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chuckroLost Lands: Dark Overlord CE - Pretty standard, pretty decent. The puzzles are generally on the easy side, the plot is stock “save your child from evil,” the achievements are actually a decent spread of actual challenges, and there’s nothing surprising but it’s a perfectly fine example of the genre.
Lost Lands: The Four Horsemen Collectors Edition - Very clearly from the same series, in this game the glasses-wearing mom falls into a Tolkien-pastiche where not-Gandalf tasks her with saving the realm from not-Ringwraiths on flaming horseback. It’s a pretty big game, including a long bonus chapter, but with a good map system (that tells you which areas you missed hidden objects in!) and a decent variety of puzzles. Notably, every (outline-based) hidden-object puzzle is a “find items then use them to accomplish finding one thing” kind of vaguely-logical one.
Sacra Terra: Angelic Night CE - You wake up in some sort of sanitarium that appears to be run by a strange cult, and an angel recruits you to save the world from what the cult unleashed. At first glance it appears that this has no map, and no puzzles besides (word based) hidden-object scenes; and that said hidden object scenes are actually impressively difficult. Upon further play, you find three very easy puzzles, and a map (that you can’t use to jump around) that’s hidden in the diary. And that yes, the HO scenes are often harder than usual. I exorcised all of the demons and restored the world, but I’m skipping the bonus chapter on this one.
Dreamscapes: Nightmare's Heir - Premium Edition - This is the second Dreamscapes game, and while the victim of the last game has inherited special dream powers, you still need to save her husband from the evil dream-invading Sandman. This could use a map and slightly more explanation of what’s going on with the fuzzy mascot trickster thing. There are only a few real puzzles, but they’re decent, as are the HO scenes. The bonus chapter is a little more rough and tacked-on than usual.
Sea Legends: Phantasmal Light Collector's Edition - When their yacht is crashed into a mysterious island surrounded by shipwrecks and Jane’s husband Mike is kidnapped by the evil lighthouse keeper, she must brave the treacherous island to save him. The puzzles are decent but relatively few, and there are a bunch of things it’s easy to miss if you don’t click on the solution just right—several HO scenes frustrated me because I apparently “missed” the hitbox of the correct object. And I had to resort to the strategy guide to drop the boat, because I apparently wasn’t aiming the lever at the right spot.
Apothecarium: The Renaissance of Evil - Premium Edition – Clearly an “advanced” game, you wander into a cursed city in plague-ravaged Italy in search of a mysterious figure and perhaps a cure. There are lots of side-puzzles and extra hidden objects separate from the hidden object scenes and item-use puzzles that make up the main plot. You can buy extra hints from the store using coins from solving puzzles quickly; and you can opt to play a match-3 game instead of doing the HO puzzles. The plot is dopey and the scenes are strung together a bit oddly (and the map is rather useless), but I give them high marks for the actual puzzles.
New York Mysteries: Secrets of the Mafia Collector's Edition - This is another solid gameplay title, as you play a reporter trying to find a bunch of missing children and also try to discover why mafia goons seem to be melting into puddles of green slime. (The answer is ghosts.) Outline-based hidden object puzzles that involve using the items; a solid map system that alerts you to where you missed the bonus HO items; and puzzles that are a bit on the irritating side (they put in some particularly tricksy ones), but are definitely real.
Twisted Lands Trilogy: Collector's Edition - Perhaps the weakest of the bunch. It’s actually three separate games, but the first was rather primitive, and when I hit the first real puzzle about an hour in, it relied on information not found anywhere in the game (which elements zodiac symbols corresponded to) and when I saved and re-loaded, that puzzle became glitchy and unsolvable. I have more bundles and likely better games.
Overall: I think the fantasy games here were generally better than the horror ones. Sacra Terra was particularly weak; the Twisted Lands Trilogy were the only ones I didn’t complete; the two Lost Lands were particularly strong; but nothing was amazing or standout.
Lost Lands: The Four Horsemen Collectors Edition - Very clearly from the same series, in this game the glasses-wearing mom falls into a Tolkien-pastiche where not-Gandalf tasks her with saving the realm from not-Ringwraiths on flaming horseback. It’s a pretty big game, including a long bonus chapter, but with a good map system (that tells you which areas you missed hidden objects in!) and a decent variety of puzzles. Notably, every (outline-based) hidden-object puzzle is a “find items then use them to accomplish finding one thing” kind of vaguely-logical one.
Sacra Terra: Angelic Night CE - You wake up in some sort of sanitarium that appears to be run by a strange cult, and an angel recruits you to save the world from what the cult unleashed. At first glance it appears that this has no map, and no puzzles besides (word based) hidden-object scenes; and that said hidden object scenes are actually impressively difficult. Upon further play, you find three very easy puzzles, and a map (that you can’t use to jump around) that’s hidden in the diary. And that yes, the HO scenes are often harder than usual. I exorcised all of the demons and restored the world, but I’m skipping the bonus chapter on this one.
Dreamscapes: Nightmare's Heir - Premium Edition - This is the second Dreamscapes game, and while the victim of the last game has inherited special dream powers, you still need to save her husband from the evil dream-invading Sandman. This could use a map and slightly more explanation of what’s going on with the fuzzy mascot trickster thing. There are only a few real puzzles, but they’re decent, as are the HO scenes. The bonus chapter is a little more rough and tacked-on than usual.
Sea Legends: Phantasmal Light Collector's Edition - When their yacht is crashed into a mysterious island surrounded by shipwrecks and Jane’s husband Mike is kidnapped by the evil lighthouse keeper, she must brave the treacherous island to save him. The puzzles are decent but relatively few, and there are a bunch of things it’s easy to miss if you don’t click on the solution just right—several HO scenes frustrated me because I apparently “missed” the hitbox of the correct object. And I had to resort to the strategy guide to drop the boat, because I apparently wasn’t aiming the lever at the right spot.
Apothecarium: The Renaissance of Evil - Premium Edition – Clearly an “advanced” game, you wander into a cursed city in plague-ravaged Italy in search of a mysterious figure and perhaps a cure. There are lots of side-puzzles and extra hidden objects separate from the hidden object scenes and item-use puzzles that make up the main plot. You can buy extra hints from the store using coins from solving puzzles quickly; and you can opt to play a match-3 game instead of doing the HO puzzles. The plot is dopey and the scenes are strung together a bit oddly (and the map is rather useless), but I give them high marks for the actual puzzles.
New York Mysteries: Secrets of the Mafia Collector's Edition - This is another solid gameplay title, as you play a reporter trying to find a bunch of missing children and also try to discover why mafia goons seem to be melting into puddles of green slime. (The answer is ghosts.) Outline-based hidden object puzzles that involve using the items; a solid map system that alerts you to where you missed the bonus HO items; and puzzles that are a bit on the irritating side (they put in some particularly tricksy ones), but are definitely real.
Twisted Lands Trilogy: Collector's Edition - Perhaps the weakest of the bunch. It’s actually three separate games, but the first was rather primitive, and when I hit the first real puzzle about an hour in, it relied on information not found anywhere in the game (which elements zodiac symbols corresponded to) and when I saved and re-loaded, that puzzle became glitchy and unsolvable. I have more bundles and likely better games.
Overall: I think the fantasy games here were generally better than the horror ones. Sacra Terra was particularly weak; the Twisted Lands Trilogy were the only ones I didn’t complete; the two Lost Lands were particularly strong; but nothing was amazing or standout.
