Review: Escape From Paradise 2 – A Kingdom’s Quest

The first Escape From Paradise was a great game. It had good puzzles to figure out, generic but addictive mini-games, and it had a lot of charm with the chibi-like characters with their big heads. All in all, it was a good “island survival” game that incorporated other casual game genres. Its sequel, however, was a major disappointment.

Maybe I just had my hopes up a little too high, or maybe it was dumbed down because the challenges were deemed too tough for the casual gamer; either way, the game feels like a series of chores. A series of chores with sub-par minigames to make up for the lack of riddles.

The entire game focuses on collecting jewels and tikis, and in order to do so, you need to:

1. Lead your monkey all over the place looking for tiny 2×3 pixel jewels hidden in the grass and trees;
2. Complete quests;
3. Complete mini-games.
4. Catch all the fish, dig up all the fossils, and catch all the birds.

There are multiple problems with this way of finishing a game.

1. Those jewels are tiny. If you realized that you missed any AFTER you’ve done point 2 as well as 3, you’ll end up leading your monkey around the entire map looking for a few colored pixels.
2. The quests are easy – there is no challenge in them at all. They come with clear directions and end up being just a series of chores.
3. The mini-games range from match-3, hidden object, click-management…to sudoku. Name any one person who’s good at ALL of those. You’ll have to be, since there are no hints or extra powerups in sudoku or match-3. And they’re long games.
4. Birds are VERY hard to catch.

On top of that, there’s the control scheme. You can either left click and drag a person to a spot, or you can left-click and right click. Sounds simple right? Now add to it that right click and dragging the map moves it, and once you select someone, you can’t access the map. So in order to move someone across the entire map, you’d end up doing a whole lot of dragging. The map is this tiny box at the bottom of the screen that can’t be enlarged, and has no significant markers. In other words, getting around is very frustrating.

Graphics and sound of this game is just as good as the last one, if not better. The core mechanics – hunger, thirst, sleep and social – stayed the same. Load times are minimal, and you can quit and autosave any time you like.

Escape From Paradise 2 isn’t necessarily a bad game. It’s still a fine casual game, but it seriously pales in comparison to the original. It’s just a bad sequel. It’s a step backwards. For $6.99, it’s a deal if you enjoy any of the mini-games.

If you are getting this game, I highly recommend getting the strategy guide with it. It is superbly written, with clear directions and great screenshots, even a map with all the locations. The only downside to the guide is that you can’t print things out.

 

Hidden Secrets the Nightmare Moths & Roaches solution

I actually had a video walkthrough for the ENTIRE game made a while back, but the site is broken and I really don’t have time to fix it. Eventually I’ll dig up all the video files and just post the links, or move to a new server. Meanwhile, this particular puzzle is here on request.

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3

 

Virtual Families – Here Comes the Sun mod *updated*

When I booted up Virtual Families for the first time, I thought everything looked really nice, but there was a color cast to everything. The characters are of vibrant colors, and the backgrounds were sort of muted. I guess it’s an effect to allow the characters stand out more, but I thought I’d like a brighter, more vibrant house and yard.

So here’s the first “background maps” mod I whipped up, with higher contrast, darker wood, and just generally more “oomph” to the colors. It looks subtle here, but trust me, it’s anything but. Try it – you’d want sunglasses. *updated* Now includes the updates so they all get a colour boost. Here’s a preview:

Here comes the sun

And here’s a link to the zip file. Unzip into your Virtual Familes\images folder. Before making changes to the images directory, make sure you back it up first! (Or you can reinstall, but backing up / restoring is so much faster)

Leave a comment if you want, say, another color theme.

 

Virtual Families – easier to spot collectibles

A simple modification to make collectibles easier to spot. I just took the original png and added a very noticeable glow.

Copy and paste the file into your Virtual Families/images folder.

Get the png

Request other mods if you like, in the comments. I’m thinking about doing a money cheat, but honestly, money hasn’t been a problem yet, and nobody’s starving to death. Maybe a few more funky graphic changes.

 

Azada: Ancient Magic Review

After the big hit that was Azada (still is, really – the walkthrough page gets hundreds of hits everyday, easily.) I waited for its sequel with baited breath. We were promised many things – bigger, better, more Azada-ness.

What I didn’t expect was a shorter game that took only an hour and a half for me to finish and a lack of challenge overall. I can understand that the first one might have been a little too hard for the casual gamer that are used to Match-3’s, but this is ridiculous. Most of the “books” clocked in at just under 3 minutes for me; there’s almost never a question of which object to use, the game held your hand all the way. When I couldn’t find something, the game obligingly points out where it is for me with a penalty of 4 minutes (nothing, compared to the 40 they gave you in the beginning).

When you’re well and truly stuck, the hints system allows for an unexpected way to get a hint without sacrificing time. Simply click on the hint button and see which page allows for a hint, then look around to see what you’ve missed. No need for a penalty.

There are certain mechanics that are somewhat inventive and new, such as the bury-wine-turns-into-vinegar-in-100k-years trick, but even that harkens back to Day of the Tentacle. Some of the puzzles seem to repeat itself; in two cases we had to click on one page, gets someone’s attention, flip back to another page, and take stuff. Of course, the guy turns around so quick we couldn’t get everything at once, so we just kept repeating the motion and he keeps falling for it.

Like in the previous installment, mini-games abound, but this time integrated into the “books” or storyline. No  sudoku this time around, or English pegs, thankfully. No slider puzzles either. In trading for the more inventive puzzles, even the mini-games were a bit of a let down. When you finish each book, its mini-game is available for replay. I wish the books themselves were left there for a playthrough as well, but I guess that wouldn’t fit well into the storyline.

Graphically, Ancient Magic is easily the best looking game in the casual market. With its 3D rendered background scenes with proper perspective, the only thing that can compete with it is Dream Chronicles. Even DC doesn’t have the kind of resolution Azada has – 1024 x 768 vs. DC’s 800 x 600. No contest there. Azada’s graphics are sharper and more detailed, objects being picked up are never pixelated.

The orchestral score performed with a real orchestra – no stock music here! – is impressive as well, and while I usually just leave the sound off or very low in games like these, Ancient Magic’s music is worth a listening to.

Is it worth $6.99? You betcha. $20? Not for an hour and a half of gameplay, it isn’t. If you load up the trial and each puzzle takes you 10 minutes to complete, it’s worth it for you. If you breezed through it, wait for a 40% off promotion.

 

Virtual Villagers 3 cheats

One of the patches will give you 30K in food. Great for lazy starters, and the other gives 1 million tech points, great for impatient starters.

The instructions are there as well. Even though I’ve never tested it on Vista, there are people who left comments with instructions on how to get it to run on Vista. Please check the thread there instead of asking here!

[2008.10.24 - Ok, Minutegamer.org is down for good until I transfer the domain. Here are the links to the patches:]

give_30k_food.exe.zip

give_1m_tech_points.exe.zip

 

Farm 51 suggestions…

If you don’t know what this game is, you have to try it. You absolutely have to try it. It’s the best game on the Big Fish Games community. Click this button and play it – heck, it’s free!

Hail to the Farm 51 team,

Love the new update! Gave us tons more to do. After playing for a few days, here are a few suggestions and a few certain elusive bugs. I’ve been playing this game for weeks now, so mind the length of this email. Thanks for reading.

Well, the bugs first.

I’m using Mozilla Firefox latest version 2.0.0.14 Java version 6 update 5 1.6.1_05-b13
2 gigs of ram, windows xp sp2.

If you click on the bank balance to open the ledger, it will work 3 times. Then when you click on it again. nothing will show up. Not a showstopper, but definitely annoying if you like to check your year to date every once in a while. Restarting the game by reloading it fixes the problem. The bullet buttons also work in strange funky ways. If you click on one, something else is selected. Weird.

Sometimes clicking on the silo to open the inventory and then clicking on an item can freeze the game. This is pretty random.

Suggestions – (in no particular order; the numbers are just for show)

1. This is probably intentional, but fuel acquisition doesn’t take into account of the cost of the crop circle. So if you only get 3 fuel it actually costs $20k per, while getting over 15 runs the cost down to $10K per. This is kind of misleading since there is a choice to get Cash instead, and people are probably thinking that it works the same way.

2. Free range cows should make more milk than penned cows. Giving them access to a river should mean they don’t need water. Chickens and cows shouldn’t have to be fed if they are given more than 15 squares to roam during the warm months. All this would add the realism of the game. Also, robo-animals should be “fixed” not “healed.” We should also be able to sell cows or even just to let them go – bombing them is a bit uh…inhumane, ya?

3. The alien planet is pretty useless once you max out gnurdaculture. There should be a bit more to do there. A scratch card, maybe? A riddle?

4. If you make a “deluxe” version of this game where you can download it and play it in full screen, I’d buy it. I know lots of people who’d buy it. It’d also be virtually unhackable if you keep an “online only” game where you can get tokens and an “offline mode” where you can’t. Something like the deluxe game son pogo.com where they include chat.

5. This game needs more screen space. Since you probably can’t provide that, I’d settle for #4.

6. Having multiple tractors should mean that you can harvest multiple fields at once.

7. The illusionator should have a wider range. Or the kind of range that the barn or shed should have. i.e. one should protect 6 / whatever number you decide regardless of where they are. It just makes sense – I mean, if I can have my hovershed above the river and all my iq enhancers below the river, the illusionator should be able to protect them even if it’s in the upper corner of the map.

8. A few buttons that I don’t think anybody really use on a regular basis: Buy building, animals, equipment, fences, Settings, Help, repair / heal and skills. You have a buy / build menu like your decorations menu, fences should really be under decoration, healing should be done in the barn, skills can go under inventory. You get the picture. Having so many buttons confuses new players and annoy the old ones.

9. When you sell ALL of something, the menu should stay where it is, not jump to the top.

10. a penultimate “fix all” button would be nice.

11. I love this game – keep up the good work! Thanks for reading all this, if you did.

~Sally
The MinuteGamer

 

Walkthrough: Hidden Secrets – the Nightmare

It is DONE! You can find it over at the MinuteGamer.org site. I’ve linked it directly to make it easier to find.

The walkthrough includes all storyline solution videos, videos for all the harder puzzles, hints for the minor puzzles like pegs, images for all the traffic map puzzles near the end of the game, in a spoiler-free top page. Enjoy!

 

Casual Game Portals Compared

There are lots of game portals out there, and each offer some sort of loyalty program, discounts, coupon codes and so on. Instead of trying to cram all the information into a blog post, I’ve tabulated the features that most causal gamers care about in their portals, and added “perks” and “quirks” of each in a related article.

You can check out the article at minutegamer.org, under the GAMES section.

 

Review: Agatha Christie – Peril At End House

I was quite enamored with the first Flood Light Games’ Agatha Christie game, Death on the Nile. To be frank, enamored wouldn’t be quite the word – I loved it. I’ve also played it too many times to be productive in my other endeavors. It was a seriously groundbreaking hidden object game. It had puzzles, it had adventure elements, it was detailed, well-drawn, and it was everything a hidden object game ought to be. I’ll also never forget that it came first.

Peril At End House is a bit of a mixed disappointment, in that regard. It does a lot of things right – 1024 x 768 resolution that runs smooth as silk, lovely classical style music in the background, unobtrusive sound effects, a puzzle in every room. However, it suffers from a lack of innovation. I guess the problem is mostly me (as will be for other gamers who has played the first game) and I’m expecting too much. Instead of getting something new, I’m getting more of the same. While this isn’t necessarily unwelcome, the time between the last game and this one led me to believe that there would be more.

This second Agatha Christie game from Floodlight games is very much like the first one. You start off with Poirot deciding that he will pursue the case, go through the rooms of each of the suspects, look for objects, find clues, and the mystery is linearly solved for you along the way. What differs the Agatha Christie games from the usual run-of-the-mill hidden object games is the attention to detail. Everything is crisp and clear, scenes are very well composed with most of the objects in plausible places.

Death on the Nile was a great game, and Peril at End House is, at the core, the same game. There aren’t any surprises – the quality is there and the puzzles are there. Instead of the old videos in between scenes, we now get a comic telling the story instead. The “saloon” where you can interview the suspects are now replaced by “CLUE” cards. “Interviews” are one-sided and really just a card in the page.

If you’ve played the first one, you will want to play this one. However, the rooms feel a lot less populated and I cannot help but feel that the game was rushed. Peril At End House should’ve been an “improvement” considering how successful the first game was, but instead of the boost in production values, there has been a cut. It’s still worth getting despite of it all; the scenes are still beautifully composed, and the story is still quality Agatha Christie.