Story/Plot:
Fairy Godmother Stories: Dark Deal is the second game of the series to appear on Steam. As the the title would suggest, you take on the role of a Fairy Godmother, a person entrusted to help people with your magic. You are about to meet with two of your newest clients when you see them interact with someone calling himself The Seller.
The Seller is able to grant wishes, but there is always a cost to it. You briefly clash, then the Seller flees to pursue his own agenda. You follow in his footsteps, undoing his magic and figuring out his plans all so you can stop him.
Beating the game unlocks a second story, introducing how you meet your friend who plays a prominent role in the main story. As extra content goes, it is pretty meh.
Visuals:
The visuals are pretty good for a visual novel. The backgrounds are colorful and vibrant, though everything is set in the winter so some of the screens feel a bit samey, though this could be due to the gameplay.
The characters are somewhat realistic, though I'm not a fan of this style. I found they hit that uncanny valley portion where they felt 'off'. This didn't happen for every character, but enough of them that it couldn't help but take me out of the game. This is also a negative when they portray movement. The characters are stiff, giving off the impression of a paper doll being pulled at certain joints.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is a mix of Hidden Object screens, point and click elements, and puzzles of various sorts. This game is one of the better ones for Hidden Object screens. They try to vary up how you find items such as writing down what to find in one area, a silhouette of the item in another, to finding the differences between two similar screens. Finally, if you can't find an item, there is a hint tab that will locate it for you, and it refills in case you get stuck again. If you don't care for the Hidden Object Screens, you can switch to a Match 3 game instead.
Adding some challenge to the game are a variety of puzzles. Most of these are logic puzzles, though a couple also rely on your reflexes. The difficulty of these vary, but any fan of HoGs will have seen the like before. However, if you find these puzzles aren't to your taste, you can always skip them.
Finally there are the point and click elements, and this is where the game fails. Why is it? They recycle every trope in what is essentially a chapter before going to the next area. What do I mean? There were at least 4 times you had to feed an animal to get them to move to access something. There were 5 instances where you had to find a long, thing object to lift up a latch.
The fairy godmother must be a germophobe as well because each chapter required you to find a broom or make something to sweep up a bunch of dirt. Hell, it got to the point where I started thinking "Given how often I do this, it would make sense for the character to carry a small bag of lockpicks, mini-broom, etc." because these happened so damn often.
There is nothing wrong with recycling a few puzzles, but this game went beyond the pale. It got to the point I almost wished to take a drink for every puzzle that was repeated.
Finally, the game has 3 collectibles you can find like morphing objects (objects which change shape), character tiles (which gives further detail on some of the NPCs you meet), and personal godmother items. Collect all of these, and they unlock a few things in the extras menu like an additional background. However, while not to hard to find these collectibles, most people will not find it compelling enough to catch them all.
Sound/Music:
This game has a constant soundtrack that changes depending on the screen. There is really nothing exceptional to it, but for those who like something to listen to it is competently composed.
I wish the same could be said about the voice acting. While a studio like this can't afford good voice actors, it would be nice if most of them at least tried not to sound like they were reading from a paper. Occasions where there should be emotion felt rather robotic.
Difficulty:
As with most Hidden Object Games, the difficulty of this is rather easy, especially for long time players of the genre. However, you do have the option of making things easier or more difficult in the options menu. Here, you can even set how fast the hint bar recharges or the skip bar gets filled on the puzzles.
Extras/Achievements
As a collector's edition, you get access to the music, backgrounds, and an extra story. Unfortunately, I didn't find this bonus content compelling enough to spend much time with.
One thing this game does well is that you can customize a lot of stuff in the options menu. As mentioned before, you can change the difficulty, or turn off music if you wish to listen to something else.
Finally, this game doesn't have any Steam Achievements, for those who like such things, but there are in game achievements.
Recommendation:
Can I recommend the game? Currently, the answer is no. I actually was a cautious fan of the first game, but this one just felt rushed and boring. This is a shame as I like the premise itself; undo the results of someone who is essentially your dark counterpart.
What proved to be the tipping point was major recycling of the point and click elements; I felt like ranting after the fourth time I had to jury rig something like a comb, staple remover, etc. so I could pull nails out. I guess hammer should also be added to the Fairy Godmother's travel bag.
However, i won't deny the game is competently made. I didn't run across any glitches, and I won't deny that as many HoGs as I've played, I have become jaded to mechanics. If you do wish to get this game, then I definitely recommend waiting until it is on sale.
