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6.3 sorta fun
The Halloween Express continues rolling down the tracks of love! Today's game is obviously influenced partly by the Saw series of films and partly by the Miss Teri Tale series of hidden object games. Saw provides the "killer cat and mouse taunting" and Miss Teri Tale provides the "misspellings!" Just kidding... but I really do hate misspellings.
In this hidden object adventure game from Gogii Games, you play a young woman named Helene who wakes up in the trunk of an old car with no idea who you are or how you got there. (You don't even know your own name!) It quickly becomes apparent that you've been kidnapped by a puzzle-loving maniac... a killer who would love nothing better than to see you fail at one of his puzzle rooms. Your only hope lies in beating him at his own game, but as you progress from room to room, he's watching you via closed circuit surveillance cameras and mocking your every effort. Trapped: The Abduction is a horror film themed hidden object game where you use items you find in piles of junk to escape from one room to the next.
In each room your abductor gives you a list of objects to find, which are listed at the bottom of the screen. When you find and click upon the picture of the item in the room, it's removed from the scene and your list. This is all typical hidden object gameplay and unless you've been working on Alaskan fishing boats for the past two years you know exactly what I'm talking about. Each room also contains one or more multiple item listings: for example, you may be asked to find ten skulls, or five vials. For every one you find, the count is decreased. Unlike other hidden object adventure games, rarely are any objects added to your inventory for later - it seems you're just finding these objects to cooperate with the madman who kidnapped you.
After finding everything at the bottom of the screen, you'll have to solve one or more puzzles inside the room. These usually involve fixing something that has been broken. You'll have to rebuild a gasoline generator, dress and makeup a mannequin, repair stairs, etc. Helene is plenty resourceful! Much more so than I would be in a similar situation. I remember one time when I was a kid, a bully said he was going to punch me and I started bawling like a baby.
Puzzles are initiated by mousing over interesting-looking objects in a room. Doing so will change the mouse pointer into a question mark, indicating that the object can be examined further. Usually a click will pop up a message (Helen's thoughts) describing an item you need to find in the clutter to interact with the object you just clicked on. You might need to find a nail remover to pull out some nails, for example. When you find the nail remover onscreen, clicking on it adds it to your inventory. Clicking on it again allows you to use it on a nail you want to remove. And so on. Sometimes it can be frustrating not knowing what you're supposed to do next, because you've moved the mouse all about the screen but somehow managed to miss the pointer getting all questiony.
If you get stuck and don't know what part of the screen to interact with yet, or just can't find a certain hidden object, hints are available. You can use as many as you like, but it takes about a minute for the hint button to recharge after each use. I must admit I used quite a few hints in some puzzles (the generator puzzle, for example) because I had no idea what to do next.
I'm happy to report that the hidden object scenes are untimed and that there is only a minor penalty for random clicking! Click on too many wrong objects and a bar of static will roll across the screen momentarily. Along with a spooky laugh from the abductor and a gasp from Helene. Total time you're barred from further random clicking: point eight two seconds. Not bad at all!
Helene also possesses a long term inventory of objects that can be used as evidence against her kidnapper... should you manage to escape! (Don't worry, this is a spooky game, but nothing as bad as a Halloween episode of CSI.)
Cut scenes between the hidden object screens and puzzles advance the story, and mostly amount to the C64-using killer taunting Helene. The actor and actress providing the voiceovers do a nice job, and the background music is sufficiently dark and makes a good match for the visuals. However Trapped: The Abduction really drops the ball when it comes to the graphics. I had hoped the days of low resolution, 800x600 hidden object games were behind us, but sadly I was mistaken. With so many dark brown backgrounds and rust-colored objects, clarity is really needed. But I found very little on hand. Too often I clicked on a blob just because I thought it might be an object on my list.
I've already mentioned the poor spelling. Actually I only noticed a handful of spelling mistakes... but even one grates on my nerves. Geez, what is my problem? I don't know, but Gogii Games, take some pride in your work!
Download Trapped: The Abduction