Fabulous Finds, a hidden object game, has a few hidden gems to offer something a little different. Rather than being one big game with several mini-games, Fabulous Finds offers three-in-one as no one component dominates.

Great Aunt Beatrice left you her home in Carmel, California. The home needs a makeover, so you dig through the house for stuff to sell in the yard sale to collect the needed funds for redecorating. The three-in-one components include collecting items for the yard sale (hidden object), selling them in the yard (connecting customers with what they want), and decorating rooms (puzzle).

The hidden object portion contains no list of things to find. Instead, you read the newspaper to identify a trend and then search rooms for items fitting that trend. One trend is gardening. Click all items that have some association with gardening. This offers a creative twist, but it has flaws. I see a garden hose and click it. Nope. It’s not acceptable. This sort of thing happens at times.

Since you’re weeding through junk, some items have missing parts or need repairs. These have helper items, but those won’t show up on the list until you’ve picked up the original item. A high heel shoe, for example, has a missing heel. After you find the shoe, the missing heel appears on the helper list. Find the broken heel to reunite the two items.

After collecting everything for the theme from several rooms in the house, time to hold the yard sale. Items appear spread around the yard, on tables, on the porch, on the corners of the yard. The customers enter and notes show up describing the customer and what he/she needs. “The librarian wants to cook.” So you look for the stereotypical librarian who dresses impeccably and has her hair up. Then you need to find something that has to do with cooking — pots and pans, perhaps. Drag the librarian to the pots and pans.

Sometimes the clues can be obscure. It makes the game more challenging. Each customer has a happiness bar. The longer it takes you to find what they need, the shorter their happiness bar. So not only do you need to find the right customer, but also the item he/she needs. Kind of a mix between hidden objects and a puzzle (using content to figure out what you need).

When the sale ends (after all customers receive what they want), you can proceed to redecorate a room. Or you can start looking for items for the next yard sale. The game doesn’t care which order you take. The only thing that matters is that the yard sale can never come before finding the items for it — obviously.

In decorating a room, Fabulous Finds gives you clues as to how to decorate the room. The closer you match the clues, the higher score your room earns. Most of the time, this is too easy. At least, after you finish the game, you can decorate the rooms in any way you’d like.

The fabulous part about the game is its colorful and sharp graphics and creative approach to finding items. Fabulous Finds, however, needs to last longer and provide a little more challenge in room decorating. Or maybe turn it into a SIM environment where you can play in the room with characters. It also needs to avoid not accepting objects that fit in with the yard sale theme. Despite the few nigglings, Fabulous Finds deserves its name.

Download the PC game.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games

Talk about cheering up a gal who couldn’t do much while recovering from hand surgery! I had no idea another Mystery Case Files (MCF) game was coming out. It doesn’t feel so long ago since we had the pleasure of seeing Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate. Then I discover it’s a follow up to Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst. I had mixed feelings because the original’s ending disappointed me. However, the game had a strong story and intriguing puzzles.

Wow! MCF: Return to Ravenhearst surpassed all expectations and blew away all previous Mystery Case File games. I believe that this one truly takes the Mystery Case Files franchise and hidden object to a full-fledged adventure where hidden objects take a back seat rather than rule the game.

Most hidden object games give you two or three scenes you can roam, one at a time, from a map. This one reminds me of the first adventure games from Sierra that I played on my Apple ][+ as a kid. Of course, the overall production transcends those old adventures.

Navigate around MCF: Return to Ravenhearst by clicking the sides of the screen when you see an arrow pointing indicating you can go in that direction. As you move your mouse around the screen, the cursor turns into a magnifying glass or a white sparkle showing there’s more to that item.

The casebook plays a big role as who can remember everything s/he reads (aside from those with photographic memory). You could write it down, but you may not remember or realize the significance of a note that appears in the casebook.

Other games with a similar casebook just rehash the story. This one provides useful details. Review the casebook as it contains clues and information that will come to play later.

Good news — if you haven’t played any of the Mystery Case Files, it won’t affect playing this one. There’s little reference to the previous games.

The game picks up from the previous after the release of Emma Ravenhearst’s soul. But Charles Dalimar — the villain of both stories — continues to torture other souls. He was also responsible for the strange goings-on at the carnival in MCF: Madame Fate. We must help free the tortured souls so they may rest in peace.

We’re seeing an influx of adventure games (yeah!), but some come too easy. Not MCF: Return to Ravenhearst. I got stuck in a few places and had to walk all over the house a few times before I figured them out. Gamers who feel games are too easy shouldn’t find that a problem here. The nice thing about getting stuck is that you don’t have to figure it out right then to move forward.

Big Fish Games, publisher of the series, has also released a separate sound track. Why? The music was annoying that I turned off the sound early on.

Some objects are nearly impossible to find. One was hidden behind a toy in a glass case. Even with the hint, I couldn’t see it. There’s no limit on the hints, but you do have to wait for the meter to refill after use.

Another negative was the game’s snarky comments when you make a useless move. I’d think, “Gee, thanks for the insult.”

Nonetheless, these little peeves hardly interfere with the experience of playing the almost perfect game.

I thought the hype surrounding MCF: Madame Fate was overdone, but not for MCF: Return to Ravenhearst. It never let me down. The game also relies on some video and they fit beautifully with the story and scenes. I generally don’t like videos because they lack captions, but that’s not an issue here as they come with subtitles. Yeah!

What will MCF bring next? When? I hope it continues to build upon the superb MCF: Return to Ravenhearst.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games, Puzzle Games

Mike and Isabel of The Nightshift Code return in Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye, an adventure that mixes hidden objects with a variety of puzzles.

Game developers have a challenge in telling a good story, providing the right amount of story updates between scenes and puzzles, and tying the story with the game. Not an easy balance to achieve.

While Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye comes with a heavy-duty story, the story gets lost and confusing along the way. I love a good story in a game, but this one had too much going on and didn’t flow well between scenes and puzzles. It may make more sense if I took the time to read the stories.

I like most of the mini-games, which aren’t standard fare. The anagram game requires moving letters around to form words. Great game, but tedious to play because it involves more mouse work than necessary to move the letters.

The time line mini-game is a great idea that needs better execution. Boxes appear above pictures. Each picture provides a clue so you can move it into the right box. The earliest event goes into the first box while the last event goes into the last box. The clues are too hard.

One of the beautiful things about the casual games industry is that most games come with a way to play at your own pace. Forget about that here. Time plays a big nasty role. You have to start the WHOLE level over if you run out of time during mini-games. That means finding the hidden objects again before returning to the almost impossible mini-game.

Logic is my favorite mini-game. As a kid, I enjoyed doing logical puzzles where you read a story and solve the puzzle using logic. Maybe we’ll see logic show up in more games. So much can be done with logic puzzles without ever feeling repetitive.

The mini-games steal the show in Nightshift Legacy: The Jaguar’s Eye. The hidden objects portion involves finding objects that work together in multiple scenes. Speaking of multiple scenes, the game never makes it clear I need to look elsewhere for more objects. In some scenes, the list of objects is everything you need to find in the scene.

However, in others, the list of objects cover multiple scenes rather than just one. I had to figure this out the hard way. So if time stops, that means you found all the objects in the current scene and need to go to another scene for the rest.

It penalizes you for incorrect clicks and some of my clicks were correct. I admit I had to replay a few levels because I ran out of time.

The do overs go fast because the object locations don’t change, so you won’t likely want to replay the game unless you want to figure out the puzzles that had you relying on the hints to solve it. It’s OK if you need to use lots of hints, you’re not the only one.

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive with Game Center Solution: PC or Mac

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games, Puzzle Games

Samantha Swift, an archaeologist, travels all over the world to find rare artifacts for a museum. Her latest venture calls for finding six roses that belong on the Shield of Athena. Adventurers will find a rosy game in Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena.The game ranks up there with Natalie Brooks and other hidden object games slash adventures slash mini-games.

Samantha, Adam Woodson and her father’s former partner, Dr. Butler, must also deal with two bad guys who also want the roses, but for selfish reasons.

Anyway, I played this game over a month ago while recovering from hand surgery as it only needed one hand. Since typing was not possible, I had to hold off writing the review until my hand healed. What stuck with me was the game had wonderful hand-drawn graphics along with a strong story that neither overwhelmed nor confused.

In replaying the game, I got stuck on a scene and couldn’t get pass it even though I did what I needed to do to move on. I used a hint to confirm I wasn’t forgetting something. So I tried starting over with a new ID and it froze in the same spot one step further than before.

Thank goodness, I got through it the first time. I tried exiting the game and restarting the computer. Nothing worked.

Replaying the game also showed me that objects rarely change location and the list of items to find changed a little. So once you finish the story, you won’t want to replay it. But that’s often the case with this genre.

I also appreciated this wasn’t a timed-game, something I couldn’t manage with one hand. Besides, non-timed games compel us to enjoy the game more because it’s not a race. When it’s a race, we take short cuts and use more hints.

Every hidden object scene contains items highlighted in blue. You can’t find these until you’ve collected the other hidden items. Once done, use the found hidden items to interact with the scene to find the blue items. This feature appears in more of these point and click adventures. That and you may need to find items in other rooms before completing the puzzle in the current room.

Hidden objects often fit the story line and theme rather than have you find things to make the game longer lasting. Found artifacts end up in the museum that you can visit anytime during the game. Click an artifact to get its details and place of origin. Samantha travels to Guatemala, Tibet, Japan, Rome and elsewhere.

Lightning bolts hide in every scene to give you more hints. Experienced gamers might find this one a little easy, but worth experiencing the gorgeous graphics, interactive puzzles, humor and fitting background music.

Just play one hour of Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena and you’ll find you want to keep going.

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive with Game Center Solution

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games, Puzzle Games

Emma’s soul is free. But her ghost has delivered a dire warning: evil still lurks in Ravenhearst Manor. Big Fish Games Studios takes you deep inside the cursed estate in Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst, the thrilling sequel.

Experience Ravenhearst’s spectral halls as never before with new immersive adventure-style gameplay and an epic original soundtrack. Feel the floorboards creak as you move from room to room solving puzzles and seeking out clues in over 150 detailed scenes.

Save 50% on the game using coupon code RAVEN50. This promotion is valid from 11/27-12/27 ONLY. Go try Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst first to see if you like it.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game News, Hidden Object Games, PC Games

Mushroom Age sounds like a quirky name for a game, doesn’t it? What images does it conjure for you? None of the thoughts I had about the game based on its title and logo accurately represent the hidden object game’s story. About the only thing you might figure out from the title it’s an eccentric story. Don’t judge the game by its name — in this case.

The first thing we see is Albert Einstein, but not quite. His name is Einbock and he hates it when folks confuse him with the genius behind the theory of relativity. Vera — us players — wants to find her fiancé Tom as she hasn’t heard from him.

Thanks to Einbock’s not cooperating, she snoops around to finds Tom’s cell phone and starts messing with it. Minutes later, she lands 1000 years into the future. Her travels won’t stop there as eventually she reaches Jurassic Period and Stone Age as well as meets Socrates and Nostradamus.

The cell phone has a feature that can’t be had on any of today’s cell phone: time travel. Vera’s lands in a graveyard in 3008 where she meets a funky robot with a laugh that cracks me up. The poor guy — though 1000 years into the future — malfunctions and Vera must reboot him on occasion by playing a “Wheel of Fortune” / Hangman game to figure out the password.

Vera has to do more than try to find Tom after discovering a dangerous plan. Dialogue shows up as both text and audio saying what the text shows. Though my hearing is far from perfect, I find the voices annoying. The voices sound like a parent talking to a young child. Clarity is important, but audio can sound clear without talking down as it does in Mushroom Age.

What amazes about Mushroom Age is that it lasts a long time (23 chapters) for a game of its kind, which blends hidden objects and doing things to make something happen. It resembles games like Azada and Dream Chronicles. The game not only expects you to find needed items (and all items have a purpose), but to use them together such as starting a fire or unlocking a gate.

Although you return to some scenes, it doesn’t mean doing the same thing as before or finding the same objects. Besides, every visit to a scene has a reason not just to save development time. The only thing that repeats are several mini-games, but they become more difficult with each play.

The end of a chapter shows how much of the game you’ve completed to that point. However, a couple of chapters make the number go down instead of up — obviously a bug.

The hint system lets you ask for a hint anytime as long as the hint meter is full. If you’ve found all the objects in one room and request a hint, it becomes a wasted hint because it tells you to go in another room and nothing else. This becomes a problem when playing some confusing mini-games.

Despite the sharp-looking graphics, the character movements aren’t as sharp. They resemble characters glued to Popsicle sicks — they’re frozen and their whole being moves as a stiff entity.

Seasoned hidden object and puzzle gamers will recognize many of the genre’s features in Mushroom Age. Yet, the game comes together as an original. The game’s title reflects a piece of the story that comes later, but it could’ve had a better name. Nonetheless, casual game players — no matter the experience or whether they have green thumbs — will likely to find Mushroom Age fascinating and funny.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games, Puzzle Games

The annual Fall Carnival makes up one of my favorite memories from elementary school. I remember enjoying going from booth to booth to win prizes and never winning the cake walk. It was also neat seeing my teachers outside of the school day. Now that I have two kids in elementary school (one is now in high school!), I look forward to the school carnival.

The Hidden Object Show 2 doesn’t quite compare to the elementary school carnival, but it’s colorful and contains many games within the game. The game takes a unique approach in not having players find X objects in every scene with special activities in between. Instead, players see the fortune teller who decides what kind of game they’ll play.

The 11 hidden object games range from the basic find 10 of the same category of objects (sweets and things you throw) and silhouettes of objects to Hangman-style (find the letters to build the list of objects to find) and compare two scenes to spot the difference.

The game’s biggest strength is length with 300 rounds! You could play it for two or three days and barely make a dent in the game. However, it also makes the The Hidden Object Show 2 feel like it has no direction. After playing four rounds in a level, you win a prize. The prize list scrolls through and names your prize. Ho hum. Just not exciting.

In addition to finding objects, players can look for tickets to grow your ticket total, question marks for one or two more hints to add on to the three in every round, and skip chips for skipping games you don’t want to play while on the fortune teller scene.

Sometimes the scenes overwhelm with so many objects blending with the busy background. It gets old. When asking for a hint, the showman comes out with his cane to point to the item. He can be swift that you miss where he points or you can’t see the object even after he points it out.

Scenes contain bright colors and the showman has a little character. Sounds get carried away at times. Season hidden object players will love this one because the objects prove challenging to find with so many things in each scene. Others might tire of the game’s business and lack of direction.

The Hidden Object Show 2 earns its money the hard way with variety and lasting a long time. But its long length may bore some who like to play for something. Life’s a carnival — give The Hidden Object Show 2 a try.

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games

An enchanting experience awaits match three fans in 4 Elements. The game’s stunning visuals, airy music, and twist on match three create a beautiful package. The story begins with the corruption of the magic of the four elements that kept a kingdom running for centuries.

You need to unlock the four ancient books of magic and collect 16 cards to restore the kingdom. The four books include Earth, fire, air, and water with each containing four cards. Before making matches, players need to unlock one book beginning with Earth. Here, players find all the pieces of objects needed to find the key to unlock the book.

The objects interact with the scene to help locate more missing pieces and eventually the key. The matching game comes in after unlocking the book. Earth is the first book you must restore by clearing tiles to create a path for the magic energy to flow through until it reaches the altar.

In Earth, the clearing the brown tiles lets the green energy make its way to the altar to bring a tree to life. The scenes and tiles match the books’ themes. So the book of fire has red liquid and ends with a flame while water’s energy is blue and the revived altar looks like a waterfall.

It takes four rounds of matching to find all the missing for a card. Once restored, players need to seek differences between the two scenes of the card to complete restore it. A fairy guides you throughout 4 Elements and offers hints in the key searching and card comparison mini-games when needed.

Unlike standard match three games, you don’t work to clear all the tiles in the scene. Instead, you work to make a path to help the energy flow from one end to the altar. The scene moves as you progress on the path and you can’t go backward. In making longer matches, the tiles at the end of the match explode affecting tiles around it. The number of tiles depends on the length of the match. So pay attention in case you need a little help from the explosion by creating the match in the right direction.

Four bonuses show up whenever you make enough matches of the bonus’ corresponding color. The shovel — which clears one tile — fills up based on green tile matches. Other bonuses consist of a bomb for clearing a small area, swap for trading two pieces, and rearrange for moving all the tiles in hopes of getting better matches.

4 Elements gives you no reason to play the game again once you play all 64 levels. Games don’t always need to have a second mode, but this one misses an opportunity for not having a second mode consisting of only the matching game considering its unique twist. Chuzzle and Bejeweled don’t have stories, yet their endless mode compel people to play them repeatedly.

It’s not often we see an original game come along especially in a popular genre. 4 Elements not only brings a fresh approach to match threes, but also comes with amazing production values. Just go download it from your favorite site. One hour of play is worth it.

Download the game from your favorite site:

• Big Fish Games
• Reflexive GameCenterSolutions

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, Match 3 Game, PC Games

Go-Go Gourmet returns reality TV-style as Ginger heads for an international competition against fellow chefs from seven countries in Go-Go Gourmet: Chef of the Year. We learn the story through the usual comic strip style images with dialog bubbles. Most of us will never participate in the Olympics, but this gives us a little taste of it as Ginger represents USA.

Unlike the typical time management game, we do more than just fulfill orders (judges’ orders instead of customer orders). We must hunt for the needed ingredients, use appliances, cook or bake the food, and deliver the pretty dish to the judges.

Judges’ faces pop up on the screen with their dish requests. The ingredients and instructions appear below the judge’s face so you can cook up a storm. Now, you may juggle two, three, or even four orders at once. While the blender runs for one dish, you might put together another dish and throw it in the oven.

Chefs earn points for their work and mini-games provide opportunities to gain more points. The compare scenes game contains ingredients while the other scene is barren. The ingredients appear on the bottom of the screen for your placing into the barren scene to make it match the other scene. The game is stubborn about accepting the first ingredient. Things improve after the game wakes up.

Another mini-game has players hunting as many of the same ingredients as they can and fast. For example, find all of the onions in the kitchen before time’s up. Succeed to win more points and get ahead of the competition.

On occasion, a judge offers a bribe… well, not officially. But if you serve the dish fast enough, you earn bonuses such as time freeze, which stops the clock for a short time. The faster you serve a dish, the higher you score with ten points being the highest possible score. Go-Go Gourmet: Chef of the Year offers hints by showing you the location of the ingredients for a few moments.

As Ginger wins rounds, she also gets new outfits that give her an edge whether it’s making the judges more patient, helping her move faster, or earning bonus points for dishes. She also picks up souvenirs and recipes you can print and try.

Upon completing all the rounds for the country, Ginger travels to the next one where the scene reflects the country’s food and culture. Go-Go Gourmet: Chef of the Year gets harder as you advance to a new country.

The opening story has a typo as sauté turns into saut and the scenes move too slowly with the constant opening and closing of the curtains. Clicks don’t always take forcing players to repeatedly click until Ginger gets moving toward the clicked ingredient. The problematic clicks can make the difference between coming in first place and finishing third. Because of the clicking issue, the game looses half of a star.

Go-Go Gourmet: Chef of the Year demands a lot of fast clicking and moving. Fingers will get a workout. Nonetheless, the game will please fans of the addicting original with its added components, recipe and ingredient variety, and challenge of competing with other chefs rather than just a race against the clock.

Download Go-Go Gourmet: Chef of the Year

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games, Time Management

The Dream Day hidden objects game franchise returns with Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan, its fourth game in the series. Once again, the series introduces features that enhance the game. Sometimes a game in a series would receive new features that look like an ugly attempt to claim the game isn’t a rehash of the previous with a new storyline thrown in.

Oh, I’m not saying sequels can’t recapture their predecessor’s success with a new story, new sets, and new characters. Fans love getting more of the same. With casual games coming out with a new game on a daily basis, it takes no time for a game to look dated. In fact, I’m judging handheld games — the same category I did last year — and these categories have no new games. The games look and feel dated.

Back to New York. Dream Day First Home introduces the two story route. Dream Day Wedding applies this feature by giving us two couples from which to choose. Play one first and then play the other couple next time around. I run into a technical problem (fixed) with the first couple after almost finishing the game play, so rather replaying them — I switch to the other couple for a change of pace.

Dream Day games come with a Choose a Story, which lets players decide where the story takes them next by picking one of three options. At the end of a Choose a Story, players earn a Time Booster item. Remember the item as it won’t appear on the list of things to find and gain one minute when you find it.

Bluebirds also appear in every scene save for Wedding Crises scenes. For every five bluebirds found, you win an extra hint. The scenes — prior to a mini-game or Choose a Story — come with three hints plus whatever you earn in finding bluebirds.

Mini-games fit the game’s wedding planning theme perfectly. After finding all the objects for a level, you’ll get the wedding registry scene where you pick a gift to open that leads to either the Choc-O-Matic Fountain or Party Puzzle (seating chart) mini-game. Players need to turn metal tubes in Choc-O-Matic Fountain to ensure the chocolate can flow from start to end in every pipe or else guests won’t get their chocolate in the wedding. Not a good thing!

Party Puzzle brings something I haven’t seen appear as a mini-game. Each placecard contains a guest with one or two colors on the sides. The colors on the sides of the placecards must line up with like colors. One joker is available to help you out of a rough spot.

After completing one of the two mini-games, you play the apartment puzzle. The bride gives you, the wedding planner, a key to her apartment where you hunt down the list of things she needs. That list takes you through the next few scenes.

The apartment puzzle has no time limits, so explore the scene and figure out what to do. While you can press “Solve” if you get stuck, these don’t take a lot of work to figure out. Just look for clickable items or watch for the sparkles giving you a hint of where to look. Some items will go into your inventory so you can use them with other objects to make something happen.

Now that you have the list, move on to the next scenes to find them. Sometimes the bride will ring you up and announce she doesn’t need an item on her list anymore — saving you one item to find… IF you find your cell phone before it stops ringing. Clever! A surprise waits in some scenes. You find an item only to discover you’re stuck in a room and you must quickly find your way out in the Escape Puzzle.

The Wedding Crisis has appeared in the previous Dream Day games. In these scenes, players have less time and must dig through the messier and busier scenes to overcome a crisis whether the roses the bride wanted sell out or the bakery can’t do the wedding cake. Once the crisis passes, you design an item that will appear in the wedding and its album.

The scenes repeat often and the objects rarely change locations. The only things that change are the Apartment Puzzles and Wedding Crisis. However, if you play the game again to try taking a different route in the Choose a Story, you’ll have to work through the same scenes again. Considering I play one couple twice due the technical problem, it’s a pain as I feel like I’m repeating everything I had done the first time.

One more disappointing element — other than in the name and the logo, you wouldn’t know you’re in New York. It’s a wonderful city with beautiful architecture and great scenes — why bother adding “Manhattan,” if you’re not going to showcase the Big Apple?

Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan takes a few pages out of its previous games and adds a few original ideas (Escape Puzzle, bride calling you, and Party Puzzle) while also copying similar features found in other games first (Apartment Puzzle) and finding a bunch of one item in scenes (eggs, arrows, etc.). Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan still provides a pleasurable adventure for fans of the series. It’s also a good one for those new to hidden object games and may not challenge the seasoned players.

Download Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan from your favorite game site:

• Big Fish Games
• Amazon

Filed Under: Casual Games Reviews, News & Talk, Game Reviews, Hidden Object Games, PC Games