Sonya: The Great Adventure

I enjoyed this game overall. It was a fine hidden object game with some fun puzzles, if also including a few rough spots. The story for this was interesting and had some different characters that you run across, although not many of them have significant parts or things to say. I won't speak too much about that because of spoilers for the nature of the story, but most of the game is really centered around the main Character Sonya who will speak to herself / to the player as she makes comments and things. But i didn't have any issues understanding the plot or objectives. The gameplay is a very standard kind of hidden object game with hidden object scenes, other non-hidden object puzzles, exploration, combining items in your inventory, and problem-solving. I found the puzzles and hidden object scenes to be perfectly fine. The worst issues I had were incorrectly translates items in hidden object scenes that sometimes had a slightly off name, but those were usually intuitive enough to figure out what object they were referring to. The puzzles all have instructions you can consult, so while not all of them are intuitive you can always check what you're supposed to be doing. The music was fine, nothing super memorable, but also did not stand out in any bad way, kind of just a nice neutral background music. The art style and animation was good, it reminded me of Journey to the Heart of Gaia, an almost animated movie or comic book kind of style as opposed to some of the illustrated styles that many other games have, and I liked it just fine. Honestly, I like seeing some variety in the art styles of these games that I play. For controls and interface, this one was a little weird. It's not that it's bad, in fact it has a feature that I really like and wish other games had. But firstly, there is no map at all. I personally find this hard since a lot of times once the area you have explored and unlocked becomes large enough it can take a lot of time to traverse back to locations to use things or remember where certain rooms are. This game isn't too bad about that though as they usually pace the areas by having you move from location to location, each with a certain number of scenes. What also was weird to me is the back button to leave a scene from the direction you entered it is a down arrow on the right side of the screen opposite the eye (I will cover the eye after this section) and I had to adjust to not being able to just move my cursor to the bottom of the screen to go back, so I would be aware of that also. The thing I found very interesting though is that there is an optional tool, a eye on the left of the screen, and clicking on that will show every part of a scene that can be interacted with. I love this feature, it's great accessibility and convenience and I wish more games did something like this. Some hidden object games will have hidden object location sparkle or glow, but this game shows every thing you can interact with including items you can pick up or locations you can use items on. The menu buttons are at the top of the screen instead of being themed as a part of the bottom inventory bar which I also found weird, but it works and isn't that distracting. There is also an integrated guide in the game, as well as the "tasks" type of to-do list that reminds you of your current goal. I try not to use those that much, and the game is usually well-designed enough that I only got stuck a few times and not for very long. I have mixed feelings about a full guide being in the game, but I guess you can ignore it if you want and some people might appreciate having it available if they need it. The achievements were pretty easy compared to most hidden object games, which I was totally fine with since it allowed for more casual play and I usually play these games at the end of the day to relax. But one thing i also liked was there is an achievement not to use any hint at all, and if you play on the hardest difficulty it disables hints so you don't have to worry about it. With the other tools like the guide and the eye, I think this is more than OK and I wish more games would allow you to "disable" hints if you wanted. There are no collectibles in the game and there are no difficulty-specific achievements (other than the caveat for the hints I mentioned) so you can play on whatever difficulty you like. There is a bonus adventure in the game, and for some of the achievements that require you to solve all puzzles and hidden object scenes without hints, you will have to do those in the bonus adventure as well to get those achievements. But I was more than happy to play more of this game. Very happy with the time I spent with it. I did not have any technical issues with this game.