dragons.) It made me wonder why I was expending all this effort to defeat the Master dragon, when the other five can’t seem to get their act together. That thought didn’t make the gameplay any less interesting, but raised some philosophical issues. (Not to get into political issues but sometimes it just feels like NATO should say “HEY! All you guys in the Middle East. Get your respective acts together. And when you do then I can help.) And that’s how this game came off to me.
Graphics were really good. Music and effects were also good. Voice acting…not so much. I wonder when game designers…specifically casual game designers…will understand that bad voice acting is worse than no voice acting.
(Another side note: Does anyone remember the movie Ben Hur? All Jewish characters spoke with an American-English accent. All Roman and Arab characters spoke with an English-English accent. And while we knew that the Romans were speaking latin, and the Jews were speaking Hebrew, it didn’t matter because it was consistent.)
So why then do we consistently have bad voice actors trying to imitate what they think is an oriental accent? Does it make the game more realistic? Hell, no! So DON’T DO IT anymore.
I think I rated the demo 3.5/5 stars. I’m downgrading the entire game to 3/5 stars. It’s still worth a buy, but only if there is a really good sale, or if you have a credit burning a hole in your pocket.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
League of Light: Wicked Harvest
This is the second in the “League of Light” series. You are part of a good-guy league, combatting incidents of paranormal evil in (what appears to be) medieval Europe. You’ve received a letter about a village where children have gone missing. As you ride in your stagecoach to the village, you are attacked. You dangle off of a bridge for a while and then make your way into the village, where a child is kidnapped literally from under your nose. The perpetrator is a giant, ghastly, magical scarecrow. Not all scarecrows are bad, however – you soon meet a small scarecrow who becomes your constant companion. I’ve had many companions in casual games, but this small scarecrow happens to be one of the most appealing that I’ve encountered. Unexpected, but there it is.
The graphics are charming and slightly quirky with a bit of a Tim Burton-esque vibe. Environments have a surprising amount of ambient animation bringing them to life. The game mostly involves exploration and puzzling, though there are some flash-back-like sequences that reveal backstory. The orchestral and choral background music has a slightly medieval flavor with lovely melodies, well-suited to the environments. A diary is provided that you can use to catch up on the story and you can also access cut scenes to refresh your memory or watch developments more closely a second time.
Wicked Harvest contains a panoply of inventory puzzles and mini-games plus sets of collectibles, including hidden owls in most screens. There weren’t many surprises or innovations in the mini-games, though the Elixir of Life assembly puzzle was particularly entertaining. The scarecrow companion can accomplish certain tasks and even can be “armed” with different tools at times, which is rather fun to watch. Hidden Object challenges are varied and include standard list-based screens and multiples of the same item. Some are silhouette-based, and a few of these are highly interactive. One HO scene involved combining visual concepts, introducing a pleasing additional layer of challenge.
I played the Collector’s Edition of this game. The SE portion resolves the main quest with the missing children. The CE extends the story further and provides a more complete ending. There’s also an Extra Bonus game that starts out by allowing you to return to certain locations and locate any of the collectible owls that you may have missed on your initial journey through the game. It appears that there’s further gameplay after that, but I made the mistake of agreeing to replay the Bonus Game after I’d completed it already (trying to access the strategy guide for that one owl I couldn’t locate). Since I’ve restarted the Bonus Game, I’m now locked out of the Extra Bonus Game until I finish the Bonus Game yet again.
Does this make sense? I mean, does what I’ve just written make sense? Or, now that I think about it, does having the game do this to a player make any sense?
You are here: Home → Forum Home → Gaming → Adventure → Thread
