Saturday Casual Gaming 219: Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure

I got my start gaming over at my grandmother's house. She had a Commodore 64 in her computer room in her trailer, and my cousins & I would play on that or her regular PC when we could. To this day, I smell bird seed and my mind thinks "Scorched Earth: The Mother of All War Games"...

But while the Commodore was usually reserved for blowing up 8-bit tanks (if you can even call them 8-bit...), the regular PC was for games I've already referenced on here before: Grandma Games.

From Bejeweled to ToonStruck, my education in video games was primarily of the point-and-click variety, rather than parser- or controller-based. Now, my folks had a few of the old LucasArts adventures (Indiana Jones & The Search for Atlantis, anyone?), and I played my fair share of Seventh Guest, desperate to escape that stupid basement or solve that tedious can puzzle... but most of my gaming was in the Hidden Object subgenre of point-and-click Grandma Games.

So of course I went and found a free-to-play Hidden Object game on Steam and I've been playing it!

From Five-BN, this is "Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure"

This game differs from the Hidden Object Games I've known in the past. It has the rockin' CG intro with a narrator, it has the easy-to-follow story, and it has all the point & click mechanics I've grown used to over time, but it has a few features I'm unused to. Daily rewards & challenges, an energy system (bleh), enemies (?!), and collections... and the chests.

These chest puzzles will be the death of me.

The Crystal Chests are opened through a puzzle where you get a beam of light from one side to the other (shown above is the easiest one...). Once opened, you get a bunch of useful items and the chest disappears from your inventory. You can also use real money to pay for the privilege of  skipping the puzzle and just getting the stuff, but I'm diametrically opposed to spending my real-life money on a Hidden Object game just to get "free" stuff.

The Chip-Based puzzles are also incredibly hard...

The regular chests I've found also have a puzzle on top - match colors, don't intersect lines. Unfortunately, even the tutorial chest leaves out the most important detail: the weird hourglass shapes aren't blocks. They're bridges. You can go both over and under them (as seen with the black & darker blue lines above). These chests contain slightly fewer and lower-rarity items than crystal ones, but I find them infinitely simpler to solve.

But minigames are not why one plays these games. No. You want to go looking for hidden objects - hence "Hidden Object" games...

Every level is this beautifully rendered.

In this bizarre Thomas Kincaid-style wonderland, everything is gorgeous, but occasionally you'll be thinking "No, that's not what that is" or "now how was I supposed to see that?" which is pretty par for Hidden Object games, to be honest. This one is much better localized than many I've seen, but they still think that a clarinet is a flute and the language can be clunky at times, probably as a result of literal translation. That being said, I haven't misunderstood anything besides "Sheath" (which I think they meant "sheaf" since it was a bunch of wheat) and "Flute" (again, it's a clarinet, and I play flute, so I know the difference), and in a world where most of these games (including the famous Nancy Drew titles) are from Eastern Europe/Russia, that's not half bad.

My only gripe is that the energy system means that I can't play for more than a half hour at a time without giving them money. I mean, obviously, everyone on this game deserves to be paid for their magnificent efforts. The CG opener is amazing - one of the best I've ever seen in a Hidden Object game - and the art is gorgeous. I just kinda wish I could play for a full hour at a time without having to keep taking breaks and waiting for my energy to return.

But the fact that this game is free is awesome and I love it.

Also, you fight enemies in this game! I've never really done that in a Hidden Object game before! At the early stage I'm at, there are only two foes - boars & Cave Kobolds. In some scenes (or chests) you can find weapons - spears for boars, Heavy Swords for Cave Kobolds. You click on the enemy you want dead (they wander the map) and they give you XP (which helps you level up and expand your energy pool), money (which you can spend on resources), and sometimes items that are good for your Collections or to resolve missions in-game.

Collections can be turned in for more XP, money, and items when you fill them out.

The story is told pretty plainly in the opening cinematic but it's pretty basic: You're an ancient elven lord who has awakened from a millennia long slumber to save the world from an equally ancient evil. You do this by helping people, fixing things, and finding hidden objects. There are NPCs who tell you more in-game, so I'll leave that there.

The music is fairly generic fantasy fare so it's brilliant but you can't help but feel like you've heard it all before...

If you want to check out Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure on Steam, I strongly suggest you do so! It's free, it's fun, it's pretty, and it's pretty good!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC