Sandra Fleming has a gift for exploration. Hired by the curator of the famous Jefferson Museum of Archaeology to find the ancient Crystal Skulls of lost civilisations Sandra gets help from her friend Tom Fletcher. Together they journey across the world to find each skull, lost to the mysteries of time. However when they discover notes left by another explorer who is related to someoneSandra Fleming has a gift for exploration. Hired by the curator of the famous Jefferson Museum of Archaeology to find the ancient Crystal Skulls of lost civilisations Sandra gets help from her friend Tom Fletcher. Together they journey across the world to find each skull, lost to the mysteries of time. However when they discover notes left by another explorer who is related to someone close to home their journey becomes a conspiracy. Help Sandra and Tom reunite the Crystal Skulls before someone else finds them!
The ancient Crystal Skulls are still a mystery to humanity. Where did they come from? Are they from an advanced ancient civilisation or are they artefacts left over by aliens? Sandra Fleming Chronicles: Crystal Skulls (2011) has an interesting premise that is never explored in any depth. Instead developers Deep Shadows seem more concerned with a mystery of why their curator is linked to an explorer they find notes from. The Crystal Skull adventuring is more window dressing for this HOPA. Sandra and Tom are inoffensive characters but they have no personality. As in other examples of this genre items are picked up from hidden object scenes. These items are then used to manipulate mechanisms and generally solve puzzles. Progress is shown as you journey across a map, stolen straight out of Indiana Jones! A hint system is available to show you the direction you need to go. It’s possible to collect these gold coins that can contribute to free hints which you’ll need since the hint system takes forever to refill. The hint system itself is mostly useless as it doesn’t allow you to complete the various puzzles that need solving or even tell you specifically what you need to do next if you get stumped. The puzzles themselves are also a problem. Puzzles are standard but some ask you to know certain combinations to complete puzzles where there is no clue in the game to help you find the solution. Crystal Skulls is incredibly buggy as well. When the game isn’t crashing it’s filled with moments that halt your progress. Numerous times you’ll click on an object you need two or three times and it won’t register the click. The worst offender is late in the game where you have to collect these coloured crystals and place them into these pillars that are to provide a beam of light. There’s another hidden object section in the same place that regardless of what you click on can’t be completed because it’s broken. Doesn’t matter because you can complete the pillar light puzzle without completing the hidden object scene! It’s not so much the lack of polish this shows but that the developers didn’t finish programming the hidden object scene correctly but allowed the player to progress anyway knowing full well stuff was unfinished. It comes across as laziness.
Sandra Fleming Chronicles: Crystal Skulls is a fun premise that starts off mediocre and becomes a buggy mess by the end. Had more time been spent cleaning up the bugs and polishing the story there might be reason to experience this game. As it is it’s very difficult to recommend in its current state and developers Deep Shadows themselves must have been embarrassed by the end result as it appears to be left off their website credits.… Expand
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