Love Chronicles: The Spell Collector's Edition

This is the first of the Love Chronicles series. You are a prince, who has been having rather disturbing dreams. Deciding to investigate as it might be destiny, you make a journey, eventually discovering a kingdom which has suffered a witch's curse. Basically, a twist on Sleeping Beauty. Plot is decent, characters are vibrant, minigames are fun, and the HO scenes are thrilling. Recommend getting the bundle.

Decent enough (if cliched) polt, characters and dialog. The graphics look a bit dated, but I'm assuming this game was first released way before it got to Steam, so that's undersandable. Music is perfectly fine; I played the whole game with it on, which is pretty unusual. The puzzles adequate, but not at all memorable. What sets this game apart from all other HOGs I've played, though is the basic HO mechanics. Normally, you navigate around a load of scenes then click on specific areas which take you to (an often arbitrary) pile of junk to search though probably giving you one useful item for your quest. Which I've always found a bit contrived. But here, each location IS a set of HO puzzles. For example, one location is a farm consisting of several different screens. On each one of these are items that you directly collect to help you on your quest. You'll visit it multiple times, in different contexts, looking for different items. This increases the immerstion and reason for looking for items immensely. The way the various scenes interact is also clever. You Find you need to make/get item A. But to do that, you first have to make items B and C. But C also needs D. And so on. To aid with this is another good idea; if an object can be found in or used in a location different from your current one, a 'feet' icon shows this, and you can just click on the object to navigate there. Much more sensible than manually wandering about or even fast-map travel (which both seem to be there just to stretch the game out and take you away from the plot, imo). On the negative side; - This game does not support HD very well at all. Stretched-fullscreen is your only real option, as windowed ends up being too small to be usable and there are no other options. - The item bar is at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes right over the 'back' navigation area. So (until I got the hang of it) I found I was constantly moving back rather than interacting with an item. - The bonus was a bit confusing, as no help is given about where to look for things, and the navigation is completely unintuitive. I just felt frustrated thoughout most of it, and was actually thankfull that it was relatively short. Overall, then a very nice twist on the usual HO concept. I'm now glad I bought the entire bundle.

This is a delightful game. It is somewhat simple but with a twist from your average HOG's which I don't know if you will like or not. There are no HOS's involved instead you are presented with a tasks to perform and a picture list of items to obtain to accomplish those goals. Some of the pictures will be dark with what appears to be cracks in the presentation; for those you will need to search in a different location in order to find the items. I kinda like the play style but it can get repetitive. The game isn't overly long but not too short either. The story is that your are a prince, restless, because of dreams, to go on adventure. You find a kingdom that is asleep ( not a natural sleep ) and you have to waken them. You will find there is a princess who needs to be shaken from her slumber and I will stop here and only say its conclusion was not what I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised. Game has a guide if you get stuck which tells you how to do all the puzzles; however I did not come across any that I needed that help. The music is beautiful with one tune that you will find yourself thinking about long after you finish the game. The graphics were very nice though I've seen better it was still a nice game on the eyes. There is a bonus chapter to play once you finish the game but I found it to be too easy yet that could be that I was firing on all cylinders by that time that it felt way too easy. This is a pleasant feel good game that you should pick up.

I strongly recommend "Love Chronicles: The Spell Collector's Edition" to fans of hidden object games. The developers did everything right in terms of gameplay (with an exception noted below). Rather than lists of words, they used pictures of the parts to be found and assembled, which avoids the vagueness and translation problems that plague other titles. It hardly mattered, because the writing was well done and free of errors. The puzzles were explained well, and the interactions of objects were completely sensible. It may be tempting to see the story as a cliché, but it is simply familiar because it is a classic theme. However, the ending (the Prince's reward) introduces a novelty that was quite psychologically mature, modern, and healthy. And why not? This prince solves problems using the skills acquired through (what one must assume was) some sort of medieval vocational schooling, rather than by asserting his will via a masculinity substitute such as a magic sword. That being said, there was a moment that turned into a strong negative for me, and I want to warn about it because I found it a very disappointing exception to an otherwise wonderful game. At one point, the prince has an interaction with a bird that is handled fairly gently when it could have been something comparatively much less so. Almost immediately after, he has an interaction with a cat that is, in my opinion, abusive. It was the one moment that made me hope any children playing the game were doing so with parental supervision. I suggest developer's need to be careful when using animals (even artistically rendered ones) as props in their games.

Short but very nice. This is [I]Love Chronicles[/I] #1. It's hidden-object game that does not separate point-and-click adventuring from hidden-object scenes, rather the story itself progresses organically through having to collect hidden objects. It's a gameplay style that works well, though can wear out its welcome of the game is too long. Here it's just right. And there are also some puzzle mini-games.

This game is a walking simulator disguised as HOG. The story is loosely based on sleeping beauty which is fine. But there is so much back and forth between the locations it got annoying.

Rimelig hurtigt gennemført men udemærket spil og meget flotte locations.

Not exactly the usual hidden object game, instead of HO scenes you find yourself spending the whole game going around the map trying to find the components to build the things you need. The concept was refreshing but the hidden areas in the locations were annoyingly too well hidden in the scene. I'm waiting for our bro to find love instead of helping others find it.

If you're looking for a new HOG and you're used to the Big Fish lineup, skip this one. Even though it's a later game, it feels dated. Dialogue and animation are cheap. The Bonus Chapter feels like an unfinished demo. Frustrating and lacking the charm of the usual HOG fair.