A Central American town is gripped by demonic Aztec forces which have caused all the citizens of the area to evacuate. Only a small amount ofA Central American town is gripped by demonic Aztec forces which have caused all the citizens of the area to evacuate. Only a small amount of people have stayed. They told the people it was earthquakes. It is in fact an awakening of an ancient demon hell-bent on taking over the world from its pyramid. Your friend Peter, a respected news reporter went in to investigate but when you arrived to offer help he was captured. Now you must navigate not just areas of the town but light as well as dark if you ever hope to find Peter and stop this incredibly powerful force!
Trying to match something that had the quality of Orneon’s other series Echoes of the Past was going to be tough. First off what makes Secrets of the Dark: Temple of Night (2011) different is its Aztec setting; something you normally don’t get within hidden object games. The fact it all takes place inside a deserted town is essentially being at the scene of the crime on the biggest scale possible; apocalyptic actually. You have to find Peter and eventually get to stop a ritual. Something else also differentiates it with other HOGs and more on that soon. Storywise there’s not much here to show any depth. Your friend Peter is annoying and delivers his dialogue in an OTT fashion. His found footage camera tapes you can collect through the game don’t reveal much other than no one can be trusted which is not a surprise considering this game’s quality voice acting. The game’s strength is more in its gameplay that takes you from the hotel to the police station etc, opening up parts of it as you progress. Hidden object scenes are incredibly simple although puzzles are uneven in difficulty. The game doesn’t offer any real learning curve with some puzzles being too easy while others are downright hard. Thankfully there’s a skip button but the point is the puzzles should be balanced in difficulty. A journal keeps notes but is limited in usefulness. Now an interesting element that does bring Secrets of the Dark some originality is the fact the demonic forces operate between light and dark. You start off in a room with natural light. The only way to progress is to close the blinds inside which turns things dark; thereby then morphing the screen to its Aztec roots. It’s interesting as the player must utilise both dark and light screens to play the game all simply by pulling the blinds inside a room that has a window. Seeing the rooms morph back between modern and ancient never gets old. The game runs stable enough however the animation frame rate (for anything story related or anything you manipulate in game) the developers use is about 15fps which is jarring when the gameplay mostly runs at full speed. A collector’s edition rather weirdly adds two bonus sections to the game. The first resolves the fate of the souls in the town while the second feels lazy with its crystal hunting through recycled screens. Putting my cynical hat on there’s the sense Orneon knew they needed a super duper version so cut the game in half and sold the other half as a ‘Collector’s Edition’.
Secrets of the Dark is nowhere near as good as Orneon’s Echoes of the Past series of games. However it’s shifting light and dark gameplay coupled with its Aztec setting make it a more unique HOG. Play it for the game, not the story as it’s not well developed or presented. The collector’s edition version is the version to go for as it contains the entire game but this shouldn’t have to be the option so naughty Orneon for selling half a game as a standard edition. This review score is for collector’s edition version. Feel free to take one mark off the below score for the standard version.… Expand
