Dream Chronicles is back! Doesn’t feel long ago since The Book of Air came out. In Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water Collector’s Edition, Lyra has found her way home only to find her town hit by a devastating storm. In search of power, the evil fairy queen of Dreams has cast a terrible curse over all of Wish. With her father gravely ill and her mother missing, Lyra must find a way to break the spell. Journey through beautifully enchanted places, solve challenging puzzles, and seek answers to save Lyra’s hometown in Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water.

Other Dream Chronicles

• Dream Chronicles
• Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze
• Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child
• Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air

Download and try Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

I love the Dream Chronicles series. Now with a name like “Book of Air,” you have to wonder if such a book exists if it’s made of air. OK, so another way to read it is that the book or episode is about air, and that’s applies to this one. I reviewed Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air. I’d like to review games more often, but no matter how many time machine games I play — none gives me more time to play.

PC and Mac Catch of the Week: Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air: Help Lyra, Faye’s daughter, find the unique Clockmaker and escape from a strange dimension in Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air! The day before her 18th birthday, Lyra finds herself trapped in a strange dimension. Following clues sent by her grandfather she flies across the realm in search of a mysterious person who will help her restore time and return home. Solve intriguing puzzles and find Hidden Objects to reunite Lyra with her family!

Catch the deal for your PC! Use coupon code CATCH299

Catch the deal for your Mac! Use coupon code CATCH299.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, April 2, 2011 at 11:59pm.

Remember Big Fish Games has a Daily Deal offering a different game for $2.99 every day. (Look to the right.)

The Dream Chronicles series comes close to poetry in motion a la video game style with its picturesque design, lyrical story and piquant game play. While the series keeps the rhythm going, it loses a little luster with Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air, the fourth game in the adventure game series. Faye’s daughter, Lyra takes the lead in this one where she finds herself alone with the only communication coming from her grandfather in the form of notes.

Tangle, Lyra’s grandfather, tells her to find the Clockmaster to get herself out of her tangled situation of being in another dimension. She travels in an air ship to complete her tasks based on her grandfather’s notes to bring her a step closer to finding the Clockmaster and getting him to help her.

As usual, you collect dream jewels with one new twist (about time). When you collect enough dream jewels, you earn a spell that will help you in your journey. The game contains five spells. Don’t fret if you miss a dream jewel like I did (I played a puzzle before picking up the jewels and couldn’t return to the scene of the puzzle after finishing it) because it won’t affect your earning the spells. There are plenty of dream jewels leftover. Once you obtain all the spells, finding dream jewels turns into a small side challenge with no bearing on the game play.

One puzzle befuddled me — the one near the end that involves a scale. I calibrated all of them and still nothing happened. I searched for solutions, but all said I did it right. Hmm… I had to skip it to move on. The improved hint system couldn’t save me. Now the game’s hint system points to dream jewels, so you can make sure you’ve picked up every nook and cranny. But you don’t get to choose the hint it gives you.

Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air has two game modes: Casual and Challenge. Casual lets you skip games after so much time has passed while Challenge won’t. The puzzles, of course, are a little harder in Challenge mode.

The story had little going on beyond find Clockmaster and find the keys. I almost didn’t mind that I didn’t catch some of the cut scenes because there was little mystery to reel you in. The puzzles and interactive parts of the game didn’t bring in anything new like the previous Dream Chronicles games had. I understand adventure games like this one with rich details and interactive puzzles take more time to develop, but this one was notably shorter than the others. Despite the disappointment, I still enjoyed some of the point-and-click puzzles and will check out the next one when it comes — this is the first of a new trilogy — I just hope we see a step forward and not a step back.

If you haven’t played the others, check them first: Dream Chronicles, Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze and Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child.

Download and try Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air.

FTC disclosure: Reviewer received copy from affiliate, which had no influence on the review.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Doreen Cronin with my youngest

What’s with the noisy title in this edition? Thank you for asking. I bet that those of you with young kids may have figured it out. We met Doreen Cronin, author of Click, Clack, Moo; Thump, Quack, Moo; Duck for President and Diary of a Worm (Amazon affiliate links) — to name a handful. I think a parents enjoyment of reading a book is a good way to measure the quality of a children’s book. You can bet I laugh lots when we read Cronin’s books especially the ones with the cows and duck.

I asked her what she was working on. She said it was the sequel of a chapter book that comes out in the spring. I looked up the chapter book to see if details were available — not yet. I think it’s a great move on her part because the kids — like my youngest – who know her duck and cows book best now read chapter books and beyond. My older son could have discovered her books when he was in the picture book stage — but we didn’t meet them until later.

Dallas Children’s Theater is performing a musical version of Giggle, Giggle, Quack. We hope to catch that one.

Brain food…

• Six Ways Authors Can Promote Books on Facebook: Authors need to take marketing into their own hands and here’s one way to do it.
• 15 Inspiring Home Offices: Kind of makes me appreciate mine more. These setups rock — I like not being against the wall.
• 101 Blogs That Accept Guest Posts: Love this list because it lists the more popular sites as well as the pagerank — but remember pageranking changes and plenty of lower pagerank sites are worth the guest blog post. I also accept guest posts as long as they meet my guidelines. [Link: @txwriter]
• The Cognitive Itch — From Earworms to Déjà Vu: Dealing with can’t get song out of my head, déjà vu moments and tip-of-tongue problems. [Link: Lydia Dishman]
• Become a Book Review Ninja: 10 Steps to Mastery: I’ve been sitting on an how to article for doing book reviews for months. It need spiffying and more storytelling. Well, this is exactly what I was looking for — don’t know that I would’ve used the ninja theme, but I knew a theme would work.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 16 Eye Popping Pixel Sculptures You Have to See: Ah, I remember the days of 8-bit graphics. Who knew it could be taken to another dimension?
• 25 Cool USB Drives: I use a boring basic one. What I need isn’t a cool one but a very short one because the one I have keeps getting hit because of the way it sticks out. Wax seal one brings back memories. Yes, I had one. [Link: Jessica Strawser]
• Beautiful and Funny Illustrations by Tokyo Go Go: Something different, colorful and fun to look at. [Link: @bkkmacdaddy]
• 10 Hilarious Yet Ingenious Solutions to Everyday Problems: I could probably use the t-shirt … but it’d help to make plans to travel to another country first.
• Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air: (Big Fish Games affiliate link) I love this PC game series because of its gorgeous screens, absorbing puzzles and captivating storytelling. Right now, it’s only available as a Collector’s Edition, but this gives you time to try the original, Eternal Maze and the Chosen Child.

Tell us about a time when you met an author in person or a celebrity.

Dream Chronicles was 2nd Runner-Up Best Puzzle Game of 2007. In Dream Chronicles, the lines between reality and fantasy fade away. Follow subtle clues to help Faye find her missing husband and escape from the mysterious sleeping spell that has taken over the town of Wish! Stay sharp and focused and you just may unravel this intriguing, dreamy mystery!

Read the Dream Chronicles Review.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, May 30 at 11:59pm.

Catch the PC version.

Catch the Mac version.

Gorgeous art nouveau style adventure game, Dream Chronicles, now has a third game in the series. Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child picks up where Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze left off. Only Faye has lost her memory and thinks her name is Brenna. Dreams again take center stage as she keeps dreaming about a man and child. The journey, again, is a pleasurable one that comes to a sudden ending that feels incomplete.

Faye stumbles her way around trying to put everything together. Lilith, the Fairy Queen of Dreams, returns and this time, she has Faye’s daughter. Poor Faye, she keeps having to search and rescue someone she loves. This world has various fairies and several work to stop Faye from progressing in her search. The fairies shake up scenes, remove steps and add other roadblocks.

In this one, the dream pieces and dream jewels have a real purpose. Dream pieces have appeared in all three games — they’re crystal-like gems that you pick up in the scenes to add to your dream journal. Dream jewels aren’t complete until you find their missing pieces. The pieces go into the jewels to complete them. They didn’t have a purpose until this one other than challenging you to find all of them. The dream pieces help you unlock the doors in the Nexus room. The room contains doors and gears so you can move the doors left or right until you find the one you wish to enter. These gateways make it fun to travel to wherever you need to go.

The series continues to impress with its careful attention to detail in its elegant scenes and smooth effects. The music is lovely that you never feel the need to turn it off. The Chosen Child, like its predecessors, holds many puzzles for solving. Only two activities annoy the heck out of me. One is the Simon-style game where you have to play the music exactly like the game plays it. The other is the 3D maze near the end of the game. My eyes and head start feeling lousy as I work my way around the maze — and it requires quite a few visits and long walks to arrive at your destinations.

When I finally finish the maze, the rest of the game doesn’t do much to make up for that long walk as the very abrupt (and I don’t use “very” often) ending comes shortly after. Nonetheless, the trip is worthwhile although too short. It only takes me an afternoon to play the entire game without getting hints from the man in the crystal ball. Well, I understand the game contains so many details and original puzzles, I think it could stand to entertain us a little longer.

I replay the game to see how well the crystal ball helps and it doesn’t. The objects you need do move to new places when you replay the game. I have trouble finding a key and Mr. Crystal Ball keeps telling me I need to sew something. So it might frustrate those who need help finding an object.

After completing the game, my jaw drops as my score doesn’t touch the Global Score list. I thought I did a good job finding the dream pieces and nuggets. Plus, I never used the crystal ball. So competitive players might feel motivated to play again in hopes of scoring better. But me — I have to move on to another game.

The free download only lasts 30 minutes rather than the typical 60, which is understandable consider The Chosen Child is short.

Download and play Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

Have you ever had a dream that crashed into reality? I have. I ran into my dad in the hallway while half asleep and it scared the bejeebies out of me. You can stay that I was wide awake after that. In the beautifully designed Dream Chronicles, the story begins with Lilith, the Fairy Queen of Dreams, casting a sleep spell over the entire kingdom.

Yet, somehow Fidget wakes up his wife Faye. But is Faye dreaming or experiencing the adventure? Players assume the role of Faye who searches for Fidget and Lilith who kidnapped Fidget. Faye has two jobs: find all the dream jewels for the dream spells in Dream section of the book that guides you through the game. The book also contains a path, known as chapters, telling you where you need to go next. But before you can get there, solve the puzzles that block your way to the next scene.

The book contains 18 chapters with each chapter, for the most part, representing a scene with a puzzle or puzzles. The hidden objects part of the game comes from finding the hidden jewels and items to use in solving the puzzle. At the end of the game, the number of dream jewels you find will determine your final score. It would’ve been cool if the player could cast a dream spell after finding all the jewels for a dream. But that could make the game more complicated.

Press any key or mouse button twice to quickly skip through the jewel description, which appears upon picking up a jewel. After reading a few descriptions, I lost interest so clicking through helps loads. Clicking twice works for any content appearing on the screen for those impatient like me or don’t want to read the same content again.

The puzzles vary through the game. Some hidden object games tend to repeat a puzzle style, but not Dream Chronicles giving the game a unique twist. As you solve a puzzle, you move to the next chapter and learn more about the story. When you arrive on a new scene, Fidget gives you hints to help you in your current quest. On occasion, something glimmers on the scene to lend a hand. I appreciate those glimmers since they don’t give away much and provide just the right amount of help so I don’t get frustrated with the game.

Any time I want to take a break from the game, I left the game open. When clicking “Quit,” the game tells you that you would restart the current level. The thing is that a level isn’t clear to me. Is a chapter the same thing as a level? Semantics, but I don’t want to lose my hard work.

I figure out most of the puzzles, but a few don’t make sense forcing me to rely on luck. I’d like to know the story behind those tricky puzzles that I couldn’t solve. Though the game ending fell a little short of my expectations, the game weaves a nice story. Dream Chronicles should be a big hit especially for the casual games crowd with its assortment of puzzles, stunning scenes, storyline and low frustration factor.

Download Dream Chronicles for 30 minute trial or buy Dream Chronicles.

System Requirements: Windows

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium III 700 MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM
• Sound card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 25 MB available hard drive space

System Requirements: Mac

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 MHz or faster, or G5 or Intel processor
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• 25 MB available hard drive space