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6.9 sorta fun
If you know anyone who needs to renew their passport, send them a link to this game as a subtle reminder. My passport expired just a month ago (ten years flies when you're having fun) and now I'm stuck in the United States until I can get a new one. At least this time my photo is going to actually look like me! I vow it! I was up against a deadline ten years ago and shot into the first camera store on High Street with a "We take passport photos here!" sign in the window. Ugh, that was a bad photo.
Little Shop: World Traveler, from Gamehouse, immediately reminded me that I need to get my passport renewed. This is the fifth game in the successful Little Shop series, and fans of the first four games will probably be just as tickled by this episode. As usual, you play an expert personal shopper (sometimes known as a professional shopper). You know how you have that great aunt who never likes anything you get her and complains about every gift she receives? Well, people like her are why personal shoppers make big bucks. Personally I love buying present for people, even grumpy old great aunts, but to some people shopping can be a real chore. These are your customers in Little Shop: World Traveler!
Naturally, this is a hidden object game. In each country you visit, you'll find one screen jam-packed to the hilt with assorted junk of all sorts - most items somewhat loosely connected to the country in question. You'll find sushi in Japan, scuba gear in Venice, cricket bats in England, lemurs in Madagascar, etc. (Yes, I know that Venice isn't a country.) At the bottom of the screen are listed five objects for you to find in the scene. These are part of your shopping list. You have five minutes to find and click on at least ten hidden objects. (Each time you click on an object, it's removed from the screen and replaced in your shopping list with the name of a new object to find.) Finding at least ten items in the country successfully completes your shopping trip. And if you can find fifteen items, you earn a gold star!
Sadly, you are penalized for random clicking. Do too much of it and your mouse pointer will change into an "stop/error" symbol for a few seconds. Fume!
In each scene there are various extras to click on outside of your shopping list. The most useful by far are the cameras. Somewhere inside every jumble of objects are three cameras. Click on one and the screen will flash white - except for the objects currently on your list. Don't blink, or you'll miss them! This effect makes it very easy to quickly find many objects at once. There are also regular hints, accessed by the hint button at the top of the screen. Hints replace the words on your list with actual pictures of the objects in question. Useful, but I much prefer the cameras. You can find extra hints by clicking on hidden question marks. There are four in every location!
And don't think you'll complete this game without hints! You'll definitely need help finding objects on some screens. The milk bottle in Tahiti, anyone? Hello?
Every location also contains two exclamation points. These give you a country-specific mouse pointer that scares the items on your list when you get near. For example, in Tahiti you get a pufferfish that puffs up. Very helpful, Mr. Pufferfish! Also helpful are the thermometers, of which there are two in every location. These give you a "hot and cold" effect (manifest in the form of icicles or flames) as you move your mouse pointer around the screen, allowing you to narrow in on hard to find objects.
Also present in every location is a rubber stamp, which upon finding gives you a stamp for your passport, and three over-stuffed suitcases. Clicking on them makes them pop open and spill their contents (clothes and toothpaste) but does little else.
As with previous Little Shop games, finding every extra (thermometers, question marks, exclamation points, cameras, stamp, and suitcases) is where the fun and replay value comes in. There's not enough of a story here to hang your coat on, and you'll revisit the same screens multiple times, quickly learning where certain objects are hidden. In the game, you play someone who hasn't been abroad in a while and doesn't like traveling much. No wonder! Flying back and forth to the same countries again and again and again would turn me off traveling as well... I ate the same brand of peanut butter animal crackers every day for a year, and now I can't even look at that brand's box without feeling sick!
At the end of each chapter you get to play a clever "Shake It!" minigame. You're given a box filled with odds and ends (coins, dice, candy, playing cards, etc.) and asked to find items or combinations of items in it. The clever bit involves shaking the box with your mouse, which bounces all the knick-knacks around. Maybe an object you need is behind some coupon clippings and you need to shake until it appears. I really enjoyed this minigame. So did the neighbors looking over my shoulder.
Honestly, the Little Shop series has been treading water while other, more fancy-pants, hidden object games have appeared on the scene. Playing Little Shop: World Traveler definitely feels like a throwback to two years ago when three clip art collection CD-ROMs and a few Photoshop artists was all you needed to create a hidden object game. (To be fair, the game uses high resolution graphics so you won't go blind squinting at a blurry screen, so it's not completely retro.) Gamehouse doesn't even try to get the shading and perspective right on some objects. It's almost kind of refreshing in a weird way. But it's certainly not the recipe for a replayable game. If you're the kind of person who likes collecting trophies and winning achievements and doesn't need a cool story, you'll have a blast. For everyone else, there's The Clockwork Man.
Download Little Shop: World Traveler