YOOMURJAK'S RING

An intriguing mystery with a charming location and interesting characters marred by unbearably defective puzzles and mechanics that induce severe boredom. Positive: - Exploring the city of Eger and visiting its buildings, interacting and conversing with its residents, and taking part in what feels like a true to life enigma is satisfying and enjoyable. - All aspects of the continually changing and expanding storyline are a pleasure to behold and fun to be a part of. There are always clues to discover and progress to make, despite the ending spiraling into asininity. - Every single actress and actor does a good job. Characters are conceivable, credible, and present the game world to the player in an intimate and compelling manner. - Subtitles and texts are written well. There are no grammatical errors or any localization awkwardness, with the exception of a couple typos. - Full-motion video scenes create a cozy atmosphere as the Hungarian surroundings and citizens provide a warm and accommodating environment for the playable character to assimilate. Neutral: - The frame rate is capped at 25 during video playback and at 75 during navigation, but this does not get in the way of an overall smooth experience. - Each location is representative of real places in Eger. This means that, if one is interested, they could visit these sites in person. - While the protagonist has benevolent intentions and vows to not do anything illegal or dishonest, he actually takes part in theft, trespassing, deception, and social engineering, in order to accomplish his goals. Negative: - Most common graphical settings cannot be changed. The game runs at a strange and unknown resolution, stretching the visuals to widescreen, that even causes the monitor to display a warning message. - All puzzles are totally unintuitive and extremely obtuse, making them quite dull and unfun. Such instances are overly complicated and unnecessary deduction minigames that add immersion at the cost of excessive tedium. To put it simply, these are ridiculous, absurd, and awful puzzles. What is expected and demanded of the player, in terms of solving puzzles, is absolutely unreasonable. The puzzles must be, perhaps, the most laborious, the most pretentious, the most convoluted, and the most tiresome puzzles in any game. - Various parts of the adventure suffer from pixel hunting. Scrolling through rooms and seeking out minutia within clusters of pixels hinders progress and prevents the experience from being rewarding. - There is a complete lack of direction given to the player at times when suggestions should be provided. Because of this, the protagonist is left to wander around aimlessly, since there is never any actual indication of what should be pursued next. - Game design choices rely too heavily on banal trial and error. Being that there are no direct hints, this is a significant source of frustration. It is practically impossible to realize one is on the right track until the game engine recognizes the process being performed according to its programming. - Cut scenes and dialogues cannot be paused. If the player is not ready to watch a cut scene or if the player has to take a break, the cut scenes will be missed. Overall rating: 2.5/5.0

[h1]zzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz......[/h1] A touristic brochure for Hungary barely disguised as a FMV game. I would have nothing against this if the game was good. Unfortunately not here: You use a QuickTime VR interface to navigate very slowly through the city, hoping you'll randomly stumble on the streets that are not dead ends and the shops where you can actually enter (undistinguishable from any other shop). I've had more fun visiting random locations in google street view TBH. The indoor areas are even worse. They make you walk very slowly around every piece of furniture. The average room has about a dozen step location for only one or two location with interactable elements. The city visit uses a time travel story as a background pretext for your investigations but it never manages to become interesting. You just endure a bunch of one-sided dialogs and it's difficult to care about what is going on. The main protagonist tries to pass himself as an american. Aha no. There is no way in hell this guy would pass for an american. I would have appreciated if eastern european culture didn't try to apply a fake coating of western identity to sell themselves.It would be so much more interesting if they assumed their difference. But this is another debate. The FMV quality is good, very interesting, the same quality as a 1990s video and low on the memory. You could do great games with that tech. I bet all the positive reviews are coming from hungarian users lol. [h1](follow my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33882793/]GenXPlayers[/url] for more retro and indie reviews)[/h1]

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this game. The story, atmosphere, puzzles, we just got pulled deeper and deeper into it. Seriously thinking of visiting Eger in the near future and poke around a bit! Btw, if behaviour of most women in the story is anything to go by, there seems to be a serious shortage of men in Eger, lol.

Yoomurjak's Ring is an adventure point and click puzzle game with FMV elements, where you playing as an American journalist, who decided to go Hungary, to Eger, partially because of his Hungarian blood line, but mostly because of a book called Stars of Eger and because of some letters from his grandfather who talked to a Hungarian professor. I really liked the music of the game. Most of them adds a lot to the mystery and to the mood, gives the typical adventure game feeling. The voices and other sound effects are all right too. The actors are in the game not the greatest, but in general it's not too bad. There is a few actors who somewhat good in the game, and also the characters are fine, you can like them or hate them, it's not that bad I think. Some puzzles are pretty clever and interesting to solve. You can find most clues for them, and even a few puzzles needs some time to solve, I found them pretty entertaining. The game is playing in a real city called Eger, which you can explore somewhat well in the game. Of course, the game is based on 2005, so it's much different comparing now, but for me who also Hungarian and was in Eger for time to time, it was pretty fun to watch the city from that time. Also, the game looks good for it's time. Yeah, it didn't aged well, but for 2005 the quality of the pictures and cutscenes are pretty good. In the game, you can re-read the lines from the cutscenes, which is really important and also you can do fast travel in the game. However, there are some major issues with the game. Probably the biggest issue, is pixel hunting. I had multiple occasions, where I couldn't move on, because I didn't had an item from a previous area. Also, there are some parts, where the game doesn't give you any direction to do. Also, in the story there are some links which you need to follow, however some of them are pretty stupid to go on. Some puzzles in the game are pretty overdone and difficulty in my opinion. Maybe I'm not great finding clues, but sometimes you need to solve a puzzle for 30 minutes basically, or the solution for that is really over made. You can't skip the intro for the game, because the sound will glitch. The game has low resolution and most of the graphics setting are not changeable. Yes, I understand this is an FMV game, which has fixed "graphics", but the setting is still pretty poor. Yoomurjak's ring can be really interesting, because the story itself is somewhat based on a novel from Hungary and you can also see some interesting things from the country, from Eger. The game has a likable mood and gameplay, however you will get frustrated later because of the badly developed puzzles and route in the story, which doesn't make sense. If you want to play a puzzle game with some FMV elements for the completion, you should find something else, however if you are interested in Eger and Hungary, then give a chance to the game. I can't really recommend the game sadly, maybe for 2€ if you are really interested in the product.

Made with love and care. At first I was not thrilled that there's no English audio. And some of the translations (subtitles) are on the formal side... you know? Like when English isn't the first language of a well-educated person (if that makes sense.) That was forgotten after the first two minutes. It's a well-crafted game with a unique charm. This is FMV at its best. I feel I got an incredible value for my $. I got in on sale, but it's totally worth the regular price and more. Bye, I've got to go now. Eger needs me.

If you like story rich (albeit low action) FMV games trying to solve mysteries, this is for you. My only negative about the game is I wished the map had your current location on it...sometimes you have to walk around to find a location not marked on the map by someone in the game, and several times I've walked past the place where I was supposed to be, or didn't know where I was in the town hitting an "invisible wall".

Seit Jahren auf meinem Pile of Shame und nun endlich beendet! :) Ein schönes FMV Spiel mit knackigen Rätseln, bei welchen ich leider teilweise in die Lösung schauen musste... Die Geschichte verblasst gegen den Schluss etwas aber die Begegnungen mit den vielen schrulligen, dennoch sympathischen Figuren machen das wieder wett. Aus technischer Sicht sieht das Spiel auch heute noch gut aus. Die Einbettung der echten Schauplätze und der grosse Raum zum Begehen sind top! Ein schöner Ferientrip nach Eger, wenn Reisen nicht möglich ist... :) Auf jeden Fall einen Blick wert!

There are games that grab your attention and fascination from the first moment on. Yoomurjak's Ring belongs to that kind of game. As an old fan of FMV-games like Phantasmagoria, I came to this game with some nostalgia. The beginning already convinced me of having an unknown gem on my harddisk, with awesomely well written text and actors that are as good as an actor can be - it's a total immersive experience, and I hoped for the main protagonist falling in love with the woman at the tourist info from the first moment on, because I totally liked the characters. Coming to the gameplay, it is a 360 degree point & click adventure with some lovely mysteries. Being a fan of Sid Meier's Covert Action, I was thrilled that a decryption mystery awaited me in the first hour of playing. I truely recommend the game to all lovers of full motion video - interactive movies and adventure games!

pros ✅ a well-developed, intriguing, and engaging time travel story and some political conspiracy about it. You play Jonathan Hunt, a journalist trying to stop the time machine from falling into the hands of some politicians who want to use it for their own interests. ✅ there are plenty of different and interesting locations ✅ there is a map for fast travel ✅ well acted by real actors ✅ nice variety, clever and complex puzzles. there are also inventory puzzles you can combine some items ✅ likeable and relatable lead character ✅ main and all of the side characters are interesting and believeable ✅ dated but still good looking graphics and fmv cut scenes ✅ Google Maps-like gameplay. You are walking through 360° interactive panoramic views of streets in a Hungarian city and visit too many interesting, historical places and buildings ✅ well-written letters and books form the historical basis of the game's story. They are intriguing and fun to read. ✅ lenghty adventure ✅ game features a pleasant soundtrack of light music ✅ there is auto and manual save cons ❌ there is a frustrating and tedious labyrinth section ❌ there are some instances of pixel hunting ❌ game is using first person Myst style 360° views and controls. this is not so bad thing but little bit clunky and hard to use in this game. ❌ game only supports 4:3 aspect ratio and 800x600 screen resolution  ❌ a hint system would be great for some complex puzzles ❌ iffy English translation from Hungarian language ❌ there are no steam achievements and cards ❌ the graphics look a little bit too bright, and there is no gamma option on the menu. Overall, this is a decent and enjoyable old-school point-and-click FMV adventure game with an engaging and intriguing story.

google maps with a story