[b]My playtime:[/b] 3.9h (based on steam)
[h1]Intro[/h1]
[i]Wave of Time[/i] is a hidden object game with a lot of minigames and hidden object scenes.
[b]Pros:[/b]
- Various hidden object scenes
- A lot of minigames
- Hint and skip button in case you're stuck
[b]Cons:[/b]
- Delay between dialogue progression
- Time-limited games are annoying
- Hitbox to move between areas is too small
[h1]Should you buy this game?[/h1]
[b]Yes.[/b]
[i]To be honest, the game is not really that good, but it's not bad either. If you like minigames and hidden object scenes, feel free to buy this whenever it's heavily discounted. Feel free to skip it if you're not interested in the genre as well.[/i]
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[h1]In-Depth Review[/h1]
[h1]Graphics[/h1]
[i]Wave of Time[/i] has a similar look to [i]Artifex Mundi[/i] games at first glance, with realistic-looking graphics and beautiful landscapes. However, dialogues feel a bit odd since you mostly won't see any characters that you talk to on the screen. Some part of the scenes also loads slowly that you can see a chunk of image fading in when you zoom a certain scene in detail.
The game also doesn't seem to portray the characters properly. Characters look differently between cutscenes and it took a while for me to recognize them. Speaking of cutscenes, all of them stutters. Luckily, cutscenes don't have an interesting point besides the visual.
[h1]Story[/h1]
The game tells its story in either cutscenes or dialogues. Dialogues can be skipped with the mouse's left-click although there is a delay before the dialogue changes, which sometimes ruins the experience. Although all dialogues are dubbed, I found some dialogues that don't match between the text and the voice. There are also some broken English that is hard to understand.
The story-telling needs some improvement. A diary, which acts as a summary of the story, gives more information than the dialogue itself. The story also makes more sense if you read the diary whenever a new entry is added. Some plotholes still remain in the story though and some dialogues feel a bit off because of that.
[h1]The game[/h1]
[b]Point-and-click[/b]
This game has a simple point-and-click as its basic gameplay where you need to find some objects lying on the ground and use it to unlock minigames and hidden object scenes. However, some interactable objects are not obvious enough even though I already used my mouse to hover most of the areas to see any items that I could take or any scenes that I could zoom. Luckily, the game has a hint button that you can use to locate these objects.
The early game relies on using an object to another object in point-and-click style to advance. I found that one solution doesn't make sense at this stage although the game covers it up by relying the rest of the game on "emblems" as an object to unlock either minigames or hidden object scenes.
[b]Hidden Objects[/b]
Hidden object scenes are usually started with the search of red, blue, and green objects, which are different in each scene, to unlock a set of keywords that are needed to locate. However, the game failed to mention this part and I was confused a bit about how to proceed. Some objects require you to combine with a different object to collect, some require you to finish a minigame, while some are just lying around for you to find.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2246738873
There is also a variation of hidden object scenes where you have to find a lot of certain objects on the screen. While these are usually easy, some scenes are cheap enough to hide some of its objects below other objects that blend with the background. Luckily, the game has a hint button that you can use to uncover those last tricky spots.
[b]Minigames[/b]
This game has a lot of minigames. Some minigames are a simpler form of other games such as snake and match 3, while some are just simple puzzles that require a bit of thinking to solve. Most minigames are easy to learn although some annoying ones require you to finish it within a time limit. Luckily, there is a skip button that is available after a certain time has passed in case you wish to skip it.
[b]Difficulty[/b]
The game has 3 difficulties that you can select in the option. Difficulty only affects the hint button recharge time although it's somehow written as "download of tips" in the game despite that there is no "download" or "tips" term mentioned in the game.
[b]Length and difficulty[/b]
I finished the game in 3.9h and used the rest of my playtime to try to finish a bonus minigame, which I failed to beat. Luckily, the bonus minigame isn't required to finish the game since it's only located in the minigames section in the main menu.
[b]Problems[/b]
It's hard to move between areas since you need to find a button that has a small hitbox near the end of the screen. There is also a long delay when you move between scenes, which ruins the experience. The delay might also be caused by my spec though.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2246738933
One minigame, [spoiler]the raptor shooting[/spoiler] one, has a bug where bullets are somehow stopped after a while despite me holding down the left mouse button to rapid-fire. Sometimes the game also doesn't run smoothly whenever I took an object in the early game.
[h1]Specs[/h1]
Intel Core i5-3317U 1.7GHz, 4GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
It's a hidden object game with a lot of minigames. Most point-and-click features are bare-bones, although functional. To be honest, the minigames and hidden object scenes are satisfying enough if you don't mind the rest.
[quote]This game was reviewed with a key provided by the developer for free through Curator Connect[/quote]
[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7871885/]Follow our curator page,[b] OCG-Curations[/b], if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote]
