On a routine delivery Alex crashes his plane into an unknown island. Unknown on charts but filled with trapped individuals he tries to escapeOn a routine delivery Alex crashes his plane into an unknown island. Unknown on charts but filled with trapped individuals he tries to escape by helping the natives. Join Alex as he attempts to get to the bottom of an ancient curse and free the locals before the island takes anyone else as its captives. Can Alex get rescued or will he spend forever there?
Substandard and mediocre best describes The Treasures of Mystery Island (2008). Under Alawar Entertainment developers Five-BN have given us a basic HOG with neither substance nor a compatible style. Just take a look at the graphics. Five-BN has given us some dated freakish character models, the kind you expect to see in homebrew porn games. The character models don’t even match the design of the foregrounds and backgrounds. Why not just animate the characters in 2D? As the player goes from one part of the island to the other we don’t so much look for hidden objects but parts that make up items. Some are easy to locate while others are pretty difficult to find, made worse by Alex’s grotesque character model resting his arms over the portrait screen. The items you form help the inhabitants of the island and once you finish one section of the game you then have to look for complete items belonging to individuals with jobs, i.e. teacher, hunter, builder, etc. Why, I have no idea. You don’t meet any of these people. Maybe being stuck on the island has hit home to Alex he needs to find another job that doesn’t involve flying cargo. Who knows? I doubt the developers do. The story itself involves stopping a cursed talisman from abducting more people and one shipwrecked man finding out he’s your girlfriend’s long lost father. The limited gameplay time and complete lack of depth stop any meaningful plot in its tracks before it begins. The cursed talisman that is the focus of the game acts as a hint system and allows you to scan the screen for missing pieces. There are achievements to get but considering one involves playing the game for five consecutive hours I’m not sure that will tempt many to keep playing. It’s a very short game but not one you’ll want to replay. Lastly I noticed an annoying bug or maybe a gameplay flaw whereby half the time a completed item can only be used onscreen to the left of the object. Hover your item over an object and nothing flashes; it doesn’t work. Hover just past the object and the object flashes meaning you can use it. It’s as though the collision detection is not centered properly. When you think about it it’s quite a large flaw.
Five-BN I’m sure have made some good games but even by 2008 standards Treasures of Mystery Island is both boring, dated and uninspiring. The attempts at plot feel detached, the gameplay more repetitive than it should be, the graphics unintentionally scary but also the game has a nasty collision detection which should have been ironed out before the game was released. The only mystery of this island is why anyone would want to stay somewhere so boring.… Expand
