[b]Awakening 2: Moonfell Wood[/b] (IHOG)
Princess Sophia continues her journey to find her people, joined once again by her fairy guide. It's not long before we find a fiery little dragon to help us along the way, and this cute little guy stays in our inventory throughout the game.
Options include separate sliders for Sound and Music, Full-screen and Custom Cursor. Choice of Normal or Casual Mode.
The Steam overlay does not work with this one, so no easy screenshot-taking. I did take some manually and will be adding them to the Artwork section soon.
Despite the fact that I bought this game soon after it came out, this is the first time that I've actually played it.
Although at first it looks like [i]Moonfell Wood[/i] is just a cookie cutter sequel, it is actually much different than the first game.
We will still find objects scattered throughout the adventure parts of the game, but this time they are spread across multiple scenes, and don't need a trigger to appear. There a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, but we have a central area that we return to, and eventually previous areas will no longer be accessible. There is no [b]MAP [/b]or fast-travel, but the way the game is structured, I don't feel that they were really needed.
Lovely little Mira (our fairy [b]HINT[/b] button) is a bit more helpful during the adventure portions, and though there is still no directional hint, it's not hard to figure out what we need to be doing.
Periodically we'll find tarot cards, and each one has x-number the same item to find on it (ie. find 10 stars.) These cards help us along our way, and also add depth to the story in a creative way.
Our [b]Journal[/b] chronicles - but does not add to - the story, and can contain hints. Some of the puzzle solutions are so specific that most people won't be able to complete them without referencing the journal... or at least MY memory isn't that good! lol~ I recommend avoiding the Goals tab unless you need help, as it is contains spoiler-hints.
The [b]hidden object[/b] scenes are lightly-interactive, with items in yellow needing some kind of action before you can find them. It didn't seem like there were a lot of HOS in the game, but that is only the find-by-list scenes. There are also the aforementioned items we need to find in the adventure portion, those on the tarot cards, and mid-game there are also several fragmented objects that we will need to find. It's just that these other scenes were so well-integrated into the game that I didn't notice them as much!
I will add a spider alert here (we collect them in one scene), but they are not presented in a scary way. They're actually quite pretty!
[i]Moonfell Wood[/i] felt very [b]puzzle-heavy[/b], and while there are repeating themes to a lot of them, they were presented in such a way that they didn't feel boring or repetitive. Themes include tripeaks*, pattern recognition, matching like pairs/finding the odd one out, untangling ropes, putting pieces back together, swap-the-pieces puzzles, etc. These can be [b]SKIPPED[/b] once the meter fills.
*We have tripeaks instead of goblinjong this time around, and the mini-game is accessible via the main menu (although we don't get trivia when completing them this time.) This is easy tripeaks, as we have multiple foundation cards to work with.
Puzzles can so often disrupt the flow of the story, but everything in this game is so appropriately-paced that it felt perfectly natural to be doing all of these minis.
The devs weave together wonder and magic, puzzles, adventure and hidden objects into a beautiful tapestry that was a joy to explore. Without skipping any minis, the game took me 5.5 hours to complete. Absolutely recommended, I enjoyed every minute of it.
