In general I agree with her - although the story of this game, quite frankly, is what it is for the kind of game it is - as she points out before going into a more discoursive critical review of the narrative!
We know most of our audience is not Emily Short (but we should probably be trying to hit our narrative, story and characters to hook her in also). It's very hard to get them to read.
Interesting quotes on the elements that do work:
I am not a great fan of hidden object gameplay. I played Love and Death: Bitten for two reasons: it was getting strong reviews as a casual game with a lot of story content, and it also contains a number of other types of puzzle.
The reviews don't lie: if we set aside the essential implausibility that the protagonists stop at the most inopportune times to search for trinkets, this is a pretty decent story/gameplay mesh for a hidden object game.
She also appreciated our attempts to tell the story via the hidden object scenes and the "thoughts" of the characters when the player clicks on items:
On the flip side:After the first act, the hidden object experience is used to unveil Damon's past and the characters' different attitudes towards that past, rather than to set up their overall abilities. Much of the action is set in the castle where he lives: the hidden object screens are full of memories when he manipulates them, and discovery when Victoria does. The list of objects to find in a given scene gives some hint about what the viewpoint character might be thinking, even when he or she offers no explicit comment.
Victoria, for instance, investigating Damon's study, finds an assortment of objects that point at his talents and musical abilities. Damon, on the other hand, notices the tokens given to him by previous lovers, and cast-off bottles of wine -- hints at a dissolute lifestyle. The game does not go into this in any explicit detail, but perhaps we can judge from this that Victoria sees Damon more favorably than he sees himself. In any case, it's a relatively deft and thoughtful use of this play style.
Finally, in one scene, the player is required to combine the hidden objects into a tableau that tells the full story of Damon's background. It's contrived, but it does work; it gives the backstory of how Damon became what he is, and connects several previously unexplained pieces of evidence.
"There is not a moment of human truth from one end to the other."
See also her previous Homer in Silicon posts on other PF games:
* Chocolatier: Decadence by Design and also Chocolatier 2 (and Choc 1, linked in the Choc link). She also played The Great Chocolate Chase.
* DinerTown Tycoon - "Unfortunately, the gameplay of DinerTown Tycoon is still fairly unadventurous; it is merely borrowing from a different genre than Diner Dash. There is little in the play of DinerTown Tycoon that one can't find in the deeply bland and profoundly unexceptional Cinema Tycoon, Cinema Tycoon 2, Cinema Tycoon Gold, and for all I know Cinema Tycoon Platinum Studded with Diamonds XXVII. "
It may sound as though I entirely despised the game, but I didn't; I played the whole thing through and I wasn't hating it while I did so. The whole Diner Dash series is designed, tested, and manufactured by people who know what they are doing. It's just that what they're doing is not always what I would call "game design."
* Passport to Perfume - she liked it, kind of. She liked making the perfume.* Wandering Willows - "amiable but undemanding" (do we want our games to be "demanding"?)
One of the most entertaining quotes here:
(I found myself fleetingly wondering about the slave-labor hierarchy of this society, since the long-term inhabitants mostly rely on the newcomer to provide them with food and clothing, while the newcomer in turn manipulates the cunning but speechless animals into doing all the really hard work. But I am fairly certain the designers did not intend me to think about any such thing.)
mwa ha ha, perhaps Dan DID intend us to think about slave-labor!
* Emerald City Confidential
* Omnibus post about many casual games including DD:HH and Wedding Dash: Having played the original Diner Dash to exhaustion, she's not excited about either one (and probably by extension the WD sequels). Also oddly enough she didn't like Cooking Dash either.
Not sure if she has ever talked about Dream Chronicles.
