Game Let Down

I was disappointed with my latest purchase from Big Fish games. I bought:

Natalie Brooks: Secrets of Treasure House

I played it immediately, continuing a game I had started during the hour demo period. And within another hour or so the game was over. I tried playing it again and found that it's one of those unfortunate games that plays through exactly the same each time. Another annoying feature has to do with the picture elements that are hidden in each game segment, once you finish the segment there appears to be no way to go back to prior areas and collect any of the pieces you left behind. In fact the only thing one can do to backtrack is start the whole game over.

The game developers appear to be Alawar and Fridays Games. I do wish games like these, that are "play once", with unvarying puzzles (and short story lines at that) came with a label stating such. And ideally, I wish they were not created in the first place. Basically, this game has all the issues that I heard many people complaining about in the first "Dream Chronicles" game. Which is to say, limited, once through game play, and the inability to go back and collect items missed. At the very least, finishing these sorts of games needs to unlock a chapter by chapter play mode so missing bits can be collected after the fact.

The only mode that this game had, which appeared to have any variation was the object search mode, which gave additional hints. In my case how ever, on the first play through I only needed one additional hint. And even this mode appeared to be affected by the "you can't go back" factor. In that, each chapter had this mode available only for the areas currently in use in that chapter.

It was all very annoying. And a waste of a $6.99 game credit. I'd ask for my money back, or rather another credit, but unfortunately Big Fish has a no return policy. Justified apparently in their minds by the fact that you should figure out during demo play mode whether the game is good or not. In this case, not something so easily predicted.

This game gets a big thumbs down. Not worth buying, possibly if you find it offered free somewhere, pick it up, play it through and unless you have a truly huge amount of memory, clean it out and make room for something with staying power.