Darkarta: A Broken Heart's Quest

Darkarta: A Broken Heart's Quest
by Tuttifrutti Interactive - March, 2017

Available at:
Big Fish as Collector's Edition / Standard Edition
Steam



Like all moms, for Mary her Sophia was the apple of her eye and her heart.

Haunted by strange curses from her orphanage days, Mary never knew the story of her dark past until the day she received that strange, mysterious letter.

Never in her wildest dreams did she fear that fate would wipe away the peaceful serenity of her life.

3700 years have gone by, but even time can never heal some wounds.

Follow the immortal enigma Darkarta who is trying to create the ‘Elixir of Life’ using your daughter to resurrect his lost bride.

How will you save your only daughter from death?

The sweetest songs are those that tell of broken hearts!

Unique features
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* A mother's epic frantic journey in search of her lost daughter, to the lost civilization of the Indus Valley - An untold saga of true love.
* Explore ‘unforeseen’ environs and original puzzles. Over 5 hr CE game play
* Bonus Chapter “Rising of the Phoenix”– Play in 'god' mode.
* Prequel Comic Book, Mom's diary pages, 30 Nostalgic memory collectibles, 36 Hall of Fame Medals, 28 Morphing Objects, * Concepts, Wallpapers and Sound tracks
* Replay Mini Games/HOP/Cut-scenes

Darkarta: A Broken Heart's Quest (IHOG)

Options include four difficulty modes (including Custom!), Custom Cursor, Full-screen, and Wide-screen, plus a retractable inventory bar which you can lock in place, if you prefer.

I wanted to get all of the achievements - one of which is for playing on Expert Mode - so that's the mode I chose to play on.  That means NO sparkles, period.  Do you know how hard it is to find hotspots without sparkles??  Pretty hard, I'd say, since the game took me over 7 hours to complete.    In my defense, I was reading every scrap of story, examining every memory, and used NO hints, and NO skips.

Our diary has four tabs: Journal, which chronicles our journey thus far; Objective; Map (insta-travel, and is also accessible outside of your diary); and Characters, which gives us background information on the people we've met.

The first thing I noticed about the game is the artwork, which is stunningly gorgeous throughout.  The music was always appropriate, never jarring, and beautiful to listen to.  The voices are very well done, and the sound effects well-suited to the environment.

Gameplay is adventure-heavy, and starts out with most of the hidden object scenes ALSO being puzzles, which I really enjoyed.  I was disappointed that they weren't ALL HO-puzzles, but at least the ones that are there are replayable!

If you're not in the mood to find all (or any) of the hidden objects, you can switch to Match-3 mode (à la Phantasmat), and finish up the scene that way.  It takes two clicks to swap gems - you can't just drag it where you want it to go - and you have to wait for the pieces to stop moving before you can make another match.

The story of a woman trying to save her daughter is something we've seen many times over, but there were plenty of surprises along the way, and it was beautifully-told.  As a side note, it was refreshing to see that there's actually a loving husband involved - something I've rarely seen in this genre.

CE Extras include:

• Concept Art
  
• 51 CutScenes
  
• 32 Mini-games
  
• 30 Memories (I missed ONE! >_<)
  
• 17 Hidden object-puzzle games
  
• 33 Wallpapers (each in three different resolutions)
  
• 12 music tracks (though I don't see a way to download them to my hard drive
  
• 36 achievements
  
• Back-story Comic Book
  

Game Guide:

It's not the best strategy guide I've seen... There are grammatical errors (which thankfully are NOT present in the game), and it's super-confusing.  The guide automatically opens to the page that references the place where you're standing, but this is not a chronological-order-type of thing.  It shows you everything you need to do on that scene, even if you're missing half of the inventory items.  'Pry open the car trunk with a crowbar'.  OK, but WHERE is the crowbar?  Good luck finding it in the guide, especially if you don't want any spoilers!  It IS very useful if you're looking for specific items in a hidden object scene, though - it has everything circled for you.

Bonus Chapter:

Short, puzzle-heavy, and the most beautiful graphics in the game.  It's a nice closing to the story, too.

If, like me, you're an achievement-hunter, be warned:  Some areas will become inaccessible even within the current chapter, so try to find all morphing objects and "memories" when you first enter the scene... You might not be able to come back later!  Also, once you finish the game, you can't restart on your current profile.  You'll have to delete that profile before you can re-use that spot.

This is a gorgeous game with a TON of content.  You can tell that Darkarta was a labor of love - it really shows!  A truly enjoyable game, and highly recommended.