It`s one of my greatest games (finished up to 78, from then it seems to be rather difficult...), but if you lost all your lives, you fall down to the first level of the country and have to repeat then 10 or more days - that is extremely boring; one or two levels back would be sufficient, i think, or ? Wolli

i finished the 1st tour and will continue the next one.it's nice( Music, effects, story, simlicity....). i also learnt something about countries, and my four years old nephew liked the screensaver.thanks to GGAOTD.com.

Level 81 is all about the first hammer. Set up the pieces so that you can use the hammer to make a combination. Than go to the top and make 4's and 5's to get the hammer. Keep repeating this. all the time.

I finished 3 journeys and stopped at 1.000.183 points. The only extra difficulty is boulders (up to 5 that come in your way)
The boulders can be destroyed with the power-ups or dropped just like the normal trophies.

Finished it! :D

I did get past 49, it was the hardest until I got to day 81. I think the time has to be longer, that if we had more time then eventually the right combination would come. I have lost two lives and ended up with needing just two parts of the ring to complete it.

GreyC--
How did you get to higher levels (i.e., past Day 81)? I completed all three journeys and they were exactly the same Days 1-81/same story, but just referred to as Journey 2, Journey 3,etc.

There was no Day 154. What did I miss?

Any clues for Day 81? I was stuck on 78 for a while, then found 79 and 80 not bad.

This is a great game that has kept me amused for days... I have been travelling for 154 days as it goes further with more difficult levels.... very colourful and interesting. I note that all countries trophies to collect relate to the country passing through ... except America... players collect "Pirate" related trophies.... interesting.. is there some significance? I found it a little disconcerting.
Thanks for this one GGOTD.

The trick to the day with all the locks and the puzzle pieces at the bottom is to get to the hammer(destroy-all-pieces-of-one-color) power up over and over as fast as possible. This means focusing on making 4-in-a-row matches. this means getting to the hammer piower up eight or more times before everything at the bottom is unlocked so it really is a speed round.

For the other difficult level with the two pieces at the bottom (sorry I can't remember which days these were), you first need to drop one of the puzzle pieces to the bottom. Then you need to position tiles to drop down when you use the destroy-one-tile power up so that you will end up with (using red) 'red, puzzle piece,red, red' so you can exchange the first red and the puzzle piece so it will drop off. Then you do the same thing on the other side (red, red, puzzle piece, red). Don't drop down both puzzle pieces to the bottom row at once or you will create a no-win situation (i.e., red, puzzle piece, red, puzzle piece, red).

I was wrong about Day 81. It wasn't too hard after I thought about it and tried it a second time. However, when you finish, the game tells you that if you do a second and third journey there will be harder levels and new features (or something like that) but it turns out to be EXACTLY the same as the first journey-- so only do it if you want to go for high scores or something.

Played all the levels :)

Level 81 (the weddingrings only took me 3 times)

To me level 78 was the most difficult.

I am not able to get past day 49. I always have one left before the time runs out and I am not sure I want to go back and start at the beginning of China again. I have done it twice and at this point find it very discouraging to try when I may get it half done then have to go back to the beginning of China again. It would be even worse to make it to the last one then have to go back.

Correction of my previous post: after uninstalling my anti-virus program, the game didn't crash every 2 levels, but only after the stamp-levels. That's reasonably fair. I'll give it a thumbs-up now.

I liked the game but a power up that let you move a piece would be nice. It sucks that you have to start a country all over if you run out of lives.

I am pretty sure DAY 81 is impossible. Any advice?

Anyone have any hints for Japan, the screen with the locks and puzzle pieces at the bottom of the page. What did you do to get past this screen.

This is fun. Confusing in the last few screens. How to get everything so that it will move down the column and go to the picture???

What a wonderful new twist on match three games. Power ups I've never seen before that build upon one another are very cool. I've been playing it all week and just needed to tell you. Now I just need to get out of China . . .

I'm stuck on level 68 - the last one in japan. how do I get the two in the bottom portion to move somewhere they will fall?

also, found a way online to add lives - edit gameinfo.xml in the base folder using notepad or similar and you'll see the number of lives.

This is a great game. I played it all night. The quality of the graphics are excellent and although I am stuck in India I can't wait to get to the other countries.

love the game. it is addicting and the graphics are cool. love the screensavers too.

One last comment almost a week later. If I run a lot of other programs I have to reboot to get the program to run (happens with Golden Prague as well on occasion). Other than that - I am hooked. It took me quite a few tries to get finished the first time but I have now gone through all levels twice (and they do change in the second go round) and am about 2/3 through my third trip.

Great game - I may never get any more work done - and being self employed and working from home this could be trouble ;)

There's a huge difference between challenging and frustrating. I downloaded the game when it was a freebie and have played it over the several days since. It's evident that the developers are enamoured of their programing abilities and their eyecatching graphics, but that they also don't have much of a clue about good game design. The lower levels are much too easy while the upper levels are redicusly hard.

It should never be part of a game that the powerups are required in order to beat it. Powerups should always be additional things that can be used by the player if desired. However in the upper levels of the game, the only way to clear the board is to use the powerups.

In a game like this, where the pieces are random, to place an unbreakable wall in the way of the objects that have to be moved from the screen is bad design. The player must move the pieces to a different row away from the wall, but since none of the powerups allow pieces to be swapped the player is totally at the mercy of random chance. That results in frustration as time runs out over and over on a level until just the right combination of pieces happen to fall at just the right time.

Locked and frozen pieces aren't normall an issue, but the way they are used in the upper levels gives evidence that the development team was not the least bit interested in making the game challenging but fun for the player. Rather, they follow a pattern of adding more and more of such pieces, almost covering the board with them and on the final board before the last stamp, then entire lower half of the playing field is nothing but frozen or locked pieces. With a space above them, the only way to free them is to depend on the powerups. Again, random chance is all the hope the player has. If the pieces don't fall exactly right, there's no possiblity of getting eough powerups to break all the frozen and double locked pieces free and no chance of completing the level.

To top it all off, even though the game allows the player to continue if all the lives run out, the player is forced to return to the start of the level and recollect all the pieces all over again.

So, great graphics and nice music. It's a nice screen saver. it is not, however, a game that's worth buying because of the poor game design in the higher levels.

I always heard that i was lucky and one of this days i got sometime in my hands and I went to one of those web that let you play for one hour only and I download this game of course I loved it but one hour latter it was over i almost bought it to be able to continue playing.
but thanks to this wonderful site that it is "giveway of the day" I had a chance of downloading and playing all the away...
the game is great and the screensavers are just beautiful.
One more time thank you!
I love my game and your Web.

Hi Keri,

Try going into the games folder. I think the default installation path will be

C:\Program Files\Around the World in 80 days

or

C:\Program Files\Playrix\Around the World in 80 days


Then create a new shortcut. (by right clicking on the games executable file then selecting ‘send to’ then from the drop down menu select desktop (create shortcut). If that doesn't work, as a last resort try installing the Playrix version of the game from the following link:

http://www.playrix.com/around-the-world.html


Though I think you may get a download manager installed as well by doing that. You could also try moving the original installation to somewhere else on the hard drive, for example:

C:\Games\around the world in 80 days

Have you also tried some of the fixes mentioned above in other posts such as turning off background programs like your anti virus programs. I found running Cantasia Studios stopped the game from playing. There's not much else I can think of with so little information given by you. (ie graphics chip, graphics memory, DX version, OS version etc)

I hope this helps you Keri.

By the way, I've just found a great alternative to this game. It's called Four Elements and is a superb match thee of the Jewels of Cleopatra style of game where you have to create a path rather than get rid of broken artifacts. Beautiful graphics and great game play. You can get it from Big Fish Games.

http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/3935/4-elements/index.html

You can get it for $6.99 if you join game club.

Regards

Stephen

o no- My last comment- I thought I was in the forum still, sorry for that everyone!

Whiterabbit- Thanks SO much for comment #32, the info for Sadie! I haven't had any problems with games here, but a few of the brand new games out there I've found I can't run and I really didn't know what to do about it- I tried googling Graphic Drivers and my comp manufacturers name but really, I was still LOST.I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop and it's a discontinued model or something so I can't just get updates on their site. (wish I would've known that when I bought it brand new last year!) I'm going to print your comment so I can refer to it again, thanks!
Oh, one question, anyone- if I do like Whiterabbit suggested and learn who manufactered the driver, can people just go to their site and download an update for it, free of charge? And a dumb question here- would that take up alot of memory, or would it be a whole seperate thing apart from my memory? Somehow I'm using 90% of my memory and I have not much installed at all. I think memory slots are an issue with laptops...? Thank you

I downloaded it, and after 2 days I still can't play it. I click the icon on the desktop, and nothing happens, can you please help

A game I awaitened. So sad my browswer crashed. I wasn't able to download it. I hope you will offer it someday again. :-(

I installed this game with no problems on an xp sp3 and on vista and it runs great on the xp computer, haven't had the chance to play it on vista yet (been too busy trying to beat it on this one, lol). My only downfall is having to reset my screen saver every time I play. I've played up to day 78 and can't seem to beat that one, lol. I'm down to 1 life left so thought i'd take a break and try again to beat it tomorrow.

All in all, this is a great game for it's genre. Thanks so much for offering it.

Stephen, comment 133, I turned off all the background programs and still had no luck. Installed game 4 times, uninstalled 3 times, tried the mirror...I'm not good with computers, so I'm at a disadvantage, but I certainly appreciate folks trying to help.

This game is great, one of the better ones!

Darn, I've just lost the game after deleting the demos I installe to do the review. It seems the big fish demouninstall feature that I found in the start menu also deleted the installation from yesterdays giveaway. Looks like I'm going to have to buy this afterall. 'Cest la vie'.

Lots of fun and HIGHLY addictive!

brilliant game. takes me a awhile to clear the levels. left with USA now. nice to play along with the storyline, the pause gives a nice background with soothing music, which can be quite entertaining.

The music for the japan round do sounds very much like a chinese piece though. small flaw.

love the game.

I downloaded the game twice and each time I tried to play it from the desk top all I got was a quick window popping up then nothing. I have Avast and Foxfire but my other friends had no problem with the game. They liked it.

Joe comment #125, the answer to why the game goes so slow on your computer is in your specs. Windows XP alone requires around 500Mb of RAM. You say you have 512Mb. That's way under par for a computer today.

Again to all those having problems with the game freezing when the game is loading. Someone else (Joe I think) confirms my suspicions that it may be a background program running. I epeat this because no one has yet to confirm trying it except for Joe. It worked.

regards

Stephen

thanks guys one for mum and the screen savers beaut

Having same problem as #26, #28, & Sadie. I've also followed all the installation advice & still have the same problem. The log in the game's Base folder gives this message:

* log also could not find keymap.xml

Log file
Select player on load : 00
Application start!
FATAL ERROR : Access violation!
Exception information
Exception adress : 0x0050a662
Exception flags : 0
Exception code : 3221225477

Hey guys, why is this happening two weeks in row a game from you? I love your downloads. But I installed this morning for all the reasons given above. It didn't work so I uninstalled it to get a new zip that also does the same thing. Get a black screen then a lighter screen, then back to desktop. Please fix this and reissue the game. I have Windows XP Professional with SP2. HELP it's too late to do it again!

I'm having the same problem as various others. I've tried this game before and it is good. Sorry to miss it!

Can't play the game.. when started only flash screen come and goes.. nothing happens.. meet all requirements.. same problem as #20, 26, 27 , 33, 97, 98...

Annoying in that the game shuts down my regular screen saver every time I run the game. MAJOR DOWNER!!!!!

Installed fine on XP. Nice twist on the standard match 3 theme. I played as far as Egypt but stopped as I really have to get some work done :)

My system did stall a bit when I closed the game but I'm sure that is just because I have been opening a lot of programs without rebooting, as well as running a live Fantasy Football tracker at the same time as I was playing.

downloaded and set up fine on my XP Pro 2.8ghz 512 ram, good graphics and all, BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAS ANYONE NOTICED HOW MUCH SLOWER THERE COMPUTER GOT AFTER COMPLETING A COUPLE OF LEVELS??? I THINK IT IS DUE TO THE SCREEN SAVER OPTION THIS GAME HAS!! UNINSTALLED IT AND MY SYSTEM RETURNED TO NORMAL, REMOVE THE SCREEN SAVER OPTION FROM THE GAME AND THIS GAME WOULD BE SERIOUSLY AWESOME!!!

I tried numerous times to get this game also like 20,26,27 33 and I also had the same problem with the game not loading to play.I am really disappointed because I was looking forweard to playing this,and now the time is running out.I hope ameawayoftheday will offer this game again for those of us that could not get it this time.
It is a real shame.

Awesome! Definitely going to be a favorite, great graphics and love that the puzzles don't always have the same obstacles :)
The brick walls are the most challenging for me, nice to have a game that you can play more than once. Thanks GGOTD for another great weekend!

Great game! I've been playing off and on all aft and eve - finished day 40 so far!! Great graphics and easy to see for those of us who are visually impaired. This is yet another keeper from Playrix - I've been playing "Rise of Atlantis" for months and am almost through my 9th journey - this one today looks just as addictive!!!

White Rabbit, thank you for your insightful reviews - they always help me decide if I can play this game, and it always helps me to see the extra scren shots you provide!

Thank you Playrix and GGOTD!!

Same here. Begins to load then just back to the desktop. Dang!

This is a really nice game, great graphics, great story line... you can actually imagine that you are in those countries and cities. Also, the game play is alright for a three match puzzler. :)

I give this one a three thumbs up out of four.

Tyvm GGOTD

I mostly like this game, except for these cons:
-it costs a life to exit partway through a level!
-playing speed, you cannot make moves while the falling pieces are making matches.

Installed and running fine on Vista home premium.

Playrix is what I was playing today as they worked on my internet access. Astro Avenger 2. I'm not big on the "match 3" after playing Bejeweled 2. Thanks for the "Rabbit review"