Here's a link to the newest games at Big Fish Games: Newest Downloads
8.4 ultra recommended
Before there was David Copperfield or Penn and Teller, Archibald the Conjurer was the greatest magician in the world. His tricks astounded thousands of audiences and were regular front page news... but then accidents started to mar his performances. After nearly being killed in a handful of tricks gone wrong, he retired from touring and purchased Worcester Castle. There he built his Hall of Secrets, a hidden chamber containing the secret notes to all his greatest tricks.
The Conjurer realized that the accidents were not normal mistakes: one of his rivals was trying to kill him! But who? To discover the would-be murderer, he arranged for a "retirement party" at the castle, attended by the next ten greatest magicians in the world. In the guise of a magic contest - with the prize being entrance to his own Hall of Secrets - he decided to discover the identity of his jealous and murderous rival... and as his closest friend, you've been invited along for the ride. With help from your old buddy the talking mynah bird Minerva, search for clues and hidden objects in the chambers of the visiting magicians and help them perform their signature tricks in this sparkle-filled hidden object game from Freeze Tag.
The Conjurer is a hidden object adventure game, of sorts. Though you have an inventory of collected objects, you don't directly use them to solve puzzles or unlock new areas. They merely represent props needed for each of the magicians' signature tricks. Notes about each magician and the Conjurer himself are saved in his own journal (written in invisible ink, of course!) that you quickly find in your investigation.
For each magician you must first clear their selected stage of clutter in preparation for their signature trick. Standard hidden object game operating procedure has you attempting to find and click on a dozen objects, each located somewhere in a cluttered scene. Clicking on one removes it from the scene as well as from the list at the bottom of the screen. These are objects like apples, axes, medallions, horns, cockroaches, tomatoes, etc. If I invited guests to my castle I'd clean it up first. But that's just me.
Once you've made a token effort to neaten the stage, it's on to the magician's quarters and surrounding rooms, where once again untidiness and disorder rule. Somewhere in these rooms are six props needed for the trick. Once you've completed these rooms, you must return to the stage and place each prop in its correct spot. This merely involves dragging the prop around the room and looking for its silhouette to appear behind the mouse pointer. Simple, and not unfun.
Then you get to watch the trick! They're all pretty amazing, even if the performers are Poser people and a bit stiffly animated. Onscreen sparkles will tell you who to click on as, step by step, the trick is executed.
As it turns out, each of the ten stages is linked to The Hall of Secrets by way of a secret passage. You'll be given a riddle describing one object onscreen behind which the hidden door is situated. But finding the door is only the first step, because each door is locked with a tricky puzzle lock. And some are quite tricky indeed! (If you're just along for the hidden objects, you can skip these puzzles.)
The Conjurer is quite generous with hints, and would make an excellent first hidden object game for someone new to the genre. Clicking on any word in your grocery list of hidden objects reveals its silhouette - perfect if you want to know whether you're looking for a baseball "bat" or flying mammal "bat" - or even just to see whether a spear is aligned horizontally or vertically. You also have a crystal ball that you can click on to show you the location of an object. This can be reused as often as you like, but it takes perhaps twenty seconds to recharge between uses. So-called "super hints" are also given out, one per magician suspect, that can tell you the exact location of a specific object. These don't carry over into future magicians' chapters, so use them while you've got them.
You can random click with impunity! There are no nonsensical penalties for clicking about madly here! A small skull appears each time you click on a wrong object, but it's only scary if you're a jungle native with no experience whatsoever using computers or playing computer games. Sometimes random sparkles appear, and sometimes random objects jiggle about. I guess that's about what I'd expect in spooky Worcester Castle.
Overall, I was very impressed with The Conjurer: A Magical Mystery. The hidden object scenes have been assembled well, with only a touch of clipartitis, and the story of Archibald, Adelaide, Alexandria, etc. actually really interested me. Perhaps it's just my love of the "strangers invited to a secluded spot and one of them is a killer" genre... or the really exemplary chicken sandwich I had for lunch, but I enjoyed this game much more than I expected. Even though it's not as clever as full-on inventory style object manipulation hidden object game adventures, the magic tricks are fun and I had a blast.