Shaban (Adventure / FROG)

Shaban
by PetaGame

Available at:
Alawar
Big Fish
iWin



Meet Shaban, a shepherd living happily alongside his sheep and goats. One rainy night, thieves invaded his property and stole all his sheep. Set off on this adventure as Shaban seeks to find his lost sheep. Enjoy this entertaining story told in a comic strip style. Solve a variety of logical and environmental puzzles
as you progress through the game. Will you be able to help Shaban rescue his sheep in time?

• 2 playable characters
  
• Original soundtrack
  
• 30 wonderful hand drawn backgrounds
  
• Walkthrough (Big Fish)
  

Click images to enlarge
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Shaban  (Adventure / FROG)

Options include separate sliders for master volume, music, and sound effects.  I was able to stretch it to widescreen, and it looked great that way.

There is not dialogue -- all "conversations" are done via thought bubble, and the story progresses via story board sequences.  There is a skip button for these sequences, and when the comic finishes, you have to hit that skip button to continue with the game (it doesn't change to a 'continue', it still says 'skip'.)

There is an optional tutorial, which is a couple of easy-to-understand pages of illustrations with a bit of text.

I was thinking that this game was going to be like Machinarium or Tiny Bang Story, so was really exited about trying (... and here I waited for HOW long to finally try it?   )  This game does have a bit of that feeling to it, but the storyboards are just too frequent, and it's distracting.

We periodically have a different kind of hidden object scene to deal with.  These scenes scroll in all directions, and with the multiple layers, it makes it difficult to find things.  It's not just hidden objects, they're fragmented hidden objects -- something I really don't enjoy... especially when the items are incredibly hard to find!

The way we use items is not done the traditional way we are used to.  When you mouse-over an area that has something that needs to be done, gears show up on the screen.  That we're used to.  When you grab an inventory item and hover it over the area... Nothing.  No indication that there's anything to do in that area at all, so I kept feeling like I was doing something wrong.

Between the (IMO) poorly-handled story, the WAY too hard-to-find fragmented objects, and the cumbersome way that we use the inventory items, I wasn't able to last past 20 to 25 minutes of the demo.  Shame -- I really wanted to like this one!