saeva's Profile
Stat Summary
- Average Rating:2.8
- Helpful Votes:114
- Reviews Submitted:14
- First Review:October 31, 2012
- Most Recent Review:March 20, 2013
- Featured reviews0
Green City
Clear away abandoned run-down houses and construct the most eco-friendly city in the world with this thrilling Time Management game!
Overall rating
2
/
5
12 of 16 found this review helpful
Good Concept, Bad Execution
PostedMarch 20, 2013
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Word, Adventure, Hidden Object, Card & Board, Brain Teaser, Time Management, Puzzle
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
'Green City' is a relaxed-mode builder game where you revitalise neighbourhoods by demolishing condemned buildings, building new structures ranging from residence to decorations to businesses. It’s a strong, timely idea -- though it has been done before whenthe Build-A-Lot series released a very similar game with 'BAL 4: Power Source' last year.
The first problem is that if you're going to do a variation on an already popular game you need to make certain you're at least as good. Unfortunately, 'Green City' doesn't even come close. Fifteen minutes into the trial I was bored and confused but, thinking that tutorial levels can be awkward, I decided to finish the trial. This is what I found:
[The Organisation]
- The instructions are minimal and limited to 'this is how you build a structure' 'this is how you demolish one' and 'this is how you upgrade one' (all things that are very obvious to anyone who’s played a TM game before).
- The buttons are spread out across the screen, making it annoying to keep track of, and some of the less common ones are difficult to interpret. In particular the 'goal' buttons come in the form of pictures that you click to gain the details of (e.g. 'Build Cottage x2') and require you to click 'okay' to return to game play without slowing the clock. Thus, it slows down your game play, breaks your flow, and lessens the chance of getting an expert mark.
- The tools menu is a fan design, which is common only in graphic arts' programs and similar, instead of a far more familiar bar design. There is a tool bar full of expanded options (where an inventory bar usually is) but it’s large and clunky, making it difficult to see parts of the screen you need to do construction on. The tools menu (fan) is in the bottom left corner, its expanded options are along the bottom of the screen and yet you need to keep track of your resources to use those tools in the top right, which can be difficult when the screen is cluttered.
- And the screen really is very cluttered with not only overly large buttons but a lot of unnecessary decoration, making it so that the areas that the player can manipulate are limited. The player can only build within certain grids and these grids make up less than 30-40% of the screen in the first ten levels.
- Additionally, unlike with the Build-A-Lot series and other similar building games (e.g. Be Rich) there's no space between the lots and often times buildings have to be build up against each other in order to fit. This requires buildings to be ‘faded’ out if the building you want to work with is squeezed behind one building and next to another, cornering it it.
Overall, it comes across as not well thought out.
[The Graphics]
- The graphics are sub-par for a game designed this year, which very little dimension to the buildings or other options, distracting animations, and low-resolution imagery.
[The Gameplay]
- The player is given very little instruction and expected to figure out how to achieve the goal themselves, including discovering newly unlocked features (the game does not tell you they've been unlocked) that are increasingly required to reach the 'expert' or even 'intermediate' goal.
- If you can’t follow the logic to the game, which is nothing like the logic of other building games of its genre from my experience, then it’s almost impossible to finish before the expert & intermediate time goals expire even if you understand how to do each thing. The game seems to be very sensitive to the order actions are taken even when there are many different ways to achieve the same results (this ability to free form is, IMO, one of the best features of this building genre but ‘Green City’ evidently would disagree).
[The Story]
The premise for 'Green City' is an eco-friendly city building plan. As said above, 'BAL 4: Power Source' has the same idea. Like 'Power Source' 'Green City' keeps track of everything from visual appeal to energy usage, often putting the player in the negative in these categories by virtue of building anything. Unlike 'Power Source', however, 'Green City' doesn't have a coherent way to introduce, tackle, or explain the clean energy idea. Instead you simply click a little leaf to upgrade your home when in another game of the genre you'd click a star.
(To give a contrast: in BAL 4: PS the player has the typical 'upgrade' option, represented by a star, but there's a second, new feature represented by a light bulb that keeps track of energy usage. Each new building or upgrade adds to that usage and if it exceeds the power being produced by the local wind farm or power plant you built to deal with the energy problem -- a feature absent in 'Green City', of course -- then the power goes out. With the power out you stop collecting rent until you add another power source or upgrade your houses with the clean energy feature (represented by light bulbs) to be more energy efficient. This offers a separate feature to tackle the energy storyline/point rather than slapping a new name on a pervasive feature and calling it done.)
All-in-all there's nothing in the first city/ten levels that I played which tackled the clean energy/green power any better than your average building game.
In summary: the game fails at its organisation, its gameplay, and its premise. I'm only giving it to a two because it is playable, if frustrating, and I've seen far worse. If you want a building game that really tackles 'going green' then check out 'Build-A-Lot 4: Power Source', if you want a building game similar to this with much higher quality graphics check out the 'Be Rich/Richer/Richest' series. There are far better building games on the market to waste your time or money on this one.
I don't recommend this game.
The family saga continues when your nephew Brandon encounters the mysterious Stone Queen in a lonely mountain town.
Overall rating
2
/
5
6 of 6 found this review helpful
Poorly Designed
PostedFebruary 20, 2013
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Word, Arcade & Action, Adventure, Hidden Object, Card & Board, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle, Mahjong
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I'm hit-and-miss with Elephant Games, usually, but they do have their strengths, especially in things like side tasks (i.e. morphing objects, collectibles), and they're usually pretty steady even if I don't necessarily find them very engaging. The Stone Queen, however, is amateur hour at its worse; it lacks in both Elephant Game staples and general good sense, far below its siblings from this developer.
1. The player is spoon-fed needed information, regardless of how they're playing the game. For example, early on the player comes to a scene. If you click on a hatch on a car, trying to explore, first, it tells you that "[Name] must be hiding proof of his nefarious deeds behind this strange lock. I must look for a cross-shaped key!" How does the player character know this? Why the convenient newspaper sitting right there... that you haven't yet picked up.
In a 40 minute trial something like that -- where the player character remarks on a detail that the player hasn't yet interacted with and thus doesn't know -- came up, to my count, 8 times. An additional 9 times something came up that you simply could not know, such as details about a town you've supposedly never even heard of before.
What's the point of having an interactive game if the gameplay doesn't depend on your choices and what you explore/fail to explore?
2. Often times when you pick up an object or find an obstacle it will tell you exactly what needs to be done, whether that information is obvious or not. Since these are not logical jumps it's helpful to the player (as they would probably have had trouble figuring out what to do), but that's bad form on two levels: hand holding and having such confusing gameplay that the player needs their hand held.
3. If you do get stuck you can use the Hint system, which will literally tell you what to do next (i.e. precisely where to go and what to use when you get there). It's like having a Strategy Guide instead of a hint system, which is not a plus for me as the two things hold different purposes.
4. Why does this town have bizarre locks opened only by pendants? Why do they have safes if they're going to write the code on the safe (I wish I was exaggerating but it's literally written on the safe)? There's no logic.
A good contrast to this would be the Echoes of the Past games or the Puppetshow games where the puzzles and odd locks are intentionally introduced by the villain to slow people down. We don't get the same sense here (and if so what sort of dumb villain leaves a safe code written on a safe?)
5. Speaking of puzzles, these can barely be called that. Within the five puzzles in the demo, not including the safe one (I refuse to count that for obvious reasons), the puzzles took me on average less than 30 seconds. The only one that slowed me down was a mosaic form puzzle and that was because each box had to be individually marked. I'm quick with puzzles, quicker than average, but they still tend to take me a minute or two to think through. These puzzles required no thought. I didn't even need the instructions as it was obvious upon sight what each was meant for (one within the demo, for example, was a simple 'match the pairs' exercise).
6. As I said earlier, there are no extras whatsoever -- no morphs, no collectibles, no side tasks. Now, usually I'm not a huge fan of these things but they do add colour to a game and allow the player to interact more thoroughly with the world. A lot of people really like them and Elephant Games is, along with Blue Tea Games, pretty well known for them. So it's a negative mark that they're missing.
There are some pluses to the game but they are few: the settings allow you to enable/disable 'Special Effects' like fog/odd lighting on hidden object scenes; the music (that is there -- it's very light on music) isn't overbearing; the storyline itself is straightforward. But they are far outweighed by the minuses. I cannot recommend this game even to new players and if you're a fan of Elephant Games I'd suggest giving this one a miss; it might as well be by a different developer entirely.
I don't recommend this game.
Overall rating
4
/
5
2 of 2 found this review helpful
Lots of Variety, Good Mini-Games, Somewhat Lackluster Art
PostedNovember 20, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I'm writing this based on the trial but I think I'm going to buy.
I've done trials for all three the Agency of Anomalies games but didn't much like the first two due primarily to poor graphics and far too easy scenes. 'The Last Performance' is, in my mind, a major improvement on the earlier games, though it still has flaws I wouldn't expect to see in a game released only recently.
The major drawback to me is the art. The interactive objects, be that tools you need to pick up or objects you need to find in hidden object scenes, don't blend in well with the rest of the images. The little animation there is include characters against static backgrounds. There's also not a lot of variety in the art as all action takes place in and around a limited area of a theatre which doesn't seem to have very many rooms. Another review said there's only 11 hidden object locations, each of which is played at least twice, so I'm guessing that this theme continues throughout the whole game.
Other than that this game is rather enjoyable so long as you like both mini-games and hidden object scenes. If you plan to mostly skip the mini-games then I'd suggest giving a pass on the game as there's (again, according to another reviewer) 14 mini-games and 17 'crystal ball' games (the latter is used to get new paranormal abilities) which are essentially all mini-games in themselves. What I appreciated was that the mini-games are difficult enough to interesting and different enough from the usual 'move a ball into a corner' 'switch out colours' type mini-game that while there's nothing completely original it's not likely to add to burnout over typical mini-games. Another plus is that there's 3 different types of hidden object scenes: list, silhouette, and 'like with like' matching. That gives enough variety I wasn't bored with the relatively easy scenes.
I didn't skip any of the games nor use the hint in any hidden object scenes -- outside of them I used it to find what room I should actually do something in as that's somewhat necessary without a map that shows objectives -- and I found the game took me notably longer than my average HOG pace. I ended up just at the end of the second chapter when my hour trial ran out when usually I make it through the second chapter at somewhere around the 40-45 minute point (demos typically end at the beginning of the third chapter, which is how I've gauged that). It makes up for the game being only seven chapters instead of eight for certain.
The storyline is rather thin but I didn't run across a lot of "But I *could* use a crowbar on that!' frustration where you have a tool that would work but they specifically want a different tool (sometimes a much less logical one) and I don't truly play for the storyline (they're almost ALL rather predictable from ten minutes in at best or so vague as to only give you what you need in the last chapter).
Overall, I liked the game and would recommend it. I might even buy it assuming nothing else I like better comes my way. I just wish the art was a bit better.
I recommend this game!
Overall rating
3
/
5
3 of 4 found this review helpful
A Bit Too Easy, A Lot Too Short
PostedNovember 18, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I'm reviewing this game based off the demo as I won't be purchasing. Spirits of Mystery: Amber Maiden is a cute game in line with other ERS games but not as gothic or dark as the PuppetShow or Redemption Cemetery series. Also distinguishing it from ERS other games is the fact that this game is extremely easy.
The biggest challenge is the HO scenes (which comprise the majority of the tasks) but only because the scenes are so monochromatic it's difficult to see different, especially small, objects. Even with that the HO scenes are quite easy.
The mini-games come with instructions that are all but step-by-step guides how to solve the puzzles and the puzzles themselves are very simple -- I would wager a bright 10 year old could complete them in a few minutes each.
The tasks/adventure portion is also very simple with objects you need rarely being far from where you need to use them. Often times they're used in the same scene or in a scene one click away.
All-in-all this was a very simple game more suited for children or early beginners than anyone with a bit of practice with these type of games. I finished 3 chapters out of 7 (the length of the demo) in 45 minutes and from the walkthrough it's clear the chapters don't get progressively longer.
I don't recommend this game.
You are not alone. Join other captives in their quest for freedom as you reveal the evil secrets possessing this puzzling paradise!
Overall rating
5
/
5
29 of 30 found this review helpful
Challenging Match-3 Game
PostedNovember 16, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
I tend to dislike Match-3 games unless they have a lot of variety (my favourite M3 is Ancient Quest of Saqqarah with its six different types of gameplay available) or are very challenging in some other way. Vesuvia is the latter.
As other reviewers have noted, you can't see the entire board as you match; for ease of movement, the game provides a master map for each board which will show you areas of interest if there's any nearby. This means gameplay requires not only making matches based on how to free different objects (such as compass pieces, keys, rafts, and other tools) but on how they move you about the board so that you can find additional objects.
Like most M3 games Vesuvia sets different obstacles -- for example, a mode where you can only see as far as the area your torch lights up and so as you move around you need to light additional torches -- and provides power-ups to ease gameplay. After the first set of boards you receive a power-up which allows you to move across the board/map to new areas you need to explore, cutting down on the time you spend wandering. Additional power-ups include the standard 'blow up a piece' and 'remove X amount of pieces from the board' while allowing the player to select what power-ups they wish to use/find most useful as gameplay continues.
Additionally, the graphics are fun. As you move to different regions on the island (i.e. tropics, jungle, etc.) the objects on the board change to reflect your new habitat so that it remains visually interesting.
All-in-all Vesuvia is a nice little M3 game that would be fun for beginners and veterans alike. If you like Match-3 games that are challenging you should definitely give this one a try.
I recommend this game!
Memory Clinic
Join Dr. Summerland and improve your intellect with Memory Clinic, a fascinating blend of Hidden Object and brain-training fun!
Overall rating
1
/
5
9 of 11 found this review helpful
Poor Graphics, Badly Designed Tasks
PostedNovember 16, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
1
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
'Memory Clinic' declares itself a game meant to help with your memory yet at least half of the game does nothing of the sort. Instead, the primary mode of play are HO scenes with poor graphics and difficult to recognise objects. The memory related play comes entirely from the mini-games, most of which have 10 'rounds' and are incredibly easy. This game will do nothing to actually improve your memory and the graphics are so poor that frustration during the HO scenes is essentially inevitable.
If you're interested in a game which will help with memory check out Brain Training For Dummies or Brain Challenge as both have better structure, design, and graphics than this game.
I don't recommend this game.
Experience the classic tale of the Three Musketeers from Constance’s eyes as she works as a secret agent for the queen!
Overall rating
2
/
5
3 of 4 found this review helpful
Poorly Thought-out, Even More Poorly Executed
PostedNovember 15, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
1
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I tried this game because I like to check out the Daily Deals and got about halfway through the trial period before I gave up in disgust.
My limit was when you're sneaking around someone's private rooms while they're asleep and the game insists you need to make certain the person doesn't wake up -- by having you find earplugs and then put them in the sleeping person's ears so they won't hear you moving around. Because, you know, touching the person wouldn't wake them up at all. Sadly, the entire trial is like that, requiring one poorly thought out or illogical decision after another from choosing what to wear to trying to find objects. Your tasks require you to go about them in completely non-intuitive ways while skipping over the obvious solution (this happens in many games at least once or twice but not nearly every task as with this game).
Overall the game has decent graphics but objects which don't necessarily look 'right', too much dialogue (YMMV there, of course), and jumps from nearly no challenge (especially in the mini-games) to so challenging (because of the lack of logic) that you must use the hint button.
I would definitely not recommend.
I don't recommend this game.
Discover the fabulous secrets that a jungle hides in Adelantado Trilogy: Book One! Help the brave and noble officer, Don Diego De Leon, to find and save the lost expedition.
Overall rating
2
/
5
7 of 7 found this review helpful
Frustrating & Insulting In More Than One Way
PostedNovember 8, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Strategy, Time Management, Puzzle
Current Favorite:
Chocolatier
(31)Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
3
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
1
/
5
I read the good reviews and decided to give the trial a go but I won't be buying the game.
To start, the premise itself is a fine but how it plays out is extremely iffy -- you're playing the conquistadors and I'm honestly surprised, given the genocidal history involved, that the story involves both the Spaniards and Unnamed Cliche Native Tribe. The latter of which are, for some reason, happy to stand around and watch you not only develop on land they also seem to live on but do things like smash jars behind their houses and take the gold.
But I've ignored iffy premises before (we probably all have) and the problems with the gameplay itself far overshadow the questionable ethics.
1. While there's tasks you have to complete to meet the goals there's side quests you also have to do (I tried to skip one since it wasn't in the objectives & it didn't end well). Thus you're constantly working on a task that might not be best for the resources you currently have even though you usually can skip side quests in such games.
2. The game simultaneously tries to hold your hand and steers you to destruction. Besides the constant stream of tasks you have to do it won't let you repair things out of the order it deems necessary even when you have the resources and they're the same buildings. I.e. there's two damaged watchtowers nearby and you have to do the east one before the west one to the point the west one won't even become available until you've done four additional tasks.
Yet, the game gives you advice ("You should build more gardens so that you don't run out of food.") that you either can't actually use (more on that in #3) or that's counterproductive. It suggested I do that and since I was running low on food I did -- only I accidentally built a garden on top of a random patch I later realised was meant to be a stone quarry. Thus, I did not have a stone quarry when I needed one. You can't demolish buildings if you make such a mistake and must start the day over.
3. One of the major points of advice is that the buildings lose efficiency after a while so you need to upgrade them. Yet (and I had to Google this) you can't upgrade them until the fourth level/day. Before that you merely have to keep building more of the same building type in what's a very limited building space.
It will also direct you to use resources on tasks that you won't find useful for a while -- and it won't let you do other tasks until you complete that one. Yet you may need those resources for more immediately useful tasks. Oh well, too bad!
4. Finally, you can't save days in progress. Since each day takes a while -- 20-30 minutes seem to be right on the least task heavy levels -- you stand to lose a notable amount of gameplay because of this.
There are a lot of ways that games like this can trigger pet peeves but I think this one goes beyond that to actively bad gameplay. Apparently there's others who enjoy it, according to their reviews, but I wouldn't bother trying it. There's many games of this type and most of the recent ones are better than this.
I don't recommend this game.
Clarence Flatt, an expert clockmaker, has asked for your help and has offered you the chance to explore the Timeless Tower!
Overall rating
4
/
5
3 of 4 found this review helpful
Enjoyable 'Place the Objects' (PO?) Game -- Very Cute
PostedNovember 3, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
4
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
I'm writing this based on the trial as I've opted not to purchase the game. However, I would still give the game a good review -- it's simply too short to be worth it to me. If it goes on sale I'll snap this up in a second. As is...
STORY: The story is very simple and really only meant as a skeletal justification for the different scenes. The premise is that you're in a clocktower where time itself is distorted by its own damaged clock and you need to fix it. To do this requires a good balance of adventure/complete the tasks and hidden object scenes, the latter of which are set in different place/time (for example, a Roman marketplace, an ancient Mayan temple, Da Vinci's workroom, etc.)
ADVENTURE/TASKS: The tasks are fairly straightforward and, for the most part, once you find an object you'll need to use it soon thereafter or will already have a place it needs to go. You get the objects for the tasks primarily through the HO scenes but there's also the occasional puzzle.
HO SCENES: In this case the objects aren't hidden so much as you have a set of objects you need to put back in place. The game relies mostly on association then with heavy emphasis on you figuring out what the game maker's thought made sense as an association. This can be frustrating but, usually, even if you have to resort to hovering over every object to see what label the coder's used, you can figure it out without a hint. When you do need a hint there's the ability to speed up the hint recharging by finding little 'E' cards so that you don't have to wait for it to recharge (so long as you keep finding the cards in the HO scenes!). This is a nice and useful plus that I wish more games had.
PUZZLES: There's few puzzles in this game (even compared to other Blue Tea games) but the ones that are present range from interesting/curious to very amusing*. Most of them work on the theme of arranging things in a needed order or pressing buttons in the right order and they're not very difficult if you're good at object ordering.
GRAPHICS/DESIGN: Like all Blue Tea games the graphics are quite well done and appropriately detailed. This has an intentionally storybook/fairy tale sort of look to a lot of the scenes so if you're looking for graphic realism this isn't the game for you. But the whimsical look really works for the theme and goes well together.
OVERALL: The gameplay was very enjoyable, the graphics cute, the tasks engaging but not terribly difficult, the HO scenes frustrating at times but mostly fun (and an instantly recharging hint button is a wonderful thing for frustration), and I normally would buy something this fun in an instant. I'm not because it's really short. I intentionally closed the game at the end of the second floor, well short of my hour trial time, and looked up the walkthrough -- there's are a total of six floors. For me that adds up to, at best, 2 1/2 hours of gameplay and I make it a policy not to buy games under 3 hours of play. It's a pity because I'd love a game like this if it were a bit longer.
*In one you have to press the buttons to animate a drawing in a certain order so that you don't get struck by lightning. I purposefully failed a couple of times because the lightning striking was adorably funny.
I recommend this game!
Investigate the disappearance of the chancellor's daughter and uncover the long lost kingdom of the exiled Frog Prince!
Overall rating
5
/
5
2 of 2 found this review helpful
Fun with a Frog (Pun Intended)
PostedNovember 3, 2012
saeva
Skill Level:Intermediate
Favorite Genre(s):Adventure, Hidden Object, Strategy, Brain Teaser, Puzzle
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
The Exiled Prince (2011) is the second in the Dark Parables series by Blue Tea Games in which you play a detective. In TEP you're trying to discover what happened to the Frog Prince. Overall, it's a fun, somewhat challenging and story-strong FROG-heavy game with some interesting but not difficult puzzles.
The Dark Parables series are all Fragmented Object Games (FROG) where you collect relics through FROG scenes that are then used in various ways -- usually they're either keys, objects that can be used as keys (returning a scepter might make a statue move, for example), or objects to be used in puzzles (which then unlock doors). By collecting the objects and figuring out the puzzles you unlock new locations which will then lead to more objects and puzzles. The provided map isn't interactive but will clearly show where you are, where any unlocked hidden object scenes are, where the objective needs to be completed once you have all the required items, etc. Unlike the later games in the series a portal isn't provided to get from one end to the other so be prepared to do some wandering (if you use the map carefully this isn't difficult to navigate)!
This is a game heavy on the FROG scenes with a reasonable smattering of puzzles but the tasks themselves are fairly straightforward. True, you might collect an object not used until an hour of gameplay later but usually it's fairly obvious what object is used where when you do eventually come across the right place. If you're looking for adventure/task oriented gameplay you might want to try the Awakening series; if you're looking for a lot of hidden object scenes then this is definitely the game for you. The object scenes themselves are fairly complex, though not interactive, and require a keen eye as the objects may not be the precise colour or size they appear in the search box display. They WILL always resemble the picture but the variation can make the scenes difficult if you're not very attentive to detail. The actual puzzles range from very easy to a bit tricky with nothing too complicated or difficult for an intermediate player.
The game, like the others in the series, provides shiny extra bits like finding cursed objects (to speed up hint time) and parable disks (little mini background stories for the in-game characters). All-in-all if, like me, you really enjoy FROG scenes then this is an awesome game. The graphics really make the FROG scenes with plenty of detail to admire (and hide fragments in!). If you like this game you might want to try Dark Parables: Rise of the Snow Queen (or vice versa). I gave it 5 stars above but I'd rate it at more 41/2 stars out of 5.
P.S. Keep in mind that unless you're playing on Hard mode you won't find the frog's crown and unlock that location but the game is perfectly playable even without that side bit.
I recommend this game!