Dream Detective

Positives: ------------- + Detailed, complex, colourful and well-drawn graphics. To the point I was still noticing subtleties and jokey references after examining a particular scene for 30 mins or so. + Lots of content for the price. This isn't something you'll finish in one sitting. Although you might try, as it very addictive to "just see what the next level is like." + Decent, responsive UI. + Plenty of different modes. + A 'theme' about restoring the castle as you progress. I bit like so many of those pesky side-stories in mobile match-3 games. But it's actually alright here, as it doesn't stop you playing if you can't repair more stuff. Negatives (minor): ------------------------- - Some more explanation about some of the game mechanics might not go amiss. Like that you can pan the screen about, or zoom in, or that you can enter different areas within a level by clicking on them. Seems glaringly obvious to me now too. But took quite a while and some random luck to discover these, as the initial level doesn't have them, so I'd mentally discarded them as options. Given the target audience ('Kids of 0 to 100') it wouldn't hurt to make this clearer. - Icons at the bottom telling you what to find are FAR too small. (I'm running at 2560x1440, if that makes any difference.) Sometimes the visual clue is a completely hopeless blob or dot. Wouldn't be hard to make those bigger when you clicked on them, surely? - Scrolling about at the edge of the area sometimes locks up the panning, or it jumps about randomly. It's frustrating trying to work out how to avoid this, and how to get out of this state. Especially in timed mode. - Some of the music is either looped irritatingly quickly, or has really jarring loop-cuts in it. (Or both). And not thematically appropriate for many scenes, either. - No way of turning the music off, but leaving the sound on. (See above for why you'll want to do this.) - No graphical options. None. This is almost 2020. Shocking. ;) [spoiler]- Sometimes there is a clear difference between a highly zoomed in scene and the vector-drawn graphics placed on it. This can actually be used to your advantage in some scenes. [/spoiler] Negatives (major): ------------------------- -- WAY too many timed levels in the main story line IMO. If you're a completionist you'll want to try and finish them anyway. But they don't fit here at all. 'Find 3 things in a large bunch of near-identical things in 60 seconds when some are fading in and out, or rotating, or obscured by parallax objects' just doesn't float my boat. I found a few of these levels frustrating, stressful, and stupidly hard (or luck based). And just 'filler.' Some are certainly interesting, clever and fun; the majority aren't. And some I can't even finish on the medium difficulty after 5 or 6 goes, so chance of getting 100%? Nil. [Note; the beginner difficulty level is generally pretty easy if you just want to progress to another classical level.] -- The (text) clues. Sometimes these are very helpful and totally fun. But some are utterly useless ("Look in the crowd") and some are so obscure or badly written as to be genuinely misleading. Conclusion: ---------------- It may look like the negatives far out-weigh the positives here. But that's misleading. It's still really enjoyable if 'find stuff' games are something you enjoy. And definitely worth the asking price. Also, although the negatives are near game-breaking at times, I don't think there is anything especially hard to fix. Maybe this'll happen; maybe not. Overall, though. I've enjoyed it. Good value at about 21 hrs game time. I still have some timed and 'activities' levels to finish; but they are annoying enough that I'll probably not bother. However, I think there's a reasonable chance that if you like Hidden Folks, this will be worth getting too. I have no problem recommending to people who like this kind of thing. Edit: ------ Okay, I now see this has been released on mobile as well. This explains a lot about the general game play and interface. I would not really consider this a 100% port to the PC, but it's certainly better than many. Additionally, a massive [b]thanks[/b] to the developers for making this an add-less, no in-game-purchase title for PC. That alone is worth supporting them for. The more developers/publishers realise that adverts, P2P and P2W just seems like a cash-grabbing, uninteresting, doomed concept (that game players simply can't be bothered with anymore) the better! I'm really happy I bought this game; I'd not even bother downloading the mobile version, even if I'd not played this first.