Timeless 1: The Forgotten Town (IHOG)
Options include separate sliders for Sound, Music and Ambients, Full-screen (auto-widescreen) and Custom Cursor. We do have a choice between Casual and Expert mode, but hint/skip-recharge time and length of the misclick penalty are the only differences.
Story:
You're just trying to enjoy the train ride at the end of your vacation when red-clad figure in a mirrored mask declares that you will come with him, and you black out. When you wake everything has changed... Everyone has disappeared, your watch and cell phone don't work, you find an hourglass with sands that flow UP, and why does everything look like it's from the early 1900's? Now you are trapped in a timeless town, and have to find a way to break this spell before the sands of time run out!
We have a fabulous
Journal, which gives us a lot of extra story including things that we can't learn unless we read it. Clues are also stored here, although the more-complex puzzle hints will have an easier way to track them.
Gameplay:
We have no
MAP, but the way the town is laid out, it was easy to keep track of where we were. It felt like there weren't all that many locations, but the gameplay was still interesting.
Using
HINTS during the adventure portion of the game will either tell you something to do on your current scene, or give you a direction to go.
Hidden Object Scenes are varied, with types including non-interactive to-find lists, silhouettes, moving items around to find things hidden beneath them, finding multiples of one item, etc. The hints charge slowly - even in casual mode - and the rapid-misclick penalty is obnoxious, making the HO scenes take longer to complete than they normally would. HOS repeat, but items you found the first time you visited will remain gone when you go back the second time.
The Mini-games were pretty fun, with some change-ups to the usual to keep things interesting.
Sights and Sounds:
Although the graphics aren't going to blow you away, they're nicely tone-setting and appropriate for the environment they're trying to portray. There were some anachronisms, to be sure, but I was able to ignore them... After all, there was nothing glaringly-out-of-time like an airplane or an electric guitar. lol~
The sound work, like the graphics, help set the mood for our
Timeless adventure. The music is very nice, and you can tell that they put some effort into the soundtrack. There are no voiceovers.
CE Content:
- Integrated Strategy Guide
- Bonus Chapter
- 10 Wallpapers (1024x768 or 1280x800)
- 73 Concept Art (shows concepts in-progress and their final looks)
- 22 Music Tracks (cannot be saved)
Bonus Chapter:
The ending of the standard gameplay was very abrupt, and that's probably because
this chapter is the actual ending of the game. I don't think I've ever seen another HOG where the true ending was so blatantly cut out of the main game. Boo-hiss for that, devs. That being said, this extra chapter wraps the story up very nicely.
The gameplay is the same mixture of HOS and adventuring, with one old location and (I think) five new ones. A
TIP for those who love story: There will come a time when you have to move around some papers to get at what's underneath them. Read them all! It gives us some great information about the time leading up to what happens in the town.
Verdict:
I'm not sure how I would have felt about the game if it had been only your standard HOS, but the way the devs spaced them out with different types really made the gameplay more enjoyable for me. This is a short game - especially for a CE - clocking at around 3.5 hours to complete everything.
The music and graphics, combined with an intriguing story, made for a pleasant evening's distraction.
