The voice of the fox helper was enough to send me running for my earplugs. Other than that, if you like treacle a whole whole lot, you might not find this game too cloying.
This is a pretty, and a pretty easy, game. The colors are bright, and the artwork is in the style of storybook illustrations. The voiceovers are well-acted. There are four levels of difficulty, including custom, and the hints are transporting. There's also a Chesire Cat who accompanies you and meows annoyingly whenever you click the hint button. He may turn out to be a helper animal after the demo. Dunno.
On the downside, there's nothing here you would call new, imaginative, or challenging, including the storyline. And unless you're new to the pond or this is your first HOPA game, you will have seen similar HOS and puzzles in many other games. For that reason, I think this would be a good introduction for players new to the genre.
Please do play the demo before making up your mind.
Were it not for the intense blue everywhere, I would probably have enjoyed playing the demo more, but even after turning down the gamma, the blue was very hard on my eyes, and with the gamma down, some of the darker areas were more difficult to see into.
Beyond that, I was enjoying the story, the graphics, and the game play. Even the little helper guy was pretty cool, and I'm not a big fan of most helpers. I'd probably add this one to my shelf along with the little scarecrow and the imp. I really want to adopt the imp! If they came out with toys of those guys, I'd be first in line to buy them!
I'll probably keep this game on hold for a while and see if it goes on sale. I'm wondering if maybe the blue won't be as hard to look at in daylight.
I recommend this game!
+5points
7of9voted this as helpful.
Subliminal Realms: The Masterpiece
Albert's worst nightmare becomes reality when a creature from his grim paintings kidnaps his family. What does she want?
Honestly, I can't believe I got conned by all the great reviews into wasting a perfectly good $3.99 sale on this demented circus of horrors. Sorry, but the game's artistic style (Picasso meets Dali meets Munch meets Duffield meets Bardi) is not enough to recommend it.
I will give the devs credit for one thing: figuring out a way to make uncorking a thermos bottle to find a wrench inside make some kind of sense... simply have the game take place in a nightmare... or hallucination... or maybe something else. Who knows? Unfortunately, we never get to find out, not even at the end of the game.
After the demo, I did not enjoy playing it. Even the HOS became tedious and not fun. I simply wanted to finish the game to find out what the point of it all was, but alas, there was no explanation, no denoument, no satisfying ending. I've played some HOPAs with abrupt endings, but none more abrupt and less satisfying than this one.
To borrow from a reviewer of the CE, the story involves the following tired, old plot: Someone is missing and is presumed to be in danger. A rescue party goes in, and now they, too, are in danger. There's a malevolent, non-human villain from, yes, a Dark Dimension, and ta-da! You get to be the resourceful hero who successfully outwits said supernatural villain at every turn. And oh, yeah. There's an ancient civilization involved, too.
Yawn.
Same familiar puzzles, too, like shooting at something with a makeshift slingshot, routing fluid through disconnected pipes, and locating and placing jigsaw-type puzzle pieces.
My favorite bit of improbable foolishness was the unloaded gun hidden in the ranger station, but it's okay because you have a single bullet you fished out of a hole with the old magnet on a string trick.
And oh, by the way... you accomplish all these heroics with a broken leg that you bandaged and splinted yourself.
But he best part of this game? The custom setting allows hint and skip refills that take only one second. Yay!!
An older style game compared to most released in the last year or so, although to be honest, I'm not sure how I'd define "older style" -- maybe it's the hand-drawn, less cluttered artwork. Maybe it's that I didn't have to keep clicking the hint button to know where to look or what to do.
There's certainly a lot that's familiar, like getting together the parts to hook up a fire hydrant while the damsel continues to scream for help, and there are some familiar-looking puzzles to solve. (I skip all puzzles, so I don't care whether they're unique and complex or not, and thankfully there's a custom option to shorten the refill time.)
I enjoyed the brighter, more realistic colors instead of all the blue/ purple/ black/ hideous reds of many of the recent games. I don't remember the music sound track, but the voices seemed authentic and well acted, other than the screaming damsel which was a little over the top. Ha! The sound effects are really nice, too, and well done -- wind, leaves rustling, footsteps, keys in locks, etc.
Sometimes you just want to play a game that's prettily drawn, doesn't strain your brain, and won't give you nightmares. For me, this is that just kind of game.
I suggest you also check the reviews of the Collector's Edition, and as always, try before you buy.
This game is just one long, painful puzzle/mini-game with a ghost buster story woven into it and some hidden objects tossed in for good measure.
The story itself is a confusing mess of riddles, rules, and characters, not one of whom I cared a whit about. The missing person's case you're supposed to be investigating gets completely lost in the ghost story, the puzzles/mini-games, and all the running around finding pieces and parts for the antiquated equipment rigging you have to do. I started out confused and remained confused (and bored) throughout the demo.
I'm sorry to say, MCF needs a reboot or else abandon the series altogether.
The best feature of this game are the beautfiful, colorful, clear graphics and why I'm giving it two stars instead of one. Kudos to Domini.
Your role in the game is as the same Seeker you were in the previous Labyrinths game. Your mission is to defeat the warriers of the same bad guy from the previous game -- the "god" Sanderion. The "Sand" warriors (cough-cough) have kidnapped your sister and are intent on draining all the energy from planet Earth.
It's not all hideous monsters, though. There's a cute talking pony who looks suspiciously like a certain famous toy. She will take you where you want to go and most likely become your animal helper. But first you have to find a seed and grow a "translation flower" which you then plug into Miss Pony's chest so the two of you can communicate.
By the way, those energy-sucking guys? Their "god" looks suspiciously like another famous series of toys. If you don't instantly recognize them in him, you haven't been paying attention.
Apparently the devs wanted a game that would appeal to all ages.
In sum, there just isn't anything new or original here, just a whole lot of the same as before.
First, there is the large side bar that pops out and just hangs there after you complete every task, an unacceptable annoyance in a current game. It reminded me of the very old HO games with the lists displayed in a banner hanging down the side of the screen.
Then there's the constant back and forth, going and getting things to go back and do something else so you can find something else to do the thing you started out needing to do, all the while stopping to read piece of paper after piece of paper, and meanwhile the poor Duchess is trapped under a massive block of statuary as she watches her home burn to the ground. It took almost the entire 20 or so minutes I played of the demo to finally rig up a rope to hoist the block up and free her. Of course, once freed, she's unhurt, calmly stoic, with not a hair out of place.
As another reviewer said, you arrive in your horse drawn coach wearing a long, Victorian style dress, repair the wiring on an high-voltage electric spotlight, climb a pole as it wobbles precariously from side to side, collect some gelantinous acid in a goblet (hopefully a glass one) to dissolve the bars in front of a culvert, and then crawl through the resulting puddle of acid and dissolved iron to get to the city gates, still presumably in that long dress,
Of course, you have the cat Mr. Jenkins to retrieve things and bring them back to you, pretty amazing for a cat. My cat is only good at two things -- meowing plaintively when his dish is half empty and destroying upholstery.
Hopefully, Mr. Jenkins will be able to follow you through that acid puddle without dissolving his little cat paws.
I can't remember playing a HOPA game as old-style as this one, and I've been playing since 2009. I say "old-style," but maybe it's simply a very poorly conceived and executed game. Probably both things are true.