Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena

Really good, but overpriced, and only good to get on sale when its like 2$.

a great adventure

ok game

НОРМ

After 15 hours of clicking on things, I have successfully defeated Samantha Swift and her plan to obtain the powers of Athena for nefarious purposes

This was a huge part of my childhood, and playing it again was no disappointment. Amazing job MumboJumbo, ya'll made an amazing game. too bad people don't make these types of games anymore. it's all fps and horror. we need chill games.

After playing three Artifex Mundi games, I thought that I would lay off reviewing hidden object games, since I clearly don’t like them. Well, I’ve reconsidered. I don’t dislike these puzzles on principle, so there should be a way to present them to me that I enjoy. I want to see if there’s a hidden object game I can recommend, so let the griping continue! Or maybe not? Is Samantha Swift worth my time? What I can say for sure is, despite the lower production value, I prefer Hidden Roses of Athena to all of the Artifex Mundi games I’ve played simply because it didn’t waste my time. Each area has a hidden object challenge, and once you’ve found every object, you never have to revisit it. I didn’t have to backtrack through long, winding paths across multiple areas to find any puzzles; a puzzle will take up two rooms or multiple rooms around a single hub at most. This was also the shortest HOG I’ve played, comprising eight locations with less than ten puzzles per location. No half-baked side stories, just eight short levels. Unlike Artifex Mundi, where I was begging for the games to end, Samantha Swift not only kept things short, but briskly paced as well. It even had a superior hint system, including an object scanner and limited but plentiful instant hints instead of unlimited hints that take ages to recharge. So can I recommend Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena? Not really. Though the simplicity is a breath of fresh air, it doesn’t make up for lack of substance. The game is beyond easy; I had about 25 hints left after completion, and what little thought the puzzles required often had Samantha jumping in with an unsolicited hint. Maybe they were trying to compensate by making the clicker annoyingly precise. If I’m two pixels off or within some inner negative space, the click should catch the object. Again, I prefer this straightforward approach to chasing after a glowing arrow in the Artifex Mundiverse, but these duct tape approaches to guiding players show an inability to make naturally intuitive gameplay. A lot of old adventure games are unintuitive, but some of them have engaging narratives, clever writing, or a fascinating world. This one doesn’t. I zoned out whenever Buddy McGuy was telling me my mission objective. Did I miss the thrilling adventure? Did Samantha’s rival do anything? Was there any significance to the roses outside of being MacGuffins? It's empty storytelling like this that cultivates a dead environment. It is at times livened up by a few bright colors and fun puzzles, but mostly just feels like a mediocre picture book. The game's trivial weirdness is more memorable than its main plot. Why is gold used as a distraction by making noise instead of being valuable? Why is a paperweight (which could look like anything) a hidden object and why is it used to break glass? Why is the Japanese object that is clearly a shamisen called "instrument?" I should keep things in perspective. This isn’t a terrible game; I came out of it a lot happier than I had with similar games, and I think someone who knows what they’re getting into buying this on sale will be reasonably satisfied. I maintain, however, that this genre has potential, maybe not in spades, but enough that is clearly being squandered by developers focusing on accessibility over innovation.

nice game to get nostalgy

Samanta a skryté ruže. Som veľkým fanúšikom hidden object games, ale táto patrí medzi tie najslabšie čo som hral. Príbeh budete zbytočne hľadať, žiaden nie je. Je to len o tom prejsť jednu scénu do druhej a hľadať opäť a opäť. Čo mne, ale neskutočne vadilo bolo malé rozlíšenie a tým pádom v dosť veľa prípadoch miniatúrne objekty , niektoré sa nedali trafiť ani na 10ty pokus. Niektoré bolo schované za postavou, čo je úplne mimo, vedeli Ste, že to je ten predmet, ale nevedeli Ste ho trafiť " správne". Hudba je v takýchto hrách pokiaľ je dobrá iba bonus, no tu to bol hlboký podpriemer. K cene , ruku na srdce keby som tuto hru nekúpil v balíku s ďalšími 10timi tak ide mimo mňa. Hra je brutálne predražená a systémovo dosť padala, alebo sa nedala zapnúť, podpora od vývojára žiadna. Za 10 € si viete momentálne zaobstarať RE 2 / 3 remaster, alebo niečo úplne iné. Neodporúčam kupovať, jedná sa o vyhodenie peňazí za nič. + žiaľ tu neviem nič napísať - rozlíšenie - optimalizácia - rozlíšenie a tým pádom kliknutie na prednet nefungovalo Za mňa veľmi slabučká HoG 2/10

This was an alright Hidden Object game. I was surprised by all the little inventive ways you progress through the game, not just looking for stuff but solving small simple puzzles to keep things interesting. You can tell the game was originally design for the DS but works fine on the PC. I'd like to see more hidden object games take elements from this game.