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7.2 excellent
Here comes another game to warm the cockles of your cockles. Find Your Own Way Home - The Game, from Dhruva Interactive and Curious Sense, is a hidden object game version of REO Speedwagon's 2007 album Find Your Own Way Home.
Kind of.
You play Ruby Easton, reporter for the syndicated television newsertainment show Entertainment Now. Ruby just happens to be the biggest fan of REO Speedwagon in the world. That's not as strange as it may sound, because this game takes place in 2007, in a world where REO Speedwagon is still going strong. You and I may know the band for their two #1 rock ballads back in the eighties, but Ruby knows every song they ever recorded, ever, which bootlegs are available, which versions they played at which concerts, and has toured extensively with the band. (She's on a first name basis with the group, so if she mentions a name in her planner without explaining who it is, it's probably a member of REO Speedwagon.)
Find Your Own Way Home - The Game is a hidden object adventure game of sorts. In specific scenes Ruby does assemble an inventory of useful objects with which to solve puzzles, however this inventory doesn't carry over between scenes. The game takes place throughout a handful of chapters, each containing numerous hidden object scenes, cutscenes, and puzzles. The story starts with Ruby finishing a news piece about the band and then follows (Editor's note: meanders is more like it) her investigation of lead vocalist Kevin Cronin's mysterious disappearance, all the while dealing with her demanding boss Marvin and weasely coworker Biff.
The hidden object scenes feature much "sketchier" art compared to most hidden object games. At the right of the screen is a list of objects to find, with the bulk of the screen displaying a scene (usually someplace connected, however loosely, with the band) cluttered with miscellaneous objects. These aren't the piled high hidden object screens of a Mystery Case Files game, but instead just a "I really should get the maid in here before I invite anyone over" kind of general messiness. Finding and clicking on objects in the scene sees them disappear, and also removes them from the list. More objects fill up the list until you've found them all.
While I certainly didn't find the story of Find Your Own Way Home impressive (except for the bits with Dennis the cat) I was piqued by the wide variety of hidden object game modes included in the game. There are scenes where you must find a certain number of like objects (all the shoes in a location, for example). Or perhaps you must find hidden objects in a particular order (effectively reducing the power of random clicking, which is not otherwise penalized). Or take pictures of various portions of a scene. Or find objects whose names are scrambled or reversed in the list. Or find objects using a flashlight in a dark room. Or find the differences between two mirrored images. And so on.
That doesn't even include minigames like Simon Says or the item manipulation puzzles. The latter involve dragging items from your inventory onto other objects in the scene. For example, putting a coin in a juke box. Or pouring some catfood into a cat dish to get a pesky cat off your laptop! Hints are not available for these adventure game puzzles, however you can skip these challenges as well as the minigames.
On the other hand, various types of hints are available in the hidden object scenes, and recharge rather quickly. There are hints which find an object, hints which show you what an object looks like, hints which make the mouse pointer into a compass that always points to the nearest object, etc.
My biggest complaint with the game is that sometimes the interface seemed to require much more precise clicking than I expected. Little inconsistencies like not being able to drag the open windows around Ruby's laptop computer when they were near the edge of the screen, or having to line the mouse viewfinder up almost exactly when taking photographs ... gave me the impression that in some ways the game was rushed. In casual games, the interface is one of the most important aspects and it felt lacking here.
The game's soundtrack features quite a few sound clips from REO Speedwagon songs, like "Lost On The Road Of Love" from their new album. One of my favorite minigames involved putting together a puzzle where rows of puzzle pieces corresponded to different recording session tracks. So you can listen to just the vocals on "Roll With the Changes," or just the drums and keyboard, or mix and match guitar parts with vocals, etc.
I enjoyed Find Your Own Way Home much more than I thought I would, and did so in spite of the eye-rolling REO Speedwagon idolatry on display. If you can look the other way during those frequent moments, you'll be entertained. I'd like to compare this game to the John Lennon Museum outside the Saitama-Shintoshin station in Saitama, Japan. When I asked a coworker if the museum was worth visiting, he scratched his head. "Well," he said, "it is if you like John Lennon."
Download Find Your Own Way Home - The Game