
Reveal the meaning behind strange dreams in this eerie Hidden Object encounter.
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All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Dutch, Korean, Portuguese - Portugal, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Ukrainian
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Reviews
Themes across 45 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
The spinning plate minigame sucks hard and prevents you from getting two achievements.
I really can't recommend it unless you get it for under a dollar and you want to kill some time. The story isn't really there -- it's like they had some ideas and just didn't fully follow through. Some of the clicking is fiddlly and it often doesn't explain what your supposed to click to work on a puzzle.
Forgotten Places: Lost Circus is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. It's a Hidden Object puzzle game, the type you normally see on mobile app stores or even as browser apps. There's literally hundreds of these on Steam, mostly published by Artifex Mundi, many of them free on mobile app stores, but this one will cost you money on Steam. There's a spooky circus theme to the game, but this is a just a veneer over a tired and overdone set of hidden object minigames and Adobe Flash tier puzzles, wrapped together with a bunch of static screens that you "move" through by tapping your finger on your iPhone screen. This is significantly worse in quality than the usual copy + pasted Artifex Mundi mobile apps. While these kinds of games are popular amongst casual gamers, it's difficult to argue this is a great value proposition as a PC game, especially considering the price of this compared to the hundreds of free HOGs on the mobile app stores. From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The mobile app only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio (it's got "curtains" to fill the pillars, but they're not fooling anyone, this is a 4:3 game). It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this mobile app has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone. Some of the defects in the mobile app can be attributed to the choice of using the video game library/engine, CoronaLabs Solar2D. It's rarely used, because it's arguably worse than construction kits like GameMaker Studio, RPGMaker and Clickteam Fusion, but it's also much harder to work with. Despite this, Solar2D has very limited capabilities, which go some way to explaining the poor quality of the mobile app. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 10 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected. So, should you buy this mobile app? Forgotten Places: Lost Circus is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the mobile app, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
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Hours played at review time, across 45 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
A horrifically terrible point and click game. It's partly condescending and babyish, and then at times, ridiculously difficult and unnecessarily hard. The "Horror" aspects of the damp, derelict circus are barely explored and you spend 90% of the game interacting only with the happy, fun circus memories - and that's IF you can get them to interact. UI is terrible and the click boxes for the game are next to useless and can be borderline unplayable if you don't click one specific pixel, whilst the game mockingly tells you to do a simple task that SHOULD be simple, yet is next to impossible. I finished it on expert mode in 2 hours, going slowly. Don't waste your money, there are better point and click games out there.
Forgotten Places: Lost Circus во многом отличается от Forgotten Places: Regained Castle, вышедшей на пару месяцев раньше у той же команды разработчиков. В "Затерянном цирке" большее разнообразие в вариациях поиска предметов, вот только предметы очень часто слишком маленькие и приходится просто тыкать наугад во всё подряд, потому что сложно разглядеть очертания. Самым большим плюсом в сравнении с "Замком" стали мини-игры, которые здесь сложнее и интереснее и неплохо разбавляют игровой процесс. Прорисовка предметов и локаций абсолютно другая и выглядит, к сожалению, не так красиво и запоминающеся как в предыдущей игре. В целом, если бы не интересные мини-игры, я бы с натяжкой мог порекомендовать эту игру. Лично мне показалось, что она очень сильно уступает Regained Castle. Жаль, что у Sungift больше не выходило игр для ПК и они переключились на мобильные платформы. Думаю они могли бы нас порадовать интересными играми.
a boring HOG with a stupid story and even stupider ending. pros. ok graphics cons. very boring story with a mega stupid ending short (less than 2 hours for the main story) no bonus story boring puzzles pixel hunting HOs no cut scenes no animations no voice acting over all i do not recommend this game for no matter what price. i give it 3/10
Completionists beware! TL;DR- For a casual single playthrough, it might be worth buying if on sale or part of a bundle with better games included. But for anyone who might want to hunt achievements or anyone looking for an actual challenge, skip this one. 2-3 hours playtime first run. Achievements are bugged. I played through a second time and never got the credit for three different achievements that I should've been given for that second playthrough. I was in the middle of trying a third run after deleting both my previous files to see if that works when I ragequit because I realized a milisecond too late that I'd missed a pawprint and would have to restart yet again. If you're the type who wants to have 100% of the steam achievements, you'll need to beat the hardest mode without skipping the puzzles or using hints AND get all of the pawprints in your FIRST run. Because there is NO going back to completed areas to get those last few paws. And there is NO replaying a puzzle to see what you skipped. And there are NO second chances. YOU LOSE. GOOD DAY, SIR! Beyond that, several "mini-game" puzzle segments are just plain tedious and not actually challenging. The "put pieces back together" types are irritating because every single one has the pieces and the place you're putting them at slightly different perspectives. This makes shapes and color patterns both really difficult to use for no good reason. A lot of the UI is unresponsive. Picked up the wrong piece and want to set it down? No, you CAN'T just click the spot you picked it up from. Have fun clicking madly for a few seconds before the game finally realizes that you want to let it go. Trying to spin a plate? Logic says spinning the mouse faster should make the plate accelerate faster, right? WRONG, THE PLATES SPIN ONLY WHEN THEY WANT TO SPIN. It seems the majority of people struggle with two of the "mini-games" and yet the devs' response was basically "Well you must be doing it wrong." and nothing else. No tips, no troubleshooting, no links to actual game footage of the solution. And don't try looking up a playthrough on YouTube, because the solution that guy uses for the barbell puzzle is literally impossible in the game currently. And he's the only one with a full playthrough. You're better off just mucking around until you get it to work. Best advice for barbells: Try to get the plates of the same color together. Best advice for plates: Try setting your framerate down and/or using a windowed mode instead of fullscreen. And the best way I've found to beat the HO levels is to click madly around areas with a lot of items until the list is half gone. There's no penalty for misclicks, so you might as well abuse that, right? None of the objects are really that cleverly hidden, although a few are just plain unfair owing to things like the definition of what shape constitutes a "leaf" and the abysmal lighting level in basically 80% of the scenes or more (there's even one level where the light flickers slightly, and yes it is MADDENING when you're trying to see in the dark corners). Completionists, be prepared for frustration and anger. Casuals, you might like a single playthrough, but I foresee at least a couple skipped puzzles and a few HO hints used. Spend money here at your own risk.
Got it on sale for under a buck. Short game but worth the discount price. Lots of hidden object searches. They're pretty good. Puzzle games are OK, most are generic, a few are different. Overall story arc is fun, you're trying to catch a tiger cub which leads you all around a circus from your dreams. Paw prints are collectable. Music is meh, artwork is nice. One thing that's unique about this game and not in a good way is that you play it on rails. You're led from scene to scene, no going back, no hunting around or traveling between scenes. So look carefully for the paw prints; you won't get a second chance to find them.
NMD玩一会就玩不下去了,我特么还以为是0几年的游戏,看了下商店页面发现是18年的,奇了怪了,同样是这段时间A厂出的点击解谜找物游戏 人家质量可没这么烂,虽然总有些游戏剧情一般 或者全是机翻,但至少都有完整的动画 角色也有配音,比这游戏强上几百倍。这游戏我是真的难绷,看到那简陋的画面就无语,2018了怎么还有这种游戏。。。
I don't really understand why there are some negative reviews for this game, because I don't have any remarks on it: beautiful and great game to play. A nice contrast between black & white, sad graphics & colorful happy one... The puzzles are easy, even with the hardest difficulty. The scenes where you have to search for objects are really nice, because you have to look at several screens to find them. For example, you can really open a locker and search which objects are in there... Also very nice atmospheric music for this kind of game. A perfect change with puzzles and search objects. Also great that this game is completely available in Dutch... It's short, but I'm sure you will not complain when 'Hidden Objects & puzzle' is your kind of game you want to play !!!
Momentum
Pace estimated from the game's recent review growth (our daily snapshots) at its own sales-per-review ratio — a momentum signal, not booked sales.
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
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