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.

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