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8.0 excellent
Do you ever get the feeling that something's a little "off" or not quite right? Like when you're visiting friends out of town and they offer to take you to a great burger place just down the street; you're agreeable, and then you end up being led to a White Castle? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, as you soon discover while on a tour of the House of Stone, late castle of Henry the Honorable and now a museum. A snarky tour guide gives you this same sort of uneasy feeling as she invites you to take a closer look at the portrait of a cursed prince.
Before you know it you're whisked 1400 years into the past! The museum is no longer a museum, but the castle as it was only years after The House of Orion was struck by a horrible curse!
Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone, from Orneon, is a hidden object adventure game that takes place in a fantasy setting. Henry the Honorable, sovereign king, inherited a kingdom cursed with a blight of greed, malice, and misfortune. All attempts to bring peace to the realm of Orion failed, and the king died. As his son the prince was about to be crowned king, the curse manifest itself in a powerful spell which turned everyone in the castle to stone! Transported into the past, you've been charged with uncovering the secret of the curse and dispelling it - accompanied by a talking magic mirror to guide you with hints and lists of hidden objects to find.
Echoes of the Past is very much patterned after the Return to Ravenhearst and Dire Grove style of hidden object games. You carry a magic book with you at all times, which is updated in journal fashion as you discover clues and information about what befell the House of Orion. An inventory system allows you to manage useful objects found while searching the castle grounds, dragging them into scenes or onto other objects when you want to make use of them. You navigate the castle by mouse; the pointer changes into an arrow when hovering over exits and clicking sends you in that direction. It becomes a magnifying glass or hand when something can be examined in closer detail or picked up. Groups of shimmering sparkles indicate hidden object scenes and singular glints call your attention to furnishings of interest.
And many, many puzzle locks insert themselves between you and your intended destinations.
In each hidden object scene, the mirror reveals a list of about twelve items you must find among a jumbled array of objects. Clicking on one removes it from the scene and crosses it off the list. More hidden objects will be added to the list until all you're tasked with finding have been displayed. In each scene, one special object (in red typeface) requires some sort of interaction before it can be found. For example, you might be asked to find a handprint. One's not in the scene, but you can pick up a glove, smear it in some coal, press it against a blank scroll, and voilà, a handprint.
The magic mirror is able to give you hints when find objects becomes too difficult and you're ready to throw in the towel. All you have to do is click on the mirror. It holds a set number of hints (you start with a very generous ten) and you can accumulate more by finding mirrors in the hidden object scenes.
I have some bad news for fans of random clicking... Echoes of the Past is a game that penalizes random clicks by causing your mouse pointer to disintegrate after too many wrong clicks in a row! (You don't have to reboot your computer to get the pointer back, just wait a few seconds.)
After completing each hidden object game scene, the magic mirror will ask you to find one more object. This article/tool/knickknack is then added to your inventory.
The puzzle locks, of which there are more than you might expect, are fairly inventive. Gears, valves, tumblers, etc. must be clicked, pushed, or manipulated in some way. Minigames are also present, from puzzles to memory games to a copy of sorts of that Boomshine Flash game. Inventory puzzles aren't too hard, but the castle is large and sometimes it can be tricky knowing where to go next. When in doubt, click on your old pal the magic mirror when re-entering a room for a repeat description or perhaps a helpful comment.
I'm rather torn about what Explosion score to give Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone. The graphics are far and above the run of the mill third party hidden object games that appear almost daily on Big Fish Games... however they're low resolution, 800x600 screens which make some objects fuzzy. Despite this obvious demerit, the sheer amount of animation in practically every scene has to be seen to be believed! Rats scurry about, spiders climb webs, objects move on their own, dust and lighting effects fill the castle chambers. Echoes of the Past is eye-candyriffic. The castle may have been petrified, but movement abounds. My hat is off to the artists and animators - I only wish I could see clearer images of their artwork!
Background music fills out the gameplay nicely, if not memorably. The voiceovers are somewhere in that middle zone between professional actors and family members promised free food in exchange for a trip to the recording studio. I was struck by a few of the random sound effects. Between musical interludes, one long, slow door creak was particularly enjoyable!
Download Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone
This is an EXCELLENT game… Great game play and challenging. Great Storyline, music and graphics. I can not wait for part 2!
io per esempio sono rimasta incastrata debbo andare a mettere i pesi
su in soffitta e mi dice metti sulle forme i pesi giusti ma nn ho capito
cosa fare si puo chiedere cosa fare è quasi una settima che non
riesco piu andare avanti ho messo l’ingranaggio ma niente metto
i pesi ma nulla succede cosa fare chi mi sa rispondere un mille grazzie
x risposta
scusate se disturbo ma una guida x chi non capisce l’inglese ho so cosa fare
ho risolto il problema dei pesi ed era 623 ma ora sono che debbo mettere le
5 foglie nelle aposite ampolle le ho provate di tutto ma niente da fare elp x favore