This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
When Anna brings home part of an ancient map that might lead her to the mythical city of Atlantis she can hardly believe her luck! Now to find the other parts of the map this young archaeologist must face obstacles in her quest to hopefully find the lost underwater city. It’s a city with many secrets that have been protected for centuries but also many treasures. Can you help Anna or will Atlantis stay a myth for all time?
Atlantis: Mysteries of Ancient Inventors (2010) is one of those HOGs that begins alright but slowly as you play reveals issues that deter from the overall experience. It features a young woman called Anna out to search for the hidden city of Atlantis. Sounds like an exciting premise for a game right? It’s not a long game and perhaps not structured very well. For a premise that can offer huge thrills the first quarter to half of the game is spent with your professor and in a library finding objects to help you on your journey. I get the impression developers Domini Games took the word ‘casual’ to heart because there’s no immediacy. I bought a game about Atlantis to do some exploring, not trawl through maps in a library. The game design makes the player feel stupid when Anna is talking about how she needs to pack her bag for what she’s going to need only for the player to then immediately click on a crow from the word list of objects. When you do begin the adventure proper it becomes fast stops to various parts of the world, meeting different individuals, none of who have any character development. Then it’s over without any resolution leaving the game on a very anti-climatic note. It’s a shame because it does a number of things absolutely fine like other games from the genre but not quite because Domini Games made something very unfinished. Hidden object screens for every section normally come in three rounds. The included puzzles vary between incredibly easy to outright impossible. Sliding block puzzles aren’t to everyone’s tastes but anagram puzzles could have worked if the developers had bothered to provide clues to the words. There is a hint system and you can choose between relaxed or timed gameplay. Yet Mysteries of Ancient Inventors feels rushed to completion with game breaking bugs having been reported everywhere. The last game puzzle for example can be completed but progress can only be achieved by skipping the puzzle you just completed! Speaking of achieving things there’s an achievements system but good luck knowing what you can achieve as it doesn’t tell you. The entire thing for some reason feels locked off in demo mode. You have to collect compasses but no progress is shown on screen and I could go on about the terrible click detection on objects meaning if you play a timed game and get penalised for incorrect clicking three or four times… Ultimately there was no sequel. This was one of Domini’s first games and thankfully it wouldn’t be their last as they went on to become well known for their (arguably better developed) Dark Romance and Mystery Tales series. Needless to say there are better Atlantis games out there, some well made and with more ambition.
I can’t recommend Atlantis: Mysteries of Ancient Inventors. The game has numerous flaws, not just its length but its structure, a host of bugs as well as a feeling of it being unfinished. The good news is that it’s a HOG that doesn’t set out to offend however the developers lack of care means you will end up playing something that feels like a waste of money. When there are better HOGs out there in no way is there any need to buy this game. Let the fabled city of Atlantis stay buried if it means keeping this bug ridden failure away from customers expecting something a little bit more complete.… Expand
