Amulet of Dreams

Don't play this game until you check the forums and familiarize yourself with what's apparently a game breaking bug late in the game that can prevent you from finishing and have to start over. It's easy to avoid (just make you sure you pick up one particular item first in one particular scene) if you know where it is, and I didn't have a problem with it since I was aware of it ahead of time. It's outrageous this catastrophic bug was never fixed, but setting that aside and assuming you know about it and how to avoid it, I thought this was quite a good HOG. There are definitely some clunky aspects. Clicking on items in HOG scenes is slightly finicky. There are a small number of dubious translations, nothing so bad as to be straight wrong and make the scene uncompleteable but not the clearest. There are no difficulty levels, so you can't choose a setting that makes interactable areas sparkle, and I repeatedly missed zoomable areas on various screens until using the hint button. But overall the gameplay here is strong -- good HOG's, good minigames, solid enough story within the context of always ludicrous HOG stories. The way this game has seven discrete "locations" that you unlock one by one after getting most of the way but not completely through the prior location kept it so you always have a bunch of areas with things you still need to do (and the game's good about marking locations as completed when you complete everything in them) without being so open that it gets overwhelming and annoying, and the amount of items in your inventory was always kept reasonable, so that when you pick up something in a new location that lets you make progress in a different location, you can ususually remember 'oh, I know where this goes!'

This old HOG is fine. Contrary to most games from that era, there's not a lot of HO scenes nor are they devious. They act as filler most of the times. The game is basically separated by 7 sections, with around 5 or 6 scenes each (except the last one which is a single screen). Expect a lot of puzzles, nothing super creative but they are mostly fine. There are some inconsistencies with hotspot signaling with the cursor but in general I found no big issues. What I think drags the game down, is the descriptions of hotspots that will spoil the puzzle solutions even when you have no knowledge of what is required. For example, you inspect a weird portal place, and the character will explain that a magic charged knife is needed, which at the time, you have no idea about it. Also, the last achievement will pop up 3 or 4 puzzles before the end. Not great, not terrible. Get it on discount.

Amulet drags me through pixel porridge nightmares. Puzzles solve me instead, still I crawl back for another brain bruise.

Good music and visuals, but voice is very bad. Story is, hmm forget about it. Puzzles are kind of disconnected, sometimes need to click on exact place to make items work... and that gnome, ugh 5/10

Good for starter gamers. Easy enough that you don't try to give up.

Visually pleasant, but poor voice acting, shallow story, and illogical item usage weigh down the experience. Most hidden object/puzzle games have an internal logic on why certain items are used for certain tasks and not others, but when I found myself holding two swords and a dagger which can only be used once each in very specific ways I was beyond disappointed. Instead of providing 300 different items to figure out their specific use, why not use the dagger charging mechanic to imbue it with different uses per new area instead? (More of a commentary on all games of the like) Why are all items one use only? Rope or matches may be used up, a medallion may need to stay in place, but who finds tools like pliers or a knife and decides to leave them behind? What makes one of the two swords better for branch cutting than egg cracking? Why do I need to wait to find rope to tie something when I already have fishing line? If you want to enforce a specific use, plan the finds so that I either have to use the rope before I can even get the fishing line, or simply don't require so many similar items, be more creative in how my character would solve the problem. Quality of use over quantity of items. The voice acting is simply very, very bad. Perhaps it wasn't professionally done and was just recorded by the developers or the actors struggled with finding the right emotions for the weird plot. (which seems to be a common problem with these types of games) Either way, I skipped most cut-scenes by the end. The only positive was the art which was pleasant and varied, keeping the scenes interesting in a way the plot couldn't manage on it's own.

In a shoert discription.... It can be said as a good playeble game...

It seemed very disjointed overall. It was just too all over the place for me. I finished because I felt like I needed to, but I'd tried and stopped playing it a couple times over the years.

The game is fine enough but the puzzles aren't very intuitive and it doesn't flow very well making it a little annoying. There are much better hidden object games out there, I wouldn't bother.

Storywise the game is fine, yet the execution is simply bad First of all there's a game breaking bug which can completely block progression. As the game autosaves to a single slot, the only way to proceed if you get locked out is to replay everything from the start Aside from this the mechanics also don't work properly. 1. Locations are highlighted as long as there are more actions to take in them, regardless whether they are available now or will be available later 2. From time to time you have to randomly check all marked locations as some interactions may unlock a new HOG scene in an already visited place. Nothing in the story points to such place and due to issue number 1 the game itself doesn't properly hint it either 3. On multiple occasions you collect few items with the same function and have to use a specific one in each place. For example at some point I had 3 swords and only for one of them there was a logical requirement to use that specific one in a puzzle. On other occasions to for example cut something you don't need any blade, you need a specific one. This makes it impossible to logically connect some objects with proper puzzles and leads to trial and error approach Overall the game isn't really that bad, but you can easily find a more enjoyable title.