Adventure Gamers - Forums

Chudah - 17 December 2012 08:06 PM

Monolith - 17 December 2012 03:59 PM

I thought Alien Town’s polish and strong adventure elements made it work very well for me. Also I can’t deny those really sharp visuals and well done cg renders.

Oh, I completely agree.  The production value on the game is probably the best I’ve seen so far, which is why I’m confused why I lost interest so quickly.  I know the music was really annoying, so I turned that down pretty quick.  Maybe it just wasn’t creepy enough for me, I don’t know, although I don’t only play creepy HOGs.  Meh!! Maybe I’m broken! lol

Wouldn’t I be the broken one? lol

Aside from the previously-mentioned dislike of the dialog sequences, I found the game to be excellent. For navigating the game, the interactive map was invaluable. As for the alien theme. Aside from the end-game and the amusement park, aliens were non-existent. Delete aliens and insert zombies. The game would have played the same.

Graphics were extraordinary. CG scenes were very well done. Music didn’t bother me, but then I tend to turn down both music and effects volume channels. There are some things that will set my dogs barking. A dog barking in a game is one of them.

I bought the SE. If either of you played the CE, it’s probably worth a quick post to comment on the extra value, or the lack thereof.

Interplay - 18 December 2012 10:19 PM

FYI, Amazon is having a sale right now with 278 different casual games on sale for $1.99!

Link

Included are a lot of Alawar games, including a couple of the Twisted Lands series.

I’m going to pick up an Alawar FROG called Oddly Enough: Pied Piper and Mountain Crime: Requital, which has gotten good reviews.

Damn, I just picked up the Snark Busters 3 pack from Amazon over the weekend, I could have saved a few bucks if I’d waited.  Ah well, there’s always something nice about having the actual disc.  There are a few gems in there, for sure. Sacra Terra and Twisted Lands, Vampire Saga isn’t too bad either.  That reminds me, I gotta finish my Mountain Crime: Requital review.  It’s a solid game which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it had some flaws.  You can’t go wrong for $1.99, though.

This is a really quick review of Forbidden Secrets: Alien Town. Quick because there have been prior postings on the game.

Right off the bat, let me say that I’m a big fan of Alawar games. This game is no exception, although I do think other games had more consistently good features. More on that in a bit.

Graphics are excellent. The CG cut scenes are very good. The opening sequence of Angelica Weaver: Catch Me When You Can, however, remains the gold standard. Not a deduction, but they could have been better.

When you open the game, both music and effects sound levels are set to max volume. At that level, they are a distraction. I think you will enjoy the game more if levels are set to 50% or less.

HO scenes are more than fair. The consist of the standard find an object, find a hidden object and combine two or more obects to make an object. This game adds another wrinkle though. It adds hidden object scenes within hidden object scenes. Very clever.

Puzzles are also “fairly” fair. Usually when you find a clue to a puzzle, it will be entered into your Journal. There was one instance where one of the three clues necessary to solve the puzzle was not entered. Fortunately I was able to solve it anyway. I also take issue with the size of the Journal graphics. There is no way to enlarge them in order to see the real detail. That can be a problem unles you take notes along the way.

The puzzles themselves are standard fare. I.e find key, find tool; use key, use tool. Although there are three “agility” puzzles that will require a little mouse dexterity.

I would rate all of the above grading criteria above average. The killer is the dialog sequences. There aren’t many. Including repeat conversations with the same person, I think there are only eight. But they are all horrible. They add nothing to the game other than the fact that when you finally get through the dialog tree you are given an inventory object. Hit the Skip button and you get the same object. The second time I played the game I hit Skip whenever I could and never missed a beat.

My final annoyance is the morphing objects. There is one object that changes shape in almost every scene/location. There are forty in all. When I played the game the first time I found eighteen. On my second pass I did the pixel search. Found all forty.

Nothing was more disappointing than when I received the “Congratulations! You’ve found all forty” message, and there was no reward for doing so. Mybe there’s a reward in the CE I’m still waiting to hear about the CE benefits.

I think most participants/lurkers on this thread will really enjoy this game. It has some flaws, but they are more than outweighed by the plusses.

3.5 stars. Probably less than what it received on BFG, but still a solid buy.

Again, this was based on the SE version.

Josh -

If you aren’t blown away by the opening tracking scene I will be very surprised.

Tim

So I just completed Small Town Terrors: Livingston, and despite the rather underwhelming graphics (the character models being some of the the worst I’ve seen in a HOG) and overly cliched storyline, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. 

The gameplay is pretty solid and very heavy on the adventure elements.  The HOS’s weren’t too hard, although the mis-click penalty was quite a bit longer and more annoying than most other games; but this only made me more careful with searching. The way your health gauge paces the exploration of areas is rather neat; you have a bar that you build up with first aid items which you spend performing tasks.  It’s the puzzles that stood out the most for me, though, with a few that really made me work to figure them out. 

All in all, I’d give the game a solid 3/5.  The production value may not be the best, and maybe I’m just getting spoiled by all these fancy new games that have been coming out, but it’s still a good game. I just don’t know if I’ll ever find myself going back to it, as an adventure really has to have either a good story or phenomenal atmosphere to pull me back in again and again.  If you can find it on sale, though, definitely go for it, especially if you like your casual games on the more challenging side.

I downloaded the demo for The Lake House - Children of Silence off of Alawar’s site, and all I have to say is, when the heck is BFG getting this?  This might be the first game I splurge on the CE right away.  Crossing my fingers for a release by the 25th so if I do break down and buy it, I at least get another CE free and a punch card filled out!

EDIT - Upon further inspection, it looks like it’s an Alawar exclusive.  I’m assuming that means it won’t be distributed by 3rd party download sites, but maybe I’m wrong.  Has anyone purchased off of Alawar’s site, and if so, what are their prices like?

Yeah, they try to trick you into installing some toolbar, but if you click Advanced Installation, unselect all of the boxes and hit decline, it’ll take you through confirmation dialogs which you also need to decline, and then the game installs without all of that junk.

And, it looks like it’s “Tomorrow’s Game Today” at BFG!  Oh boy…now I have to decide if I want to spend that extra money.  Hmmmm…..

If you have Windows 8, please check out Adera. A high quality casual adventure game that great production values. Its also free and episodic (at least the first episode is free, but I haven’t gotten to Episode 2 yet).
http://www.adventuregamers.com/forums/viewthread/947/

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/adera/77f0d9b5-87ac-4816-87d5-76b75afcb6db

Chudah - 23 December 2012 09:15 AM

And, it looks like it’s “Tomorrow’s Game Today” at BFG!  Oh boy…now I have to decide if I want to spend that extra money.  Hmmmm…..

I saw that as well, and downloaded the CE demo. That 60 minutes went by in a flash.

The style, particularly the dialog style reminds me of another game. The basic title was Sins of the Fathers. It’s only a minor step up from the dialog style of Alien Town. I’m not sure if SotF was an Alawar game. Nevertheless, the game looks good.

BFG does have a “buy one/get one free” sale going on through the 25th. So, if I splurge on this CE, I can get another one free and reduce the cost of the two to SE level. Now if I could only think of another game I can’t live without.

Are you both talking about Lake House?

Yes

rtrooney - 23 December 2012 06:55 PM

Chudah - 23 December 2012 09:15 AM

And, it looks like it’s “Tomorrow’s Game Today” at BFG!  Oh boy…now I have to decide if I want to spend that extra money.  Hmmmm…..

I saw that as well, and downloaded the CE demo. That 60 minutes went by in a flash.

The style, particularly the dialog style reminds me of another game. The basic title was Sins of the Fathers. It’s only a minor step up from the dialog style of Alien Town. I’m not sure if SotF was an Alawar game. Nevertheless, the game looks good.

BFG does have a “buy one/get one free” sale going on through the 25th. So, if I splurge on this CE, I can get another one free and reduce the cost of the two to SE level. Now if I could only think of another game I can’t live without.

I think you mean Dark Strokes: Sins of the Father, and yeah, that’s from Alawar as well.  It seems they have several units that work on different games at the same time, and these two were under Friday’s Games.  Now that you mention it, not only is the dialog very similar between the two, but the cut scenes and action also feels very similar too.

So I just bit the bullet and picked up Lake House and Brink of Consciousness 2.  None of the other CE’s really interested me much, and I enjoyed all of the extras in the Dorian Gray Syndrome CE anyway, so I figured this was a pretty safe bet.