Dark Parables: The Match Girl's Lost Paradise Collector's Edition

We made it through the 14th out of the 15 game series! Based on the Match Girl... Yeah... If people are familiar with the actual Fairy Tale? They are going to know... Right off the bat... Ehh. Even IF you changed the story to something a little bit different. u.u... ALSO: There is an ITEM. A BRUSH... It's in a MURAL. It will appear that you CANNOT click on it... BUT YOU CAN! It was severely stuck for me and I was about to quit the game, until...! I used the Hints system on it and *somehow* I managed to take the item out. Phew! There. We are almost there. One more to go. :D.............

[h1]Short version: 53%[/h1] Dark Parables 15 is a mediocre fragmented object game with beautiful art and a woeful lack of things happening in its story. [h1]Long version:[/h1] After their failure in Dark Parables 13, Eipix had to sit one game out before they could come back with The Match Girl’s Lost Paradise. They obviously tried to reflect on their errors, but the results are questionable. To put it frankly, both the game design and storytelling feel uninspired. Everything in the gameplay aims for the bare minimum. The puzzles are simple time-wasters with no difficulty. The straightforward point-and-click segments feel sluggish, despite the quick-travel map. As for the fragmented object scenes, they are simply dull and a bit eye-straining. The story pretends to try more, but not much. As usual for this developer, we start with a great premise, learning that Andersen’s little match girl grew up to be a serial killer sorceress. However, we never move from there up until the last minutes, where it just dumps all remaining twists on us. Usually, the collectable backstories help with a weak plot in a Dark Parables game, but not here. They are focusing on the match girl’s childhood and her tutor, but apart from showing us her past, it doesn’t contribute anything.

TL:DR Not the best in the series, but worth getting. Sound and art are as lovely as usual. A little short, even with the bonus story. A nice game, though like most of this series it's more about atmosphere, art, and story-telling, than about regular hidden object (or other) puzzles. I enjoyed the game, but it lacked the adventure that made its predecessor - the Salt Princess - such an excellent and immersive story and game. Overall, there just isn't quite enough to it for me to give an unqualified two thumbs up. It is also shorter, or at least feels that way. My time shown (as usual) is much longer than I spent playing. I do recommend the game, especially since you can now buy it with the Dark Parables Collection with a bundle discount. These are very pretty games, and they are far more relaxing for those of us who prefer fantasy and fairy tales (even grim ones!) over more "realistic" casual games / HOGs featuring nightmares, police drama, and more modern enemies. To be clear, the Dark Parables series is terrific in part because it *does* show the dark side of fairy tales. At the same time, it avoids the more gory and straight horror imagery of a lot of modern games. ~ Imp (impracticaldemon on tumblr)

这个系列真是越做越烂。。。 1，章节减至6章，用不了多久就能玩完 2，场景偷懒，使用了不少前作的素材 3，解谜无新意，而且由于左上角寓言故事收集进度无法关闭，好几个解谜都被挡住了，完全没法玩，最后只能跳过 4，内容进度无法自动保存，我在最开始明明创建了玩家，之后再登录却根本没有存档 我还记得当场在ipad上玩第二部时那种惊艳的感觉，现在却只觉得狗尾续貂了。。。

I loved the games from this developer when they first came out...now, not so much...the story lines and mini games are so boring and repetitive to the point of insanity! Their games have been SO disappointing the last few years (I thought I'd try one more time) but...after this one (I completed it ONLY because I am a finisher) I will not be bothering to buy anymore of their games.

plot was less inetersting than usual. and i couldn't find all morphing objects, no matter how much i looked

TLDR: Possibly my favourite of the series so far. I've played the whole series almost back-to-back now, and I think (apart from 2-5) they just keep getting better. I really liked Ep.1, as despite being dated, it was a fresh and interesting way of implementing a HOP game. Then the series took a bit of a nose-dive (imo), as it went with the 'let's hammer out lots more of the same, not very well implemented or thought out games.' The stories were pretty good, but the rest was mostly just a chore. By the time 'true' widescreen was introduced (around Ep.8?) things definitely started improving. And since then other small nice changes have crept in. (Or maybe I was just getting used to the problems or getting more invested in the characters and games in general.) Ep.15 (this one) is in one small way a little disappointing; it doesn't have the same interweaving of previous characters the others slowly built up. That said, I thought the story wasn't bad at all. So maybe this is a good thing for many as it makes it a far more stand-alone game. Through the entire series all HOPs are of the 'here are pictures of the things you need to find; go click on them' type. And to begin with I really wasn't keen on this. The objects were either so badly blended into the scene that they were obvious, or so massively distorted in size/colour/contrast from the target picture that they were all but impossible to spot. But as time has passed, these things have been massively improved. EP.15 seems to have fixed my final issue with this type of HOP. It was possible in earlier titles to know for certain that you'd found the correct item. But a slight mis-click or (in some cases I'm pretty certain) bad masking did not get the item, instantly failing the 'perfect' status for the HOP. (I've found that I much prefer the games when you can try for this, as it becomes less of a mindless click-fest, and more about patience and observation.) The puzzles were interesting, if not massively hard. The music (apart from one extremely melancholy track which pops up in completely inappropriate places) was good too. So yeah; well worth it if you are OK with this type of HOP. It's certainly one I'll be playing through more than once.

Unexpected worthy to collect, Never heard of Match Girl Story or Handsome Prince. Recommend get Dark Parables the Sky + Giant one first it would make sense some parts of story. Only Issue I have is What happened to kingdom thereafter when detective returns they never show that part. Likes: bonus chapter you can play as match girl. Dislike: Match girl tries to kill detective in main game Personal opinion: Play with caution and don't take it too personally. Mind the dolls.

畫面美，找東西不會亂來

This game was good.