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6.7 sorta fun
Recently I've been spending a lot of time at the museum. When I was a kid my mother used to visit this woman who kept a squirrel as a pet (I don't remember the woman's name, but I remember the squirrel). The squirrel was very nervous with strangers in the house and would always hide under chairs and sofas. Just catching a glimpse of it was exciting. When its owner passed away, she left a sizable donation to a local museum in my name... nice though such strange, selfless acts are, they can cause someone a lot of unintended busywork! And meetings!
Something similar occurs to you in Amazing Adventures: The Caribbean Secret, from Spintop Games. As an adventurer you often travel the world looking for lost treasure, treasure maps, pirate treasure, sunken treasure galleons, buried treasure, treasured treasury treasures, and treasure. Soon you're off on another search for gold as the Museum sends you a telegram about a rumored treasure somewhere in the Caribbean: a lost Spanish ship carrying a fortune in gold that never made it to its scheduled Honduras destination 300 years ago. Before you know it you're on the trail of what the locals refer to as "The Caribbean Secret" ... with the full weight of the museum behind you.
This barest bone of a story fragment is all the excuse needed to group together a collection of hidden object scenes and minigames. Amazing Adventures: The Caribbean Secret contains twenty-five hidden object scenes and between each, one of a handful of various minigames and puzzles. There are no characters or story dialogues or plot twists or clues to follow... in fact, this game would be a perfect hidden object game for kids. (Some of the hidden objects' descriptions are puns or riddles, meaning reading ability is a must, but besides that caveat kids would be welcome here.)
The hidden object scenes are rather typical in presentation. You're shown a cluttered scene filled with random objects, then asked to find ten specific ones somewhere within. (There are a few awkwardly-named objects that suggests the developers' native language is not English.) Most objects are fairly well placed - that is to say, they don't look like they're floating above the background (due to mismatched perspective, shading, etc.) However there are quite a few in every scene that are unnaturally deposited (for example, floating in the sky). I give The Caribbean Secret a clip-art-itis score of 4.5 out of 10, which isn't bad but is far from perfect. Clicking on objects removes them from the scene and crosses them off your list at the bottom of the screen. Once you find all ten, you must solve a puzzle or win a short minigame to reveal the location of your next hidden object location.
Ocassionally, you'll receive a piece of a torn treasure map to the location of the "Caribbean Secret," along with a historical factoid.
Where the hidden object scenes stand out from similar games are in the object descriptions. Half or sometimes even more than half of those on your list are riddles describing the object you need to find. For example, "hangs clothes" refers to a clothespin. "Former fish" refers to a fish skeleton. And so on. In each scene, you're given one phrase (in single quotes) that requires an action to complete. This involves clicking on an object and dragging it to another place onscreen. You may have to cut an apple, or place some chopsticks in a Chinese takeaway box, or spell a word using some child's alphabet blocks, etc.
If you can't find an object, a hint button is available. You can use it as often as you like, and it recharges quickly.
You must find all ten hidden objects before a time limit runs out - the quicker you accomplish this the higher your score. Bonuses are awarded for completing a scene without using a single hint, finding two objects one after another in quick succession, etc. The higher your score, the higher your rank as adventurer. Unfortunately, you're penalized for random clicking by a minor score reduction.
Hidden in each hidden object scene are two skulls. Finding all fifty during the course of the game will unlock a special untimed mode, and a bonus match-3 minigame. (These are also immediately unlocked should you find the titular treasure.)
The minigames between levels are nothing special, mostly simple time-wasters that break up the sequence of hidden object locations. They amount to jigsaw puzzles, swap the tile puzzles, rotate the discs puzzles, word search puzzles, match-3 games, spot the differences games, memory games, and more. My favorite among these were the word search puzzles. Using many different fonts made the puzzles more challenging and fun.
Since I'm a big match-3 game fan I was fairly disappointed that the match-3 game doesn't allow you to continue making matches while new pieces are falling into the game board... you have to wait until the board is static and all chain reaction matches have ceased. Plus I found the row-destroying powerups annoying as they made it hard to use my usual match-3 game strategy to take out the top corners of the puzzle.
Amazing Adventures: The Caribbean Secret is a decent hidden object game for $6.99 but I'd regret paying any more for it unless I was buying it for a younger player. Some hidden objects are fuzzy due to the 800x600 screen resolution and the lack of story makes the whole package rather forgettable.
Download Amazing Adventures: The Caribbean Secret