Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: Review

By MagicIndie Softworks, Published by Big Fish Games

Inspired by Daniel Defoe`s classic masterpiece,Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a story of a man who survives a terrible shipwreck and finds himself cast away on an island in the Caribbean. In this incredible hidden object adventure that spans over 28 years, help Robinson explore the island, fight with cannibals, visit a lost village and construct a new boat to sail back home!

–Big Fish Games

Story: Who needs to be reminded of Daniel Defoe’s classic 17^th century story of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday? Robinson Crusoe, the strapping young son of an English merchant, sets sail one day in search of adventures. The rest 20 years are history.

The game never veers off the main course of the original story. Highly linear, and highly subjective, the game includes only the pressing highlights of Robinson Crusoe’s life in a compact format. And oh, the entire story is narrated at the beginning of each of the chapters.

Gameplay: Adventures of Robinson Crusoe includes 6 chapters, each subdivided into 6 others – so a total of 36 parts. You’ll find Robinson Crusoe a small and fairly easy game – except in a few places. Those certain places, heh heh, you can find yourself desperately stuck without any hints.

Unless you’re ever stuck, the game is easily finished under an hour.

The game is built around Robinson Crusoe’s long toil to build a new boat for himself. You don’t directly participate in any of the boat building activities, but everytime you successfully finish a chapter, you get the option to update your boat. I wish there were some direct involvement required for constructing the ship – could’ve an extention on the game.

The hidden object puzzles as well as the minigames are quite easy – except a few places I talked about before. You get the usual number of hints, and you can add more by locating any inscription on wood in the scenes. Keeping in sync with the new style, you need to interact with part of the environment to gain some of the objects in the list – opening a chest, pulling a chain, looking into a sack, etc.

Graphics and Music: Adventures of Robinson Crusoe comes with crispy fresh and bright graphics, suitably accompanied by a mix of middle age English and modern music. Cheerful atmosphere alright!

Bottomline: A short game, with not too much stress on syncing with the main story. So what? This at least has nothing unnecessary to clutter it up, nothing excess to bore you. It is just an hour or two of good old plain entertainment. And mind boggling puzzles.

Go for it!

Rating:

Azada 2: Ancient Magic Review

“Big Fish Games Studios summons you back to the deep mystery and magic of Azada. Too afraid to enter the library, young Titus calls upon your courage and superior puzzle-solving skills to disarm the magical menace. Luckily, Titus has given you a magic medallion to call upon him when in need. Enter the lives of storybook characters in more than 20 magic puzzle books. Meet famous legends like King Arthur, Rapunzel, Henry Jekyll, Buffalo Bill, and many more. Can you unveil the dark hidden secret in Azada: Ancient Magic?”

–          BigFishGames

Remember Azada, the trendsetter of modern puzzle games? Now it is back. With a bang. And with tougher, more elaborate puzzles.

Story: The original Azada was one of my favourite games of all times for its brain-crunching puzzles. Azada 2: Ancient Magic picks off from where you left it – namely, rescuing Titus from the book. Now, as the master puzzle solver, help Titus discover the source of magical disturbances in his great-uncle’s library. You have to play through classic books and help the characters to escape the confinement of the pages. But watch out! Some evil genie has corrupted a book in the library! And there will be no peace till it is finished.

That, in a nutshell, is Azada 2’s story. Except for the small gaffe where the genie garbles a lot of letters in Devanagari, supposedly speaking an “ancient Mesopotamian language”, the rest of the game is flawless. Azada 2 is actually left off at the end to add a second sequel – Azada 3.

Puzzles: Most of the puzzles in this game are moderate to tough for the average player. In fact, there are only one or two that can be finished without effort. They range from interactive puzzles to all kinds of board ones. The developers have added some distraction/ avoision puzzles as well in the package.

Ambience: Coupled with cool graphics and good music, this is sure a captivating game!

Bottomline: What  else can I say for this? The game speaks for itself. Definitely catch this.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Visit Big Fish Games for more info and the trial version.

Visit H33T for the full version.