Adventure Gamers - Forums

I finished the demo of Beyond. Still had 35 minutes to play. Thomas showed signs of his whiny self. “Mom! Can I please open a portal by myself? Pretty Please?” This kid could be a major irritant if this goes on for the entire game. Next task will be to find a roll of duct tape to put over his mouth!

There’s a half price sale going on at BFG which makes the CE purchase possible. Does is really add good detail to the story? If you give it a thumbs up, I’ll get it.

rtrooney - 10 December 2016 11:12 AM

I finished the demo of Beyond. Still had 35 minutes to play. Thomas showed signs of his whiny self. “Mom! Can I please open a portal by myself? Pretty Please?” This kid could be a major irritant if this goes on for the entire game. Next task will be to find a roll of duct tape to put over his mouth!

There’s a half price sale going on at BFG which makes the CE purchase possible. Does is really add good detail to the story? If you give it a thumbs up, I’ll get it.

I wouldn’t say the CE adds a huge amount to the story. As I recall, the gameplay was rather ordinary. I wouldn’t bother unless you are an extras fiend like I am. I’m about to put up a review of a game where I think the CE was worth it.

Calling all puzzle fans! The storyline in Mystery Case Files: Broken Hour (Eipix) is a rather bizarre tangle, but who cares, as it exists mainly to string together a lot of enjoyable and yes, challenging, mini-games. As the game opens, you are listening to an assignment from the Queen herself, to find out what happened to the Royal Photographer after he checked into an infamous boarding house.

There follows a typical haunted-mansion storyline, with the garnish of a rigid schedule for what boarders do at certain times. Fortunately, you do not have to follow the schedule! There are a few “jump scares”, but the main excitement comes from a number of those multi-step mini-puzzles which MCF games specialize in. In this game, you can skip a single stage and go on to the next segment of the puzzle instead of bailing on the whole thing. There are no hand-eye coordination challenges, thank goodness.

The background artwork is well-conceived and several scenes include excellent use of perspective to give depth. The character illustration is outstanding (but don’t look closely if you demand lip sync). The music was mostly doleful and annoying, especially when they were playing the track with the creepy children’s laughter. The HOPs were about average for a modern game.

The CE bonus chapter clears up some lingering questions and I would recommend it, in spite of having to look at Jacob’s horrible little chin-beard. Also there are a couple of clever extras, and Eipix gives us replays of all those dandy puzzles. It took me hours to explore this weird establishment. Given the complex puzzles, I would not recommend this game for novice players, but gameplay is not fiendishly difficult. I would rate the SE 3.5 and the CE a 4.0 (after taking off a half-star for the moaning-Myrtle soundtrack).

I enjoyed MCF: Broken Hour as well, and I find those kind of Rube Goldberg puzzles particularly fun, especially when the steps finally fall together for an ah-ha moment.

I finished playing Beyond - Star Descendant CE. Hard to say whether I liked it better than the first. I found the bonus game interesting. It wasn’t necessary to finish the main game, but it provided a nice explanation for how your adopted son arrived. It would appear that a trademark of Mad Head Games is battle sequence between the protagonist and the chief antagonist at the end of the game. Beyond - Light Advent had one. The two Rite of Passage games had them. I’m guessing that the new Rite of Passage - Deck of Fates game will have one. That’s about the only thing I don’t like about Mad Head games. Fortunately there’s the option to simply wait those sequences out until the Skip button has recharged.

I just finished playing Rite of Passage - Deck of Fates. It’s the last game in the franchise that now includes six games. The other two I’ve played are Child of the Forest and Perfect Show. That is the order in which I played them, but chronologically the order is reversed. The other three games, which I have not played, are The Lost Tides, Heart of the Storm and Hide and Seek.

I can say that all the typical Mad Head Games’ elements are present. E.g., using books with mis-placed elements to provide backstory, and the final battle scene between you and the antagonist. What I can also say is that this game was considerably more suspenseful than the two games I played before. While I was in no real danger of being killed by the antagonist, (there are actually several of them,) there were certainly some moments when my anxiety level rose to dangerous heights.

I did play the SE version, so I can’t comment on whether the CE’s bonus material is worth the extra cost.

I just downloaded the SE version of Rite of Passage - The Lost Tides. I’m kind of curious about the evolution of the games in the series. The latest game, Deck of Fates, which I talked about in the above message, seemed to rely a great deal on memory and action puzzles. I didn’t dislike them, but they were quite different than the logic puzzles I recalled from the first two games. This is the third game in the series. Is this the game that started a transition in puzzle design?

I’ll let you know.

Becky recently subbed for me and posted a Casual Friday AGSOTD. The game can best be called Adam Wolfe - Supernatural Detective. But that’s not entirely the case. The game consists of four episodes, and is sold by BFG in two two-episode packs. The first is titled Adam Wolfe - Flames of Time. The second is Adam Wolfe - Blood of Eternity.

I finished the game, (that is all four episodes) earlier today. Each episode/act takes between 1:20 and 1:30. So that makes this about a six hour game. If you buy it at standard pricing from BFG, that’s $14 US, or CE pricing for a game with no bonus material. So if you want Steam-style pricing, but dislike Steam, as I do, wait for some sort of half price or BOGO sale. There are at least two or three of those a month.

The puzzles are often quite simple. There were several lockpicking puzzles, but only one required you to do any actual lockpicking. There are only five “random list” style HO scenes in the game. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a fair number of HO scenes. They are simply very cleverly disguised as something else.

Both Becky and furgotten mentioned on the AGSOTD thread that the ease of the puzzles was a way to maintain pacing. That may very well be true. Because even though the game can last almost six hours or more, it seems very fast paced. And that pacing very much contributes to the unavoidable tension in the game. Danger is around every corner, and you are in a hurry to find it.

Breaking up the game into episodes, even though they are part of a contiguous whole, adds to the tension. Just like a Dan Brown novel where chapters are only two or three pages long, the shortness of the individual episodes compels you to move forward.

At the end of a few episodes you confront a character and are given a dialog tree of sorts. The character says something and your are given a choice of three responses. This goes on for three or four additional trees until there is a conclusion. I may play the game sometime in the future to find out, but right now I have no idea whether any of the choices made in the dialog tree affect the outcome.

As for the final outcome….I am clueless. Is the protagonist dead? Did he die to save his sister? Is he in some sort of limbo? Is this a setup for a future sequel? I really don’t know. When you play the game yourself, which I recommend you do, let me know what you think of the ending.

For those who are interested in the discussion on the AGSOTD thread, you can find it here.

I went looking for “Best of 2016” lists for casual games, and found these:

Unigamesity Best Hidden Object Games of 2016:
Grim Tales: The Heir
Hidden Expedition: The Fountain of Youth
Reflections of Life: Dark Architect
Bridge to Another World: Alice in Shadowland
Dreampath: Curse of the Swamps
The Secret Order: The Buried Kingdom
Living Legends: Bound by Wishes
Whispered Secrets: Everburning Candle
The Keeper of Antiques: The Revived Book
Sea of Lies: Leviathan Reef

AllAboutCasualGame has a number of lists, including Best Adventure, Best Story, Best Visuals, Best New, Best Sequel, Best Concept, Best Developer, and Talk of the Town, as well as:
Best Hidden Object Game
Haunted Hotel: The Axiom Butcher (Elephant Games)
Dark Realm: Lord of the Winds (Mad Head Games)
Hidden Expedition: The Fountain of Youth (Eipix)
Dead Reckoning: Death Between the Lines (Eipix)
Lost Lands: The Wanderer (FIVE-BN Games)
Living Legends: Bound by Wishes (4 Friends Games)
Witches’ Legacy: Awakening Darkness (Elefun Games)
Whispered Secrets: Everburning Candle (GrandMA Studios)
and
Best of the Best
Adam Wolfe: Flames of Time (Mad Head Games)
Mystery Case Files: Broken Hour (Eipix)
Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala (Artifex Mundi)
Grim Tales: The Heir (Elephant Games)
Dawn of Hope: Skyline Adventure (Mad Head Games)
Reflections of Life: Dark Architect (GrandMA Studios)
Bridge to Another World: Alice in Shadowland (4 Friends Games)

My personal favorites of 2016 were: (alphabetically)
Bridge to Another World: Alice in Shadowland
Dead Reckoning: Death Between the Lines
Mystery Case Files: Broken Hour
Rite of Passage: Deck of Fates
Sable Maze: Sinister Knowledge

Wow! I’ve played many of these games, but not all. Some, such as the first Adam Wolfe game can’t be thought of as great without including the second two chapaters. Even then….great?

The Heir is just a horrible game. No idea how anyone could include in in a best of anything list.

There are a few I can agree on. Enigmatis 3 was certainly one of the best.

Will review more and come back with thoughts.

Thanks ever so much cluelass for giving us all a aterting point.