Tornado: The Secret of the Magic Cave (Pop-up/FROG/IHOG)
Let's get the bad out of the way right off the bat: The English is terrible. Warring tenses, odd sentence structure... This game has the unfortunate distinction of having poor translators. Lucky thing that the written pop-ups are short and to-the-point, with skippable cut scenes.
OK, now on to the game review!
You have an option of Easy or Hard, which is simply choosing how fast you want your hints to refill. There is an automatic tutorial, which can be turned off. You also have the option of playing as the brother or the sister. I chose to play as female.
The cut scenes are skippable, and the artwork for that part is acceptable. The gameplay graphics, however, are excellent. I didn't realize that this is a Pop-up game when I first started it, and since I'm generally not a fan of Pop-ups, I almost turned it off. I'm glad I didn't, for this game is much more than finding items to put in a bubble. Such as:
- Adventure, being able to go back and forth between (limited) locations at will, whether you've finished those areas or not. You interact with multiple locations to finish one scene, which always adds interest.
- FROG, though the items aren't actually fragmented - they're multiple items that you need to collect to complete the item (such as a set of screwdrivers).
- HOG, where you're not quite sure what you're supposed to find, you only have a flat cut-out of what you're looking for (though if you mouse-over, it will tell you what the item is). There are also close-up scenes to find items by picture.
Another way the developer adds interest is that there are multiple areas on each screen you have to interact with to find all of the items: Objects in cupboards, under pillows, in drawers, etc.
As for menu options, there are a lot! Full-screen, "Correction of the wide screen" (aspect-ratio), Special cursor, Speed cursor, Total volume, Music, Sounds and Background (ambient noises). What I didn't see at first is that there is a Brightness button! There's a lamp on the top right of the options screen, and by adjusting the tassels, you can change the brightness of the graphics. Excellent!
The combination of interesting gameplay and lovely graphics is good enough for me to overlook the poor English. It's a BUY for me :thumb:
