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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
mystery chronicles: murder among friends
Mystery Chronicles: Murder Among Friends is a hidden object game from Lazy Turtle Games.The setting is France, around the turn of the 20th century. Your cousin and wife were killed, and their butler and children are missing. It's your job to solve the crime. You have the option of playing in either the relaxed or the timed mode. Each chapter starts with 45 minutes on the clock. As with all hidden object games, there is a list of items to locate, and a hint to help. In this case, it's a magnifying glass. Clicking on it highlights one object still unfound on the screen. It takes 2 full minutes to recharge. There are multiple scenes in most chapters, and clicking on the footprints in the lower right hand box opened up the additional scenes, in case you get stuck and want to move on to finding something else.
I found I had to click seven times in quick succession before I encountered a time penalty (30 seconds). However, slow random clicks did not seem to have any effect. There are no bonuses for locating multiple objects in quick fashion.
What was done well: mini-games intersperse the hidden object scenes. You may have to play a game similar to minesweeper or piece together paper fragments, as examples. The story was intriguing. Items frequently looked the same from scene to scene (i.e. the brown briefcase you collect from the first location of the Mansion will be the same brown briefcase in other scenes as well).
What could have been better: I found the objects frequently blended in with the background. For example, in the first location, the mansion, the bullet hole in the window was difficult to locate. In the garden, the coffee grinder in the weeds was impossible for me to discern. There was no way to magnify an area, which contributed to my frustration in locating blended objects. Occasionally, there were items that I had not heard of (i.e. Hanoi tower - the ring tower). Many of the items to find had nothing to do with solving the mystery. In one scene, there is clearly a dead body. Clicking on it prompted no action. It wasn't until the end of the scene that you "discover" the body in text. That was too contrived for my tastes.
Recommended for: hidden object mystery fans
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