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A collection of riddles you mostly see in magazines wrapped into a mystery story with an excellent art style, Puzzle Agent strangely stands out with its engaging plot rather than the lackluster puzzles.

Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is an interactive mystery cartoon drawn in the style of Graham Annable’s Grickle series, in which you are regularly presented with brain-twisters usually encountered in (puzzle) magazines.

The story is clichéd, but good: the titular FBI agent is sent to a small snowed-in US town to investigate a series of strange events, encountering a number of eerie townsfolk along the way. The plot is excellent, but lacks a proper ending: most of the questions are addressed in the second game.

The puzzles are fun and varied, but most of them suffer from one of two large problems: too easy/short, or ambiguous due to poor design (which leads to the rejection of seemingly perfect answers). Not too many fall into these categories, but enough to leave a bad taste in the player’s mouth.

Still, Puzzle Agent is a fun game to play, especially in the budget category. If you like puzzles and/or supernatural mysteries, then give it a go, you probably won’t regret it.

Haunted is the type of game that enchants you the moment you start it. In conjunction with the fairly long story, an interesting stable of characters, and classy British voice acting, you get a solid point ‘n’ click title that is equally entertaining for kids and adults alike.

Haunted is a charming little tale set in 19th century London about a girl searching for the ghost of her sister, only to stumble upon a devilish plot that she needs to foil with the help of a few eccentric otherworldly spirits. Naturally the voice cast is all-British, and they do an excellent job– although they tend to use the same monotone even in emotionally intense scenes.

The OGRE engine is responsible for the Tim Burton-esque visuals, all presented in lush, but not too intrusive colours and great details. Due to the engine’s limitations clipping and floating bugs are somewhat common, and facial animations are also very limited.

The puzzles are not particularly difficult. They use a simple system where you need to combine items and/or ghosts with certain hotspots to progress. Even if you get stuck, the brute force method will eventually let you pass.

So, in essence, Haunted may not be the most memorable point ‘n’ click title out there, but it is certainly unique and entertaining enough to earn its place on the virtual shelf of all adventure game enthusiast.

Short but oh so sweet, Gomo is a wordless room-by-room point-and-click/puzzle adventure game that may end before the 90 minute mark, but those 90 minutes are guaranteed to be memorable and fun.

There is a very small sub-genre among point ‘n’ click games which relies solely on visuals: no narration, no dialogues, everything is told in pictures. It is a great artistic challenge for the designers, since everything has to be told by actions and facial expressions; plus it opens up possibilities to include a plethora of details that would probably go unnoticed otherwise. In Gomo’s case these are small (or sometimes large) visual gags that are littered all over in every scene.

The gameplay follows a room by room design, where you have to interact with scene elements and sometimes collect and use items to get to the other end of the screen. There are also a few more conventional puzzles here and there, but even with those Gomo is little more than an interactive cartoon. For adults at least. For small children it may act as a good educational software to teach common problem solving.

Like most similar games, Gomo is short, 60 to 90 minutes long. But even at full price it costs about as much as a movie ticket, providing at least as much fun as a film would.

One of the best Artifex Mundi titles, Enigmatis 2 offers a thrilling story, good voice acting, excellent level design, wonderful graphics and nice puzzle variety.

Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood could be one of the best games to showcase what the hidden object puzzle genre is capable of.

The story does a great job of keeping up the interest with adding new layers to the already complex mystery. Although it ties perfectly to the previous episode with a good amount of returning characters and expanding upon the events we saw in Maple Creek, it’s still unique enough to stand on its own. The voice acting is nice, and the amount and distribution of the cut scenes is ideal for the pace.

Whereas Enigmatis 1 put a large focus on the hidden object scenes, Mists of Ravenwood tries to create an ideal balance between those, the point ‘n’ click parts, and the conventional puzzles. This also means that none of them are particularly difficult, nor too easy. They are what they are meant to be: an immensely fun enjoyment for a lazy afternoon.

A superior game to Family Secrets in all but one aspects, Palm of Zoroaster features improved level design, even better graphics and much easier puzzles, catering more for the more casual hidden object game fans.

The Palm of Zoroaster did exactly what is expected from a sequel: took everything that was good or popular in the first game, made it better, and threw out the rest.

There is no more boring running around. The titular house serves only as a nexus between the four distinct paintings/levels, all featuring their own new ghost story that eventually form a larger plot. What that plot is can be a good question though, since the game lacks an ending, it just stops after the last artefact. And no, the bonus chapter won’t help either, although it reveals a few interesting secrets on its own.

The difficulty has decreased substantially since the first game, and there is a much larger focus on hidden object scenes. The progression is more straightforward, but not linear, giving you a greater sense of pace despite the fairly long gameplay.

More of a point and click adventure than your usual hidden object game, Lost Civilization features a surprisingly lengthy story but no difficulty whatsoever.

A story in a hidden object game usually serves as nothing more than a backdrop for the puzzles. In Lost Civilization these roles have reversed: the puzzles act like small pauses in the plot. Not that the game isn’t trying, the hidden object parts even feature some variety– including reverse HO (putting items into the scene) – but none of them pose any real challenge even for a second.

As for the plot itself, it’s part Indiana Jones, part Broken Sword 2, part every other archaeologist adventure you have ever seen; but it’s a good and enjoyable mix. With decent voice acting, passable dialogue and a lot of different locations.

Although the game is far from being perfect, if you ever want a cheap adventure title for a lazy afternoon, then Lost Civilization is definitely a good pick.

Time Mysteries 3 corrected almost everything that was wrong in the previous game at the cost of play time and puzzle difficulty. A solid ending to a hidden object game trilogy.

One of the largest problem with Time Mysteries 2 was the lack of story and continuity with the first game. Final Enigma chose the opposite path: not only it’s completely plot-focused, but it features characters and places from both previous games. Sure, it’s basically a huge rip-off of Terminator, but fits well into the established canon.

It seems the story was such a priority that the development team forgot to work on the puzzles; they pose absolutely no challenge. Even the hidden object scenes are a letdown with only a few dozen items per scene. The contrast is even more apparent in the bonus chapter, which reuses parts of the second episode. (It also lacks any original content, making it possibly the laziest bonus episode we have seen in a hidden object puzzle game.)

To sum it up, if you have been along for the ride since the Inheritance or if you would like a nice and easy HO game for a change, then it’s more than recommended to get this one.

If you like a little challenge in your hidden object game that will constantly keep your brain in gear for a few hours, then Time Mysteries 2 is definitely a good pick.

Artifex Mundi wisely decided to skip the first game of Time Mysteries, Inheritance, and start the distribution of the series on Steam with Ancient Spectres– which only has two things in common with its predecessor anyway: the Ambrose family and their ability to travel in time. (Sadly the only good thing of Inheritance, the hint system, was also removed.)
Although it’s hardly an important point, since Ancient Spectres is not really keen on plot: you wander around in two buildings in three time periods trying to stop the clichéd evil entity from escaping its prison, and that’s about it.

The shortcoming of the story is compensated by a difficult, but not overcomplicated puzzle system, including a well-balanced hidden object skipping minigame: it’s easy, but slow. These design ideas really make the game stand out of the competition, especially for HO veterans who like a good challenge.

An enjoyable adventure turned into a slightly worse than average hidden object game. Mostly recommended for those who like treasure hunt stories.

Adventure Chronicles– the sequel of Escape the Museum– is the type of game that is almost pure atmosphere; the whole thing is pretty much a Saturday morning treasure hunt adventure cartoon in the form of a hidden object game.

A pretty mediocre hidden object game. Just like the previous title, it has a really nice variety (30 scenes) and a much better picture quality (but still low resolution) with the cost of level design: a lot of items are hidden by blending them in instead of clever placement.

On the other hand the story is pretty good (think of it as the kid-friendly version of the movie National Treasure), the voice acting is excellent, the music is catchy– but repeats a lot– and it’s just a good fun from start to finish. The game even has a nice incentive system to replay the already visited levels… bust just like Escape the Museum, it never follows it up with an additional reward for 100% completion.

A very innovative hidden object game with a fun and immersive storyline that is sadly ruined by horrible visual representation, significantly hurting playability.

Escape the Museum has almost every ingredients to make it a memorable and fun hidden object title; it features lots of scenes, including a rarely used HO type, problem solving screens (where you have to find and use objects to progress, almost like a one-screen point-and-click game).
The storyline is simple, but works well: you are trapped in a museum after an earthquake, and slowly work your way to freedom. There are lots of small cutscenes and the voice acting is well done.

But all of this is ruined by one thing: the graphics are terrible. The rooms are overcrowded, and combined with the low resolution and the dial-in era level of JPEG compression it’s impossible to recognise anything. It’s a shame, but I had to resort to a rapid clicker program to pass most of the scenes.
Still, if you don’t mind the bad visuals, the game is worth it for the storyline, which is continued in the superior sequel, Adventure Chronicles.