Wonderful, fun relaxing game. Mildly snarky villain, achievable goals, minigames that are mildly challenging. If I take too long, it asks if I want to skip.You betcha! This makes a nice change from thegames that want you on your toes every second. some days I want that, and some days I just want to leave reality behind. I love this game.
I thought I was burned out on adventure games, They are usually too full of minigames of the annoying to the point of scream point. This one keeps some hallmarks of games--there is the door that you have to go through but first--rather than having to assemble a lock, all you need to do is take care of cave-in. Not trite, not impossible, somewhere in between and fun. And I did have to almost work at finding the hidden objects.
So many Eipix games have turned me off before the demo finished that I didn't expect to play through. The house is different, the HOPs are improved an occasionally amusing. I liked it that after you find the object you need, you can manage to achieve something in a few steps. Eipix' too long cinematics are still a bit long, the voices are matched to the characters. The so-called instructions to the minigames still need work, but again, an improvement.
I still play Cubis Gold 2 almost daily. It is not as much fun as the original Cubis. This Cubis has been cutesipated with a story line that is totally unneeded, music that is overbearing. The controls have been fouled up becuase they don't feel right. Getting the cubes into position is a slithery mess. See, when I want to play Cubis, I am interested in sliding cubes to a puzzle. I'm not interested in saving a kingdom, earning elixirs or any of that. I don't want cuddly animals. Ugg.
The handling is slithery, so it is all too easy to shoot a cube before you want and where you don't want. There is a CUTE cartoon sequence at the beginning, and I could forgive that, but I liked the original Cubis and Cubis Gold because they were nice quiet games that I could lose myself in. Cubis Kingdoms wants me to stop playing with cubes and think about numbers of this or that cube, and watch cartoon sequences. Not to mention grandiose music, another intrusion. The colors and shapes of the cubes are less pleasing than in Cubis Gold. I suppose I could play this game with if I had to, but it's not what I was looking for.
The cartoon style is different, flatter, with fewer eyecatchers. The level of snark is good, but oh, so longwinded. Why, yes, it IS a fractured HOG, but there are fewer things to find and my goodness, what is the point of a challenge level that wants you to remember quickly where you found the fragments in the thing you just finished.
No fun for me. This is entirely too much like a socalled HOG that is 9 puzzles to 1 HOG.
Favorite Genre(s):Hidden Object, Marble Popper, Match 3
Fun Factor
3/ 5
Visual/Sound Quality
5/ 5
Level of Challenge
3/ 5
Storyline
5/ 5
Good story line.The graphics are, as usual, excellent. Lousy minigame instructions, and you call that a hidden object puzzle? Really? I could have done with fewer forced minigames (or an option to to something, anything, else). If you ask a person to do something and then put too many minigames between things...this reviewer gets fed up.
When you present a writer with a lifetime achievement award, this assumes they are at least 40, and possibly 60. A hang glider to get to the campus, particularly one you have to build before you can use it, is just a tad much for me to believe.
A glitch in the demo (no hints, no skips) made this game a horror for me, but I tried it again when it hit $2.99. To my delight, the challenge option was functional, and I could skip minigames I had lost patience with. Nice, relaxing casual game with enough twists to keep me going. How much did I like it? I played straight through, and will play it again next week.
The graphics got me. The whimsical presence of a cat, who is not required to be a "helper," is a plus. There is a cognitive dissonance, because the storyline told in a journal speaks of a family devoted to its factory, while the one and only maintenance man keeps sending us, the players, to fix things. I'm less than fond of fractured hidden object games, or being told to find 15 of an object , but some things are very well hidden. Even if you are not a beginner or a child, you can be challenged.
Don't you think the mad inventor theme is a bit worn out? I get tired of tricks designed to demonstrate how clever the developers are. I cannot bring myself to care about a game where pugilism is the first thing I am allowed to do. Or about a game populated by too many puppets. Yes, I can follow the action, anticipate tricks, play match3...but I don't want to.