World Mysteries

World Mysteries is a Facebook hidden object game by Vostu.  The game let you embark on an adventure of mystery and fun, and investigate what lies behind different maps. Sharken your eyes using the existing signs, clues, and evidence.

Review:

To some of us, HOG (hidden object game) is about a mini game that will never grow any complicated. This genre has been a favor for those casual players who would like to hunt for something mysterious and spot something different. But it seems that HOG is being massively expanded and accumulating momentum towards social platforms like Facebook. And Hidden Chronicles (HC) has been highly embraced by hundreds of thousands of Facebook users. World Mysteries (WM) is following such a fashion trying to be better. But it is so identical to its predecessors that the gaming fun is falling. Something may be devaluated just because it’s not the first comer.

The degree of difficulty is a key to settle down beginners. World mysteries, like hidden chronicles, places the items their initial location in repeated playing. Of course, the locations are not set according to common sense. A spoon may be far away from other tableware, a lighter in an open fridge. Different descriptions of an item are also adopted to balance the boredom of repeating. For example, lips may change to kiss, candle to fire. Retaining the delicate graphics style of similar games, the rooms in World Mysteries are more crowded, object outlines dimmer. The main reason of my poor scores is the hint. The focus of the hinting glass is not on one item, but a range. I wonder how such a rough hint attracts gamers to recharge their account.

Decoration turns to interior part from the yard. Furnishing an empty room is fun. However, the scrolling is not easy and the room is too large for me to get a full view. When the room get richly furnished after plenty of tasks, it doesn’t look as nice as expected. You are looking at an extremely spacious room full of mini-sized furniture.

The story is still about a mansion left by a killed uncle, and still too weak to link all the tasks, like HC. There have been so many puzzle games that are famous for a strong story. So I wonder how HOG lives long with endless finding work without any specific purpose. Although people can progress by repeating a task for another dozens of items amongst thousands of them in a scene, there is still room for better justification for finding some specific items. You seek for thousands of trivial items just because you are searching a beautiful room instead of the filthy drainage?

World Mysteries must have got some uniqueness by letting gamers travel different continents as the arrow shows. But the difference between cultures is not visualized enough. It’s just a serious independent object finding tasks with no hit of a foreign culture.

Minigames of the game enrich the gaming experience because they are of different types. Of course, they have something in common by being mysterious. Some are not difficult at all, but not often touched in daily life. Because most of them are basic skills of a certain profession, like a detective, or a doctor.

“Social” is one of the attempts for such games. People do need cooperate when they are frustrated again and again. But if the invitations and neighbor-adding requests pop up before your screen, that would be more frustrating.

A crippled pace caused by the difficulty and no strong attraction to keep me there or hold me back – this is my brief impression about games like World Mysteries.