Annie’s Millions, from PoBros, Inc., is a simple hidden object game that follows Annie in her quest to spend one million dollars as quickly as possible. No doubt based on the novel (or films based on the novel) Brewster’s Millions, your task is to accompany Annie to each of twenty stores in the game and find the objects on her shopping list and spend, spend, spend. Annie starts the contest tentatively purchasing nearly worthless knick-knacks, while her cousins spend both extravagantly and not at all. All the while she wears more eye makeup than a community theatre Juliet, her uncle’s motives remain unclear, and her cousins are bumping into her in various boutiques. Will she win the inheritance?

Each hidden object scene has a simple shopping list of twelve to sixteen items. Finding and clicking on them in the store purchases them, with dollar values rising to let you know how much Annie just subtracted from her one million dollar goal. (She uses a special credit card that her uncle’s lawyer Roger prepared. If I had that card I’d click straight onto Amazon.com and fill up my cart with all sorts of loot. Including Torchlight, which is an awesome casual RPG.) Once she has bought everything on the list, it’s on to the next store. Or perhaps a cutscene.

Random clicking is penalized, but only with a painless slap on the wrist. Your mouse pointer swirls around for just a second and you can get away with a healthy amount of random clicking before even that happens.

If you can’t find an object, hints are available to pinpoint an item’s exact location. But you’ll have to earn them because Annie’s Millions doesn’t have a slowly-recharging hint button. Finding two objects in quick back-to-back succession earns a third of a hint. In other words, find four objects quickly with no pause between clicks and you win a new hint.

Or, you can play one of four The Price is Right-inspired (cough cough cough) minigames, available at any time by clicking on a red square panic button at the bottom right of the screen. In “Price Builder,” you’re given the scrambled price of an item and have three tries to rearrange the numerals and make the correct price. In “Price Match,” three items must be matched with three different prices, also within three tries. “Price Guess” is by far the hardest… (Until you’ve played the game through a few times.) You have four guesses to input one item’s exact price. And finally in “Sort Items” you have three tries to sort four items from least expensive to most expensive. Win any one of these games and you’ll receive a free hint. In practice, these games aren’t much more fun than shoveling snow off of your neighbor’s stretch of sidewalk. It doesn’t take long before you start seeing the same items repeatedly and begin memorizing their prices.

Annie’s story and both her and her cousins’ quests to spend one million dollars play out in comic book-styled cutscenes and character dialogues that pop up within the hidden object scenes. It’s very fluffy stuff, but well-presented with professional voiceovers.

Annie’s Millions is one of those rare games that makes 800×600 low resolution hidden object screens work. The few times I couldn’t find an object it was because it was a little cheekily hidden, not because it was fuzzy or blurry. Ordinarily I shake my head sadly at low resolution hidden object games, but I couldn’t do that with this one. I did notice that approximately half of the hidden objects on Annie’s list in each scene were immediately easy to find, just because they didn’t quite blend in with their surroundings. Either they were a bit more “pixelly” or “anti-anti-aliased” than their surroundings or something, but just glancing about the store I could pick them out before even looking at the shopping list.

Download Annie’s Millions

National Geographic (and Anino Games, Inc.) take us back to a time when large noses were attractive in Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra. After Caesar’s assassination and the fall of the Second Triumvirate, a mid-twenties Cleopatra has teamed up with Mark Antony to keep the throne away from Octavian of Rome, Caesar’s heir. Octavian is the guy who gave us the month of August… so if you’ve ever had to trudge ten miles along a humid South American river trail in the middle of August you know who to blame!

A sudden break-in – and murder! – at the queen’s palace has stirred up the court. As Cleopatra’s advisor in Alexandria, you’re put in charge of the case. This is your last shot to impress the impetuous young queen. Previously you provoked her anger by declaring your (unrequited) love for her majesty. With the queen’s handmaiden Kathya you set out to investigate the break-in. Is it Octavian at work? Can you get to the bottom of this mystery?

Mystery of Cleopatra is a hidden object adventure game. At all times you have a list of tasks to complete, from investigating certain areas to interviewing suspects and witnesses. The mouse pointer changes shape when you hover over certain areas of the screen, letting you know they can be interacted with in some way. For example, the pointer becomes an eye over something that can be examined, and a pair of feet over the exit to a location. The plot is revealed in dialogue scenes with other characters and some above-average animated cutscenes.

Most gameplay involves searching a scene for various items. This is a hidden object game, after all. Obviously suspicious items call attention to themselves with sparkles; examining them may give you another task, pop up a list of hidden objects to find, or trigger a short text description or maybe even a puzzle.

All hidden objects are shown as small gray silhouettes. It’s your job to find the objects matching each shape in the current location and click on them. (If you play in advanced mode, you’ll not only have to click on the objects but drag them onto the correct silhouette, too.) Hovering over a shape gives you a tooltip text of the object’s name, which is often helpful. If this text is printed in yellow, you’ll have to manipulate the scene in some way. Open a drawer, for example, or move aside an object. Often you’ll search for multiple sets of hidden objects, with one set combining to form a missing hidden object in another. Ocasionally the hidden object silhouettes appear over objects in the scene and occasionally they appear in the parchment panels at the bottom of your screen. It’s all very complicated and I can’t help but feel needlessly so.

If you get stuck or need help, a hint button is available to send a slow flaming spot onscreen to where one of your objects hides. I must confess that I used the hint button in Mystery of Cleopatra much more than I normally do in hidden object games, because I’m not so good at finding silhouettes… especially when they differ in size from the actual object.

Random clicking is unfortunately penalized… do too much of it and your mouse pointer will flame into nothingness. It comes back soon enough, however.

Useful objects are added to your inventory, a very small scrollable window at the bottom right of the screen. Using them entails clicking on them and then dragging them onscreen to where you’d like them to be used. The game is pretty good about giving you hints about what you should be doing in the tasks list, character dialogues, and sparkle effects that highlight various buttons.

As usual, there are plenty of puzzles to solve during your investigation. And even quite a few flashbacks that take you back to a previous scene as new information reminds you of clues in already-visited areas. These flashbacks require manipulation as well, and as corny as they sometimes are… they were my favorite part of the game because they forced me to follow the same stream of thought as my character, the minus first century advisor.

The graphics, especially the period hidden object backgrounds, really shine and the music is boring yet unobtrusive enough. I must confess that Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra was very difficult to get into because of the confusing nature of the hidden object mechanic. Only my passion for history kept me going. This is a National Geographic game, after all, so you know you’re going to do some learning… whether you want to or not. Your character carries a journal that he updates regularly with information about the characters he meets. Also stitched in are scrolls found in many locations with descriptions of the history behind people and places.

Watch out for asps!

Download Nat Geo Games: Mystery of Cleopatra

Tinseltown Dreams: The 50’s, from Namco Networks America, is a match-3 game about producing movies. Mr. Big, studio head, has called you in to oversee production on seven movies that absolutely must succeed to guarantee the success of his studio. Times are tough with TV forming fierce competition for movie theatres. The studio has resorted to widescreen CinemaScope to try and sell more tickets, but what it really needs are some critically-acclaimed blockbusters.

Each film is assembled in a ten week schedule, during which you play ten levels of match-3 games to acquire your weekly budgets. This cash is spent on Hollywood stars, directors, incidental actors, special effects, cameras, backdrops, and countless, countless props. Mr. Big is all bluff and not much help. Luckily his secretary Betty gives you enough pointers to get you started.

Actual match-3 gameplay is typical to the genre. Your gameboard is filled with various picture tiles, all having something or other to do with the movie-making process. Tiles include, for example, movie cameras, 35mm film reels, sound slates, megaphones, stars, saltwater taffy, etc. Clicking on two adjacent tiles swaps them. If this exchange results in a sequence of three or more similar tiles in a horizontal or vertical line, those tiles are removed from the gameboard. (If not, the swap immediately reverses.) You earn a dollar for each tile removed, and more game tiles fall in from the top to fill any gaps. This might result in more matches (we call them chain reaction matches in match-3 fan meetups), which are also removed. Every level has a number of gameboard squares with gold backgrounds. Making a match in front of a gold background removes the gold, valued at $100. Collect all the gold and the level ends.

When you make an extraordinarily good match, or just happen upon one with dumb luck (my personal strategy) a cow peeks onscreen to offer accolades: “Mm…great!” Brilliant. More match-3 games should implement this feature.

A few special powerup tiles are awarded for lengthy matches: Matches of five tiles earn you a giant fan that displaces several tiles (and splits stanchions) or a hammer to destroy a single tile or a genre-specific animation (depending on the motion picture you’re making) that removes multiple tiles from the gameboard. Matches of six tiles pop up a stick of dynamite, while matches of seven tiles gives you a sandbag. Some levels have a locked trunk tile and a matching key tile. If you can get the two together, the trunk is unlocked and you earn a free prop.

By quickly making matches, you charge a “Craze Meter” and pop popcorn at the side of the screen. When the popcorn machine is filled, you can click on it’s “Go!” button to send about ten kernels of popcorn onto the gameboard, temporarily. Clicking on each before they drop off the board earns you $10.

Stanchions (those red velvet ropes that are fun to rearrange when you’re waiting in line at the bank or at Tokyo’s Narita airport) act as locks on tiles. You aren’t able to swap those tiles until the stanchions are destroyed. This is accomplished by making them part of a match, of course.

Between levels in Tinseltown Dreams you hire cast and crew and select props. If you’ve earned a lot of money on the match-3 boards, you can hire the best cinematographers and directors and top stars. If you need to pinch pennies, you can go with the cheaper staff, but your movie won’t be a blockbuster. All available cast and crew have amusing names like Jack Wayne and Marylou Monroe.

Finally, you’re shown a studio stage with all your props and actors and actresses. You can drag everything around and rearrange things as you wish, reversing and even resizing items and placing them on top of others. It takes a bit of time to finesse things just the way you like, especially when the stage starts to get crowded. You can always drag any unneeded props into the lot’s prop trunk to clear up stage space. A movie camera icon at the top of the screen shows you the current look of your movie in CinemaScope, so you can get an advance view of any special effects or camera upgrades.

After ten levels are complete, your movie is finished. Give it a name and wait for the premiere! The critics in 1950’s Hollywood judge moving picture shows on four criteria: acting (did you hire top talent?), set design (did you place props appropriately?), sound and special effects (did you upgrade your camera and spend money on fancy-pants lighting?), and cinematography (did you attract the best directors and cameramen?) My epic romance, Revenge in Paris, earned $332,055 at the box office, and the critics loved it. It got five out of five stars in all the trades… except for set design. It only got four out of five stars. In retrospect, it was because I placed a poodle on top of the star actress’ head. I always thought I could handle a big Hollywood production but it turns out that it’s harder than it looks!

Tinseltown Dreams: The 50’s is a fun match-3 game. I enjoyed playing it, but it never dethroned my favorite match-3 hits of past years. The graphics, especially the movie sets, are particularly impressive and a lot of fun to assemble. In fact, these sets are bit more impressive than the match-3 gameplay. I didn’t care for the way certain powerups removed either the trunk or key tiles, ruining my attempts to combine them. And the mouse pointer seemed to lag just slightly behind my movements. It was barely noticable, but affected my enjoyment of the game. Maybe this lag is because the game takes place in the 1950’s?

Download Tinseltown Dreams: The 50’s

After a lot of trouble in Amsterdam, in underground libraries and organ repair shops, your unnamed adventurer has decided to take a vacation on an unnamed tropical island. Who wouldn’t? Since the island seems to be brimming with Mayan statues and artifacts, let’s assume it an island somewhere off the coast of Mexico. If you haven’t been to Mexico on a vacation, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Youda Games have thrown together another oddball hidden object adventure game. Your adventurer discovers a fake conch shell in a cluttered tourist shop and just has to have it. One very unfun and pedestrian board game later, she’s back at her beachfront room with a brand new pearl-coated artifact. One which shatters during the night, leading her on an adventure deep into the heart of paradise.

Each location is a hidden object scene, with a grocery list of objects at the left of the screen for you to find. Clicking on their pictures within the scene crosses them off the list and removes them from the room; miscellaneous objects glow then disolve top-to-bottom into pixie dust, while useful objects fly into the steamer trunk your adventurer lugs around the island. Most scenes have multiples of the same type of object to find, like ten flowers, or seven map pieces, etc. Some objects are presented in blue typeface – these require some sort of puzzle to be solved in the current hidden object location before they can be found. For example, repairing a fan and then switching it on to create a breeze that moves aside a curtain. Portions of the hidden object scene that can be interacted with sparkle; most solutions involve dragging items from your inventory trunk onto the sparkling portion of the screen.

A Mayan statue with glowing blue eyes acts as your hint button, and takes less than a minute to recharge between uses. Clicking on the fellow causes blue sparkles to emanate from his eyes, creating a ring around the location of one of the objects on your list. The current trend in hidden object games is to swirl the mouse pointer of players who resort to random clicking… and this game is no exception.

There are handfuls of turquoise rocks to collect in each hidden object scene. These collectibles are added to the border around the game screen as you find them, which is a rather nifty nice touch.

Sadly, The Golden Bird of Paradise is stuck back in 2005 with 800×600 resolution screens that make discerning smaller objects almost impossible. It takes greater skill to assemble a crowded collection of junk for a small resolution screen, and Youda Games was apparently not up to the challenge. The game is particularly vexing to play on a flat panel display with upsampled graphics, as the result is muddy, blurry backgrounds. This isn’t a hidden object game where the developers took great care in making sure all hidden objects fit well into their backgrounds, either, with proper sizes, perspective, shading, etc. This is a game where a bullet can be the size of a truck tire. Early in the game there’s a screw that’s so difficult to see that I couldn’t even make it out after using a hint to find it – I had to just click in the center of the hint’s circle of sparkles and hope for the best. Making matters worse, the sparkle/particle effects slowed the game to a crawl, at least on my system. Clicking on two or more objects in back-to-back succession sent the game into molasses mode until the graphics engine could catch up… so something somewhere wasn’t working right. It looked like software rendering slowdown to my untrained eye.

Where the graphics do shine, however, are in the game’s many minigames and logic puzzles. These pop up between most hidden object game scenes. Graphically, the screens encompassing these puzzles are much less busy than the hidden object scenes, with tiles and switches larger and well-animated. Some puzzles are more clever than others, however. A few are actually hard to describe as “puzzles” with a straight face.

All in all, I was rather disappointed with Youda Legend: The Golden Bird of Paradise. There are grammar mistakes, and the story presented in mostly text dialogues and a few comics isn’t at all interesting. The interface leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to polish. Selecting items from the inventory to use covers up a portion of the screen, and sometimes you need to use an item on the screen behind the sliding inventory window. It’s not always clear that some inventory items need “fixed” before they can be used in puzzles. (One silly example: using a hammer to “repair” a chunk of large glass blackbird statue by apparently hammering it into two pieces – in preparation for a puzzle involving reassembling the many broken pieces of the statue you’ve already collected!)

Download Youda Legend: The Golden Bird of Paradise

ERS G-Studio brings Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story to life with all the skill of a Frankenstein in Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is popularly regarded as the world’s first detective story, even before the word “detective” existed. You play a private constable who has just drawn the short straw and been assigned to work with eccentric detective C. Auguste Dupin, a knight in the Légion d’honneur who likes to test new assistants by setting them upon puzzles in his home. Soon the two of you are off, investigating the murder of Camille L’Espanaye in a house in the Rue Morgue. (That’s a street, not a morgue.)

Murders in the Rue Morgue is a hidden object adventure game, meaning that your character possesses an inventory of useful items collected during your adventure, items which are used to solve puzzles and progress the story. As in games like Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst, mousing over portions of the screen changes the always-animated mouse pointer to let you know items can be examined, or picked up, or that exits can be used to move to another location.

Hidden object scenes are forecast by sparkles. In each of these you have a list of objects at the bottom of the screen that you must scan for and click on in the cluttered scene before you. As you find them, objects are crossed off the list and removed from the scene – one or more of these will be added to your character’s inventory. Unlimited hints are available, but it takes the hint button about a minute to recharge between uses. If like me you’re a fan of random clicking, prepare to be somewhat disappointed as after too many false clicks the mouse pointer will swirl about the screen out of your control for a few seconds. Luckily this is a rather unintrusive annoyance at worst and there are certainly more offensive penalties in other hidden object games.

The artwork in the hidden object scenes is impressive indeed, with few (if any) objects looking as if they’ve been copied from a clipart collection and pasted onto a 19th century background. Most objects are the correct color, size, and the game rarely stoops to dirty tricks like making objects 75% transparent. Many hidden object scenes contain drawers or cabinets to open, or objects to slide aside. Make sure you find all these as chances are one or more of the hidden objects on your list are out of sight as you begin your search.

Between hidden object scenes are a wide variety of puzzle locks and minigames to break up the tedium of Dupin’s investigation. These include logic puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and many, many examples of using a code obtained from location A to manipulate the lock on a door in location B. Not all are satisfying, but all are at least skippable. So if you really get stuck you can vault over tricky puzzles – you just have to wait a minute for the “skip” button to activate.

Unfortunately, the adventure game aspects of Murders in the Rue Morgue get silly faster than a giant pink car shaped like a rabbit. Your investigator (and C. Auguste Dupin) collect the most useless of trivial items from locations – for no possible discernable reason, mocking providence – and then astoundingly (Editor: falls off chair) find these trinkets useful to solve puzzles miles away, later in the game. From the beginning of the investigation, suspension of disbelief is stretched so far that it snaps and I believe the force of the fracture has somehow broken my Windows XP Japanese language bar. If I ever want to type in Japanese again I’m going to have to get a restore CD or bring up one of my backups or something… curses!

Download Dark Tales: Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue

Download Immortal Defense

Speaking of high school mysteries, I couldn’t resist playing through the latest Natalie Brooks adventure. Cute, dashing supersleuth Natalie Brooks is resting at her grandmother’s house when she receives a strange letter from one of her old high school classmates, Chad Robertson. Chad’s in trouble and asks Natalie to meet him at his art gallery as soon as possible. It seems Natalie and Chad’s almer mater used to house a fiendish gang of criminals, and the principal’s daughter plans to frame Chad for the murder of her unsuspecting, fabulously wealthy new husband! Can Natalie figure out what’s going on in time to save Chad, his girlfriend Kitty, and the day?

Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High, from Alawar Friday’s Games, is a full-featured hidden object adventure game. In fact, gameplay is much more adventure game styled than in previous games of the series. You spend so much time trying to solve inventory and item manipulation puzzles that it takes a suddenly appearing hidden object scene to remind you that yes, technically, this is a hidden object game.

Each of the game’s ten chapters takes place in a location made up of a handful of rooms. Mousing over the background reveals tooltips describing objects, exits, other characters, etc. The mouse pointer may change to a magnifying glass to indicate that an object can be examined further, a set of gears to announce that an object can be handled physically, or a doorway to point out an exit Natalie can access. Clicking on useful objects adds them to Natalie’s inventory.

To solve most puzzles, click on an object from your inventory and then where onscreen you’d like to use it. Thus you can unlock doors with keys, pop balloons with darts, remove bolts with wrenches, and all the other staples of adventure gaming. Natalie is nothing but unstoppable in her quest to repair every gadget she comes across in her investigations, somehow knowing that toy helicopters and broken piggybank clocks will be useful in her near future. Many puzzles are downright silly and tenuous in their grasp on logic… but Natalie lives in a cartoon world and laughs in the face of explosions, so it’s all in good fun.

One puzzle in particular didn’t make any sense to me… a password to a window washer’s laptop is a sequence of numbers read in the reflection of a bank’s rooftop sign. I think the letters reflected are the first four in ALAWAR, reversed as WALA (with a backwards L) … which Natalie somehow sees as “4142.” I don’t get it.

At the bottom right of the screen are Natalie’s goals, so you usually know what you’re supposed to be trying to accomplish. Hint: when in doubt, click on everything. Sometimes the smallest little room furnishing in the unlikeliest of places is a clue.

Hidden object scenes pop up occasionally and are fairly standard for the genre. In a cluttered room (or hilariously stuffed-full purse) you’ll be asked to find ten objects, one or more which will be added to your inventory for later use. I’m very pleased to say that there is no penalty for random clicking! Hints are quite plentiful if you can’t find an object, and the hint button (which does double duty also giving out clues for the game’s many item manipulation puzzles) recharges decidedly quickly.

Every chapter contains a few minigames or logic puzzles. For example, you may have to steer a boat toward a rendezvous, use a spider to catch some maggots (seriously!), connect some wires, and of course enter in all sorts of secret codes in all manner of strange locks. These are all skippable after a few seconds of effort, if you’re not in the mood, or like me are afraid of maggots.

Natalie’s friends and enemies are portrayed onscreen as 3D characters that fidget back and forth within the current background. They are not run-of-the-mill posers, but custom 3D models. If you play a lot of casual games like I do, you know just how much original content is appreciated! The story takes place in conversations between characters, Natalie’s journal entries, her own asides, and some well put together animated cutscenes. There are no voiceovers in Mystery at Hillcrest High, but the game hardly lacks from their absence.

The graphics pop off the screen and most rooms are smooth and have a nice, curvy, rounded comic book appeal to their design. Some are better than others, however; Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High is a bit inconsistent, but never so much as to appear amateurish. The game is quite lengthy, though perhaps not strong on replay value. I really enjoyed Konstantin Yelgazin’s background score and only wish I could get it into iTunes.

Download Natalie Brooks: Mystery at Hillcrest High

Kelly and Brock Burton don’t feel at ease in their house. The huge mansion looked to be perfect for the newlyweds. Lots of space for Kelly and lots of things for Brock to tinker around with. But then toilet seats started opening and closing on their own, drawers slammed back and forth, and green spectres appeared in the walls! The couple was about to run back to their real estate agent when a little old man in a bowtie appeared on their doorstep. Milton Hobblepop knows a lot about the ghosts in the Burtons’ mansion, and with their help can assemble the proper equipment to catch them all!

Mishap: An Accidental Haunting, developed by Virtual Prophecy Entertainment, is a hidden object puzzle game. You play as the Burtons, following Milton through your mansion looking for objects which have somehow absorbed ghostly energy from the many beings haunting the house. By collecting this energy, Milton will be able to catch the ghosts haunting each area of the house. Some objects can also shed clues on the identity of the ghosts or be used as building blocks to assemble Milton’s ghost-hunting gadgets.

Each area of the house (eight in total) include one large room and three smaller rooms attached to it. You can travel between rooms at any time by clicking on doorways. (The mouse pointer becomes a door icon.) The larger room is bigger than the available screen; moving the mouse near the screen’s edge causes the view to scroll. Each room contains its own list of hidden objects. Also included are ghosts. Milton’s monocle, at the bottom of the screen, flashes in the presence of invisible guests.

Not only must you collect all the hidden objects to complete a room, but you also need to catch any ghosts hiding within. The monocle allows you to see ghosts and gives you a “hot and cold” meter to resolve their location. Hovering on them reveals them, and clicking on each three times allows Milton to vacuum it up.

Your list of hidden objects are at the bottom of the screen. Finding and clicking on one within the scene crosses it off your list and also removes… aw screw it. That’s about as much of this review as I can stomach to write.

I can’t recommend Mishap: An Accidental Haunting (even though I enjoyed playing through the demo) and here are the three reasons why:

1. Upon completing the demo, the game opened up my web browser without my permission and sent me to the purchase page. I really hate when that happens. Especially when the browser they hijack isn’t the one I normally use. But okay, whatever.

2. Mishap left my computer at the wrong desktop resolution. This messed up my icons. When I tried to return to 1680×1050, Windows told me I’d have to restart. That meant the twenty or thirty screenshots I had painstakingly assembled in Adobe Photoshop for this review were lost. Why? Because Photoshop still thought we were in my normal resolution, and the save dialogue box was offscreen so I couldn’t click on it to save the screenshots. I tried everything: keyboard shortcuts, the Windows taskbar Move function, hibernating, etc. All in vain. Hence the screenshots included here are taken from the game’s official site, something that’s against my rules as a game reviewer.

3. Virtual Prophecy Entertainment and Namco have decided to sell Mishap through Plimus. Plimus is the worst of the internet’s e-commerce companies. As a customer and regular purchaser of online games, I’ve had nothing but bad luck with Plimus. They never send the game’s unlock code right away – they always take hours. You want to continue playing immediately? Too bad. Once, they called me on the phone with a creepy computer voice asking me if I had intended to buy a game. They thought I was a criminal even though I had previously purchased from them using that same credit card. That was the last straw. In conclusion, I’d sooner go out in the woods and throw my money down an old rat hole than give it to Plimus.

Wait until Mishap comes out on a trustworthy portal like Steam or Big Fish Games or Popcap or Game Socks.

Download Mishap: An Accidental Haunting (if you must)

Download Aqualux

Harlequin Presents: Hidden Object of Desire, from Gunnar Games, is a hidden object game for players yearning to return to the modest hidden object games of yesteryear. Just a no sweat mindless hunt for (mostly) arbitrary clutter as you follow a simple story to its conclusion… no inventory puzzles and few minigames to get in the way of the eye exam scenes.

American reporter Allie and her photographer Shaun, on behalf of the Midwest Messenger, arrive at the twin island nation of Adamas to cover the Aristan crown prince Adrian Karedes’ thirtieth birthday celebration. With one half of the famous Stefani Diamond missing, the nation is unable to crown either Prince Karedes from the island Aristo (or his opposite on the island Calista) king… and the nation is becoming restless. Things immediately get more interesting for the American tourists when Allie meets the charming ladies’ man of a prince… and Shaun is thrown in jail after being accused of stealing the other half of the Stefani Diamond! Can Allie’s journalistic snooping get to the bottom of the fiendish plot Calista has set in motion to steal the throne? More importantly, will the prince sweep her off her feet and smother her with kisses?

In every hidden object sequence Hidden Object of Desire gives Allie (or occasionally Shaun) a list of objects to find at the left side of the screen. Clicking on one will remove it from the list and the scene. These objects are somewhat tangentially related to the romance novel plot, or not at all related. A character may be looking for a camera to advance the story, but every other object on the list is a random item from the current disarray. Some items deemed important to the story pop up windows with story information and are added to Allie’s inventory/journal after being found. Though you can look back over these items, they’re never used in any sort of manipulation or adventure game style puzzles. Find all the objects and the game will move onto the next hidden object challenge.

A hint button is available and takes about thirty seconds to recharge between uses. You can recharge it immediately by finding one of the Harlequin logos that appear in each scene. Finding two objects back-to-back with only seconds between clicks also rapidly recharges the hint button. Sadly, you can also deplete the hint button by by being overly-zealous with your random clicking. Since “overly-zealous” is my middle name I had a bit of trouble with my standard strategy of starting each level off with a flurry of indiscriminate clicking in an attempt to “narrow the field” before getting down to searching for specific objects in earnest.

The story progresses with chapter headings, dialogue word balloons and torsos at the bottom of the screen, and the occasional fullscreen comic strip. I can’t say I was particularly enthralled, but big-hearted romantics may find the predictable story enjoyable. (In fact, amusingly enough the game even offers you a chance right at the beginning to turn the story off.) What is, however, ultra-entralling is the included complete novel in PDF form just waiting to be printed out and enjoyed at your leisure. Billionaire Prince, Pregnant Mistress by Sandra Marton provides the setting of Adamas… some story background… and that’s about the entirety of the simularity between it and Hidden Object of Desire.

Minigames are present, but take a back seat to the hidden object game sequences. Jigsaw puzzles, memory games, logic puzzles (but not too difficult), spot the difference between two pictures games, etc. All can be skipped after about a minute if you find yourself struggling, but none are hard enough that you’re likely to reach any sort of point of frustration.

The graphics vary between run-of-the-mill and impressive, with thankfully well-constructed hidden object game scenes to hunt through. (i.e. no objects looked like they were floating above the background, even though quite a few were in silly or unbelievable places.) Only once or twice was I asked to find a hidden object that I thought unfairly hidden. Sometimes I ran across an object (a safety pin, for example) that needed to be clicked on in exactly the right position to register that I’d found it, which was mildly annoying. I found Harlequin Presents: Hidden Object of Desire a bit short compared to other hidden object games. Unless you’re ready for a free Harlequin romance novel (and who isn’t in this day and age when libraries are being down-sized and paperback novels cost more than the average casual game?) you may be disappointed with the length of Allie’s adventure on Aristo.

Download Harlequin Presents: Hidden Object of Desire