A new genre of games has come on to my radar in the passed few weeks. This genre is that of the Hidden Object variety. Bearing close resemblance to the Point and Click adventures of old, a Hidden Object Adventure has you roaming around a territory, going through a story by solving puzzles and riddles. For most of the puzzles to solve, you come across a large backdrop in which plenty of objects have been placed. You need to find specific items within this heap, which usually results in you finding an item that you need to solve an environmental puzzle, like a key to open a door or a blade to cut a rope.
Bringing forth an excellent example of the genre is the title: Nightfall Mysteries: The Asylum Conspiracy, a game by Big Fish Games. In this game you follow the young Christine as she sets out for the Ashburg Asylum on a remote island. Her journey there serves but a single purpose, and that is to find her lost grandfather. He was a patient there and there has been no word from him. With the Asylum being abandoned, Christine has a good ways to go before she will be able to find him. Unfortunately, the place isn’t quite as abandoned as she was lead to believe. And so the player is sucked in to an Asylum of secrets and horrors.
The game opens up on a dock, where you can search around for something of help or to move on to the next screen. A screen in most of these games is a broad angle of a scenery, in this case the docks, the waters around it and the road up to the asylum. Moving from this screen to the next entails a simple click of the mouse when hovering close to the edge of where you want to go. There are two kinds of things you need to watch out for here. One is a Hidden Object puzzle and the other is a Search puzzle. Searching means nothing more than examining something from close by, which is usually a part of or is an environmental puzzle. The first Hidden Object puzzle is a bulletin board, which is littered with bugs, newspaper articles and various other items including a flag of a country. There’s a list of items on the bottom of your screen that you need to find to finish the puzzle.
And so the game goes on, taking you from one location to the other, propelling you further in to the asylum through means of the story, which is short but sweet.
In the end, the game isn’t that very long. But for what it’s worth, which is only 5 bucks on the site itself, it’s a fun game that should keep you entertained for a little while.
The thing about this game is that the graphics usually are of quite the astonishing quality. More than once you’ll see that graphics on games like these will be far superior to those found on AAA titles of today. That’s because the only graphics are still screens with a bit of animation, but that doesn’t change the fact that they can be quite stunning to look at.
I’ll give you even more by saying that the music in these games match the scale of the graphics and are very fun to listen to.
I’ll be the first to admit that I looked down on Casual games. Not because of what they are, but because of what they are doing to the industry. Everyone is looking to take a piece of the casual pie, which means streamlining games and making them more accessible. And everyone seems to be wanting to make these games as well. Which means a huge load of sub-par shovel ware that is being passed off as a game when in the end, they’re only wasting the time of the developer and the consumer.
There is one uncanny trend with casual games that I surely do not wish to bleed in to the AAA title world. Ever heard of Bejeweled? Yes? Good. No? Where in the hell have you been living? Anyhoo, now go to a random casual games website and tell me just how many Bejeweled clones there are? Riiiiiiiiiight. It’s quite unnerving. And then there’s Zynga, that openly says to the world that they want their developers to steal as much as they can, as long as it means meeting the deadline or making the game fun.
It’s a damned shame that all of this is going on because there really are gems in the casual game business, like Hidden Object games. I really hope that you give these games a chance.
If you want a to try out a game for free, many of these Hidden Object games have free one hour trials. If that’s not your cup of tea, try out Gardens of Time on Facebook. Truth be told, the only game on that place worth a damn. GoT can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/gardensoftime/
Bringing forth an excellent example of the genre is the title: Nightfall Mysteries: The Asylum Conspiracy, a game by Big Fish Games. In this game you follow the young Christine as she sets out for the Ashburg Asylum on a remote island. Her journey there serves but a single purpose, and that is to find her lost grandfather. He was a patient there and there has been no word from him. With the Asylum being abandoned, Christine has a good ways to go before she will be able to find him. Unfortunately, the place isn’t quite as abandoned as she was lead to believe. And so the player is sucked in to an Asylum of secrets and horrors.
The game opens up on a dock, where you can search around for something of help or to move on to the next screen. A screen in most of these games is a broad angle of a scenery, in this case the docks, the waters around it and the road up to the asylum. Moving from this screen to the next entails a simple click of the mouse when hovering close to the edge of where you want to go. There are two kinds of things you need to watch out for here. One is a Hidden Object puzzle and the other is a Search puzzle. Searching means nothing more than examining something from close by, which is usually a part of or is an environmental puzzle. The first Hidden Object puzzle is a bulletin board, which is littered with bugs, newspaper articles and various other items including a flag of a country. There’s a list of items on the bottom of your screen that you need to find to finish the puzzle.
And so the game goes on, taking you from one location to the other, propelling you further in to the asylum through means of the story, which is short but sweet.
In the end, the game isn’t that very long. But for what it’s worth, which is only 5 bucks on the site itself, it’s a fun game that should keep you entertained for a little while.
The thing about this game is that the graphics usually are of quite the astonishing quality. More than once you’ll see that graphics on games like these will be far superior to those found on AAA titles of today. That’s because the only graphics are still screens with a bit of animation, but that doesn’t change the fact that they can be quite stunning to look at.
I’ll give you even more by saying that the music in these games match the scale of the graphics and are very fun to listen to.
I’ll be the first to admit that I looked down on Casual games. Not because of what they are, but because of what they are doing to the industry. Everyone is looking to take a piece of the casual pie, which means streamlining games and making them more accessible. And everyone seems to be wanting to make these games as well. Which means a huge load of sub-par shovel ware that is being passed off as a game when in the end, they’re only wasting the time of the developer and the consumer.
There is one uncanny trend with casual games that I surely do not wish to bleed in to the AAA title world. Ever heard of Bejeweled? Yes? Good. No? Where in the hell have you been living? Anyhoo, now go to a random casual games website and tell me just how many Bejeweled clones there are? Riiiiiiiiiight. It’s quite unnerving. And then there’s Zynga, that openly says to the world that they want their developers to steal as much as they can, as long as it means meeting the deadline or making the game fun.
It’s a damned shame that all of this is going on because there really are gems in the casual game business, like Hidden Object games. I really hope that you give these games a chance.
If you want a to try out a game for free, many of these Hidden Object games have free one hour trials. If that’s not your cup of tea, try out Gardens of Time on Facebook. Truth be told, the only game on that place worth a damn. GoT can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/gardensoftime/
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