Reviews by JT&LB

Age of Enigma
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Good, but . . .

We like Adventure Games, not Hidden Object games! Too many Hidden Objects games are listed as adventure games. This game is less adventure & more hidden object-so it's not my favorite. You are given the choice of playing a Casual or Adventure version. We played the Adventure version, which allows you to roam freely. All was OK until we put up the torch before getting the incense burner. We were stuck-could not take back the torch, and could not get the burner (it was grayed out)-so couldn't go on in the game. Had to restart. What is funny is we were previously told we couldn't put the torch up because we still needed it. We then used it to light the lanterns in another scene and it then allowed us to put it in the other scene, prior to taking the burner. So why didn't it stop us then-Bad programming? It would have been nice to go back to a saved game, like in true adventure games, but there aren't any in this game.
All in all, the story was interesting, but the reuse of the same cut scene was boring. The puzzles were different, but sometimes they used the same one too many times. (The bonsai tree was hard-could only find 6 of the 7 cuts.) The graphics and actions were very hidden object like, right down to the tinkle. The voices were done well & the eerie background music set the mood. It was worth the sale price, but it is not for the true adventurer!

by JT&LB, USA - Jan 1st 2019

Morningstar: Descent to Deadrock
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Great for the price!

This is a short fun game. It kept our interest, was easy to navigate, had good voices, and acceptable graphics. The puzzles were not hard, but took some thought, and they moved the story along. It's a great way to pass 3-4 hours.

by JT&LB, USA - Dec 28th 2018

Hotel Standard Edition
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Fun Game but . . .

Had a problem in the beginning & had to restart the game. Without realizing it, we missed speaking to the seated detective and continued playing until we couldn't do anything else. We just walked around without anything happening. Checked the walk-through & saw we missed a conversation, but couldn't find the detective again. So we restarted and all went well. It would have been nice to have voices for the dialog, as reading became tedious. But we did get used to it after a while. Good story, graphics, characters & puzzles that fit into the story, although they were easy. Short game, but it is well worth the price.

by JT&LB, USA - Dec 26th 2018

Nancy Drew: The Captive Curse
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Fun, only 1 problem . . .

This was a fun game, but it had one bad thing-the last puzzle. We played the Senior Detective & wished we played the Junior when we got to the last puzzle where you place the letter & it slides along a rail to another spot. What a royal pain-had to use a walkthrough, which by the way, had an error in it on this puzzle-3 N's instead of 2 and only 1 M. But we figured it out. Other than that the puzzles were logical and could be figured out with some thought. If you play it, let the credits roll & at the end, you will see a "blooper reel" that's really funny!

by JT&LB, USA - Dec 20th 2018

The Secret Of Darkmoor Manor
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Short but good!

Yes, this game is short & ends abruptly, but it is an interesting game with good graphics, sound & fun to play. Well worth the price. The built-in hint system, is a bit too much. They are not little hints, they are solutions, so I suggest they not be used, unless you are really stuck. It's a nice way to spend a snowy afternoon.

by JT&LB, USA - Nov 13th 2018

Atlantis: The New World
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Disappointing Game

This game is short, only took about 6 hours total. It started out to be fun-good story, graphics, voices, puzzles, etc, but about half way through, it went bad. The story became muddled, puzzles became tedious and a weird bug happened-I mistakenly walked down from the tower when I shouldn't have & couldn't get back up! So I looked at a walk-through to see if I could get out of this situation and that's when I realized that the version that I purchased here isn't the same version sold elsewhere. This version doesn't have all the puzzles spoken about in the different walk-throughs I read. Maybe if I had the full game, it would have made more sense. Then I saw that there was a Load Game option, and just reloaded an earlier saved game (the game has a Continue Game option, so I never had to Load a game). The worse part was the ending-it was a big let down-way too abrupt. It's getting harder & harder to find good non-violent Adventure Games!

by JT&LB, USA - Apr 19th 2018

ASA: A Space Adventure - Remastered Edition
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Good . . But . . .

I had problems with this game right from the beginning. When I first ran it, it was in a 3" wide box & was too small to play. So I had to change settings on my computer to Open in Low Resolution. That fixed it. Game play started out fine, was interesting, but the navigation left much to be desired. I played with the hot spot option on, but sometimes the hotspots weren't shown. The story was interesting and moved along, but as time went by, the puzzles got more confusing. They just weren't logical or intuitive. The worst was the colors/numbers, in the crossword grid, where you had to draw, on paper, the crossword grid & put all the numbers found into it. How would anyone know that? Thank goodness I found a walkthrough! If you find everything, there are 2 different endings, if not you have a few options that give you the same ending. Like I said, it was fun to play up to a point, then solving puzzles became ridiculous!

by JT&LB, USA - Aug 8th 2017

The Eyes of Ara
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Great Game, . . .BUT!

The graphics & music are very good, but the story was a bit weak. Playing the first half of this game was wonderful, puzzles were interesting and fun. But as the game progressed, the pixel hunting bacame tiresome and the puzzles became harder. The sliding, circle painting puzzle in the cellar, took hours. Using the on-line hint, didn't help-it didn't work. You should just try to understand it and figure it out. One of the puzzles on the top of the tower was hard-you have to know binary and be good at math to solve it, but it was better than the sliding, circle painting puzzle. If you collect all the non-story enhancing items (coins, toys figures, photos) at the end, you get a bonus puzzle & room. Don't get me wrong, most of the time, it was fun to play, but sometimes very frustrating too!

by JT&LB, USA - Jan 29th 2017

Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum
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Really disappointing!

We are great fans of the Tex Murphy series & when we saw that this older version was re-released, we had high hopes for it, as we've played all the re-released King's Quest games & enjoyed them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have been upgraded at all. It seems, all they did was made it play on the new computers. The graphics are crude & pixelated, the words are hard to read, the videos break-up, freeze, & are blurry, the sound breaks up often, and there is no info on how to exit the game. You have to remember that in the old days, Ctrl Q was the way to exit a game. We believe this was a great game in its day, but it is wat too cumbersome to play today. It is not worth the $6 we paid for it. Needless to say, we are not finishing this game.

by JT&LB, USA - Nov 30th 2016

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
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Brillant Game!

We had no problem playing this on the Mac Book Pro with El Capitan.
We're not finished with this game yet, but had to write this review because we just finished the part where Wilbur goes back in time into a text adventure game. It was absolutely fabulous! They did a great job of transitioning from text to today's graphics. We started playing text games in the 1980's with our kids, then to the Space/King's Quest games, Myst & onward, so this brought back so many memories. The humor in this game is great, especially when they make reference to Star Wars & other movies/games. The writers are brillant! Wish I had more time to play it, but growing old isn't always easy. We'll hopefully get back to it soon. Thanks to the developers for this one...keep them coming!

by JT&LB, USA - Sep 25th 2016

The Book of Unwritten Tales Deluxe Edition
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Lots of FUN!

We were pleasantly surprised at this game. Lots of humor, good characters that you can switch being & story. Great graphics and very creative. Different & fun puzzles/tasks. Reminded me of older adventure games, but much more advanced. If you like adventure gaming, you'll love this one.

by JT&LB, USA - Sep 5th 2016

The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles
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Another great one!

This is a prequel to the first Book game. It unfolds how Critter & Nate meet and become friends. Again, lots & lots of humor, very creative, interesting puzzles, unbelievable graphics, especially in the Arch-Mage tower. Gives a nod to Star Wars in the professor's cave. A true adventure. Can't wait to play the last one.

by JT&LB, USA - Sep 5th 2016

Nancy Drew: Trail of the Twister
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Not one of the better ND games

This game was very tedious. The story and characters were weak and predictable. The game was basically completing tasks that had nothing to do with the story. The trap the mice puzzle had to be done 4 different times, which became boring after the 2nd time. Some of the puzzles were not explained very well and there wasn't a way to repeat the directions. So after the first time you opened the puzzle, you had no directions. If you had to leave the game and came back to a puzzle, you're out of luck. The driving the car on the map was extremely funny, kept on crashing, but it became annoying after awhile. It was just a tedious way to get from one place to another. I thought using the GPS, which appears on the bottom of the screen, would help, but it didn't. All in all, it's an OK game.

by JT&LB, USA - May 21st 2016

Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness
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Fun in Iceland!

We really enjoyed this game, as we recently learned a bit of Norwegian for our visit to Norway. The language was similiar, so the language game was a breeze & a lot of fun! We earned lots of money, but forgot to spend it on gifts for Ned, got caught up in the game & only got him one gift. The story and charaters were interesting. The graphics & voices were great. The puzzles were sometimes hard, but really fun to figure out. The song was really pretty. We recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good non-violent adventure game.

by JT&LB, USA - Apr 3rd 2016

Dreamscapes: The Sandman Collector's Edition
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Fun, Fun, Fun

This is a really cute game, fun to play. If you're an experienced gamer, play the Expert mode, as Regular (the one we played) is very easy. This is a fun game, with a better blend of Hidden Object & Adventure aspects to it. I do not care for HO games, but this had a good story, with sensible puzzles. It was short, but after the credits rolled, a Bonus Game was unlocked. This added to the story line in a completely new setting. If your into Achievements, this had a unique way of showing you what you completed. It was like filling in the blanks with images...cute!

by JT&LB, USA - Mar 2nd 2016

Nancy Drew: Alibi in Ashes
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A different Nancy adventure.

We enjoyed playing this game (on Junior level) because it was not the same old ND mystery, but it did have a task list, which was helpful. (The hint system was no help at all!) For most of the game, you have the ability to switch characters and speak to suspects, getting a different slant on things depending upon who you are. The letter swap game at Scoops was lots of fun, and was a good way to kill time waiting for a suspect to leave the area. The map used to travel to different places with your car, was enjoyable because you could go to places, not needed in the game play, with cute results. The graphics, sound & game play were all very good. The puzzles were not hard at all, most were fun. The timed ending maze was a bit tricky, but fun. The game had a satisfactory ending and wrapped up well. Enjoy!

by JT&LB, USA - Feb 23rd 2016

Cognition Game of the Year Edition
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Good Game

We played this game a few years back when it was called Cognition Director's Cut 4 pack. This is a true adventure game! It has everything you want in a game-good story, graphics, characters, etc. The only problem I had with it was that the 4th episode was too violent, as you had to fight a guy, which is not what I expect to do when playing a game. But don't let that stop you from getting it.

by JT&LB, USA - Feb 23rd 2016

Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device
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Good, fun game

This was an interesting game to play, lots of electronic & binary puzzles. It was better than OK, but not really GREAT! The characters were good, especially Ryan, but the story could have been better. This is the fifth Nancy Drew game we've played and we're beginning to see they are all very much alike-simple story with limited scenes. This doesn't mean it was easy-far from it. The puzzles were challenging and some are timed. It was just missing something. We do recommend this game-even though the story is a bit on the light side-you will have fun playing it. But it would be so nice if they wrote a more in-depth story, with deeper characters, and more scenes to explore. It had a good ending & wrapped up the story well. If you let the credits run though, at the end, there is a very cute Gummy Bear stick puppet play to watch.

by JT&LB, USA - Jan 2nd 2016

Broken Sword 2 - The Smoking Mirror Remastered
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Not the best one, but fun!

Read the comic that's on the menu page before you play the game. It sets up the whole game. This was an OK game. The story, graphics, characters, music, humor were all good, but the puzzles weren't always logical. Some times, you had to try every item in your inventory on a hot spot, even if it didn't make sense. You were switched between Nico & George, which was interesting. You only have 8 save slots, but if you die, you can go on & try again in the same scene. The game crahsed on us a few times, but continued to the same spot when reloaded. There is a built in hint system, but it doesn't give you options on what you want help on. The ending was way to abrupt. It's as if someone cut out a closing scene. But it was fun seeing Nico & George again!

by JT&LB, USA - Dec 19th 2015

Nancy Drew: Ghost of Thornton Hall
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Fun Adventure Game

This was fun to play, and had a good story. The music, voices, graphics & puzzles, all were very good. Some puzzles were harder than others, but all were workable. Only wish Nancy could repeat the instructions. But you really need to play it in the dark. Some of the screens were extremely hard to see in normal light. Played at night without lights, it's fine. We think this is one of the better Nancy Drew games, but we really haven't played that many. Fun to play!

by JT&LB, USA - Dec 9th 2015

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