[h1]The Fool[/h1]
...is a hidden object game. You fooled your way into marrying the princess, but must now face the consequences of your lies and become the hero you pretended to be.
[h1]⚙ [u]Game Description & Mechanics[/u] ⚙[/h1]
You travel through the world on fix backgrounds, talking with other characters, interacting with the environment and picking up objects to unlock doors or puzzles. The differences between hidden object games and traditional point & click games are that the story is by no means the focus, merely the excuse to solve puzzles and walk through the typically hand-drawn backgrounds with little to no animations. In fact, you never actually see your character, except in small cut scenes.
Such games revolve around solving puzzles of various kinds: completing images from missing parts, moving pieces around to a specific layout or pattern in a limited quantity of moves, setting up correct sequences, and, of course, the namesake hidden object puzzle where you face a screenful of clutter for which you're given a list of twelve specific items to find, some requiring assembly or uncovery before being able to select them. If you're absolutely stuck, the game can point you to one of the objects you're missing, or allow you to skip the other puzzles entirely.
[h1]☺ [u]What I enjoyed[/u] ☺[/h1]
I appreciate the game being separated in different regions, chapters if you will, five to be exact. This gives the excuse for very different settings, drives the story forward a bit more than I'm used to seeing from other games in the genre, and also has the convenience of removing some of the usual tediousness: if you missed a clue or object, you only need to search the six to ten areas you have access to. Furthermore, backtracking is a lot less frustrating, since you often find objects at one end of a branching path, which is meant to be used in another area entirely.
Puzzles were varied enough, with very few hidden object puzzles being used twice. I didn't face the abstractness of item descriptions I've found in other games, meaning I could rely on patience to pinpoint harder-to-find items, rather than needing having no idea what I was looking for and clicking on items at random, or being forced to use the hint system, like I've had to do in other hidden object games I've played. Of course, I always found a certain charm to the hand-drawn aesthetics used for the hidden object puzzles, with removable objects being indistinguishable from the rest of the background.
[h1]☹ [u]What bothered me[/u] ☹[/h1]
Puzzles have no explanation, no details telling you what to do. The game doesn't have the level of detail required to act like puzzle box games and "having you figure it out". It's not merely a question of going through trials and errors: I honestly didn't even know what I was supposed to do in half the puzzles until I observed what happened when I tried and failed. Therein laid the only difficulty I faced, because once I figured out what I had to do to solve them, the puzzles were in fact way too easy.
[i]The Fool[/i] is much older than it claims to be, with graphics that have aged poorly. It's native low-resolution 4:3 format looks horrible on modern computer displays, while the windowed mode is small enough to fit four times on my screen. There's no way this game is from 2015, it must be a decade older at the very least, far from justifying the asking price.
[h1][b]My Verdict[/b]: ★★★☆☆ - [i]"It's up to you."[/i][/h1]
[i]The Fool[/i] is a perfectly serviceable hidden object game, although one amid a myriad of others. I certainly wouldn't recommend spending full price on this, although price has never been a focus of my reviews before. If you have it in your library, it's worth its one-time playthrough. Just don't expect a particularly unique hidden object game.
[i][b]This was just my opinion.[/b]
If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/CJsOpinions/]reviews[/url].[/i]
