Found the music to be really irritating in this one, so turned it off. Found that I had to use the hint numerous times, not because I didn't find the object but because I apparently didn't click it in exactly the right (TINY) spot making me think I hadn't found the correct item - that was immensely frustrating. While I love hidden object games, I prefer the ones that give you a map that lets you just go directly to a location rather than having to go through numerous screens again and again - this was especially frustrating as for this particular game, each screen change took around 10 seconds to load. Doesn't seem like much but when you have to move five screens and have to sit 10 seconds between screen load to grab and object and then go back those same five screens, with the same delay in screen loading, it's enough to make one not want to play the game anymore. In fact, I turned it off and left it for a few days before finally finishing it. This was the only HOG from here that I've downloaded that had that issue. That said, while some aspects were frustrating others were interesting. I'm afraid it still just squeaks into a 3.5 out of 5 for me.

Would be nice to have a map. I found my way across the water but had to go back. Now I cannot find the way back to where I was.

Pathetic game. I've come to a point where there's no way to continue. Can't seem to do anything and the hint button just returns me to the beginning, then tells me - there's nothing here search somewhere else. Brilliant! To be able to proceed I'll have to randomly click on all the scenes until I'm lucky enough to actually click on something/someplace hidden that turns out to be useful. Or I can assume that the game is impossible and uninstall it. Considering how the game has gone thus far I'll take the 2nd option.

Going to add that when I'm skipping mini-games because I can't get the actions to reliably repeat, the setup is poor and needs to be tweaked for smoother execution. I've stopped this game in frustration a few times - not a plus, IMO.

Installed without a hitch and is another great offering...I can tell this was an older game but I love the casual adventure genre and really enjoyed the game!
Many thanks again to Mysterytag and GGOTD!
Oh and good luck to both your son and your daughter and you as the proud parent and advocate during this exam season, Stephan!:)

This is without doubt the worst bunch of junk I've ever played. Excuse me, tried to play. Just so happy I didn't pay for it. I spent over an hour just sending their dump things. UCK.

Enjoying the game, although not in the class of some of the recent offerings, BUT the text issue is a deal-killer for me; the "hidden items" are in a color that blends into the background so much that even with a magnifying glass and changing my screen contrast, it was in many cases totally unreadable, and so I had to use a hint, not because I couldn't find something but because I had no idea what I was looking for. Doubt that even very young eyes wouldn't have some trouble with this. Also annoying is the tendency to have very odd "clickable" points---I see what tool to use, I use it pretty much where you instinctively would, and nothing happens, making me think I'm wrong, but it turns out that the clickable spot was off to the side somewhere.

So nice graphics, cute story so far, I like the level of the puzzles (not too hard, not too easy) but aggravating because of the usability issues.

So? Shut up then :-{

how bout letting the download to install time, on anything over 100Mb, get given a 12hr extension???. 1hr grace is rubbish. can't evaluate a game if it is slowww server. ps: download accelerators are no help on 730Mb file today...Ta.

All finished. I really enjoyed that game. Thank you so much. Yes the words had you squinting in the sparkle games, but a great game. Hint button came in handy quiet a few times.

Downloaded and installed fine on WinXP SP3.

Good plot, but I agree with others that the videos do make the game 'drag.'

I rather like that most puzzles don't take much moving around to solve — especially as there's no map! Or did I miss something?

And in THIS game, MENU and HINT are the "right" way round: YAY!

Took a LONG time to realise (I didn't bother with the Tutorial, so it may be covered there?) that the big Round Thing above the HINT button IS the Amulet that captures the souls of frozen ones, and you have to click and then "use" it like anything else in your Inventory. D'OH!

Overall, though, it was one of the easier HOGs I've played, so perhaps best for those new to this type of HOG/adventure genre; or perhaps for the younger ones, though some of the scenes were rather scary, especially for Extreme Arachnophobes like me (not a spoiler, more a mental health warning!!!).

Many thanks to MysteryTag and GGOTD for another enjoyable one: I just hope the ending isn't an anti-climax.

ahh ok i just saw your comment to me.. im not giving up on it. i just hope it installs easily and quickly cos im an airhead with computers and software heheheheh if it gives me a hard time ill just have to delete it .. keep fingers crossed and thank you for replying. :)

..................................Moderator comment................................

Hi again Peggy, if you don't manage to get the game downloaded before the end of the giveaway, you can still activate the game so long as you do it within an hour of the end, i.e. a one hour extension, so long as you have a download ongoing.

2 hrs later and its still downloading and says 2 hrs left geeesh

Insane Cold seems a lot like the Mystery Lake game that was given away by MysteryTag a couple of weeks ago. There's lots of good stuff in this game (the musical score sounds like an octobass) which runs very well on my Win 7 system, but there's also a lot of repetitive clicking and guessing. Much of what the player is required to do seems to have been included in the game just to take up the player's time. I'd prefer a game that was more challenging and didn't require so much clicking. Since the game sells for $9.99, I wouldn't complain if the game could be completed in an hour. Most of what's required of the player is far too simple to hold the interest of an adult for long, and the game is too spooky for small kids; I'm wondering for what group of people this game is intended. I'm going to delete this game rather than waste time clicking, clicking, and clicking.

The download is horrible. Starts out fine then slows down to a crawl. Tried on 2 different computers, same results. Maybe I'll get it downloaded before it the offer expires. Still have 5 hours and 10 minutes left. Says it's going to take 4 hours.
RE: Right clicked and saved the link location then pasted in the address bar. Going faster, but still over an hour. 730mb usually takes me about 15 - 20 minutes, but copying the link does work better.

.................................Moderator Comment............................

See the comment I made to Peggy above.




see my comment to Peggy

omg seriously?? ive been d/l this for at least 30 mins now and it says 4 hrs left .. seriously???

..............................Moderator Comment.................................

Hi Peggy,

Because the file is quite large, and on average 14 community members have been downloading this every minute, that means at least 200 plus community members are downloading this game at any one time. The giveaway servers only have a certain amount of bandwidth, that is shared equally between everyone who is downloading at that time. This is the reason it is taking so long to download.

Exams should go well... Don't "Stress Out" Stephan. We ALL appreciate your reviews, but we understand Family is important we can continue without them (your reviews) when your circumstances require it.
Everyone, Have a GREAT Weekend !!!

...............................Moderator comment...............................

Thanks Chris. I'm not stressed, just tired. It's been really hard work since he started his exams. Now my daughter has started her end of year exams. They aren't quite as important as Cals, but still needs support.

OK developers, one other thing that is more a niggle than anything, and perhaps "it's just me," but please: NO SPOILERS!

By which I mean, if the self-extracting files (like music or movie files, for example) have plain English names which spell out game locations and events (as today's GGOTD definitely does), that to me counts as a spoiler; and I much prefer to play HOGs without knowing anything about the plot or locations before I've even started the game for the first time!

This is very very easily fixed by just adopting a different file naming strategy. Don't call your sound file (for example) 12_under_water_token_collected.ogg, just number them all from 01 up to however many sound files you have in total. After all, Windows and the game engine don't care what names your files have, so why give away the plot during your install process by leaving the file names the same as those you used while you were making the game?

So … I have left the WinRAR self-extractor running as I type this, so I don't see any MORE spoilers!

Thanks for reading, and I hope all HOG/adventure game developers read and take note of this.

I did too. I just tried it again and eventually it did load.

When I saw that it was another Mystery Tag game, I cheered. Yay! See? A cheer.

Downloaded fine, extracted fine, etc, Win 7/64.

It's... just not the same... fun as the others.

Technical nit-picks: Yeah, that blue-on-blue text is a real killer and the red isn't much better. Really taking all the fun out of a hidden objects when you can't figure out what you're supposed to be looking for. Got to the point where I realized that I was just coasting around, waiting for my "hand" to switch to something and then click around to guess. That's not much fun.

Scene switches - that black screen might only be ten seconds, but it seems like forever when you have to go back and forth. A map that lets you skip over places would be a way around it... but no map.

The films were So Slow And Tedious. Felt like they were trying for so much detail that the tempo had to be slow in order to see everything, and yet... nothing really to see.

Music - tired and oppressive without adding any tension or feel.

The art is rather pretty. I normally really like winter-y or water-y themed games, but I just can't get into this one. It's a shame, because I really wanted to. I'm sure there are good features to the game, but they didn't come into play soon enough and the annoying parts completely overwhelmed any thought I had of trying to swim through to find the good features. Sorry.

Yes Cas, totally agree!

Developers please note: think about people who have particular colour vision problems and please make sure there is enough grayscale CONTRAST in every piece of text in your game.

This can usually be done very easily without affecting the 'look' of your game too much from your original design or concept. Ideally, test your designs by actively recruiting users with vision issues as playtesters or beta testers.

Point taken, I hope? And I say all this as an experienced Windows programmer myself.

I have a new Windows 8.1 laptop. I could not see the cursor in the game at all. After reading Dax's post, thank you, I right clicked on game exec file, went into compatibility tab and checked "Run the program in compatibility mode for:" and I chose "Windows 8". That step alone made the cursor visible in the game.

I only had a short amount of time to play. As far as I can tell, the game seems like standard HOG play, nothing exceptional, nothing terrible.

Thanks GGOTD team and MysteryTag! I hope the exams are going well Whiterabbit!

Can I play this game in french?

I had no trouble downloading or installing on my Win7 system. The graphics are better when NOT in full screen mode. That's fine by me because I don't like full screen. Also, I have a quite large monitor and that makes a difference.

IMO, nice freebie. Thanks.

And crush those exams whiterabbit.

My first thought is this game needs a new score. The music is not just repetitive and boring but very dreary and depressing.

Second thought is - the tutorial is much too short. I got two pop up hints and that was all.

There is much too much of a "hit or miss" type of play to this game - very little intuitive type of action. Should provide options where if one thing doesn't work you can move on to another screen and perhaps locate another hint.

In this case, you must solve one puzzle or you are stuck. And that's my problem - I just spent an hour and I have not progressed very far.

I'm not a noobie to HOGs or any other type of puzzle game but this one leaves me very cold -- I think the music helps reinforce that impression.
I'm not going to give up just yet - but am not recommending this one.

Now Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome - I'm really enjoying that game.

In any case, thank you for provide these freebies. For someone like myself with very limited income but an eagerness to play games, this meets a need.

But I also locked up before finishing tutorial so maybe I am doing somthing wrong

Game downloaded fine and seems to work fine Win 8.1 but help button is useless, I am stuck and no help at all.

I forgot to mention, I'm using 32-bit Vista on a 7-year old Dell PC with a newer Nvidia GTC TI 550 graphics card. Lots of other comments were added while I was playing, sorry to see so many people having issues. Runs well on my old system.

I also agree with Rose:
"* The level of sensitivity for mouse click areas is too tiny and sensitive. I’ve frequently been clicking in the right area, but not the EXACT RIGHT SPOT, and that’s led to frustration, particularly when I *know* I’m doing the right action in the right area (the key card swipe is a good example)."

Another like: sounds are good, make the actions seem more real.

Thank you GAOTD and Mystery tag. I checked out this game on the Mystery Tag site last week and thought I would enjoy it more than the other games. Downloaded and installed without issues, a bit slow to install. I made it as far as the ferris wheel so far, about 1/2 to 3/4 through?

Some of the items have names that are strange to me, like "zipper" for a triangular sign with a lightning bolt. I wondered what "flaks" were until I realized it should be flasks. Puzzles have mostly been fun although the spider legs seemed to be nothing but trial and error. I don't like that some items need to be clicked in a certain order even through they already appear in the search list. Cursor got mixed up a few times (had the "go back" arrow shape anywhere on the screen). Some of the descriptions seemed odd to me, like telling me I need a spear to open something when it seems many other objects could work - I guess it's intended to be a clue but is spoils some of the discovery. Seems to be only one or two songs that play and start over after a while. In spite of these issues, I'm enjoying the graphics (especially the cut scenes of the locomotive and ballerina, very well done!) and the story is interesting. Nice game!

Stephen, best wishes for your son's exams!

And, in the hidden object scenes I can't read the words to the right and left, because of this "insane" overlay.

I loved the HOGs GGotD offered us the last weekends. But this one... oh, I don't know.

The download with DTA was no problem, either the installation.

But my monitor seems to be too narrow for the game ^^

I can't grab the items to the right in my inventory, because the medallion and the hint-button are in the way *sigh*.

And yes, it's a bit slow, but that's no prob at all.

And, yes, I did check to see if my graphics driver is up-to-date..It is.

I have the same issues as #10 Cas. At first, I couldn't see my cursor at all. So, I went into the Compatibility settings and clicked the last 3 things under Settings:

Disable visual themes
Disable desktop composition
Disable display scaling on high DPI settings

I COULD see the cursor at that point, but it was shaky except for when it was the hand/magnifier cursor, which was stable.

And I also tried different settings under "Run this program in compatibility mode for...." to no avail.

I have Windows 7, Home Edition, 64-bit, 4GB General RAM, on-board graphics driver Intel G45/G43 express chipset.

And BTW, I never commented last week, but I installed & loved both HOGs last weekend. This one looks good but if the cursor isn't fixable, even though it's playable, I won't be keeping it....too many other alternatives that I have but have yet to play.

--Dax

Managed to download the game with Internet Download Manager, unzipped the package to a new file, started the set up application but received the "failed to launch program" message. Never had any trouble previeously

Downloaded in 40 minutes, installed and played through in 3 hrs without a problem on WIN 8.1.

Graphics are a bit blurry but ok - storyline is great too.

Keep them coming - thank you very much!

I used DTA with Firefox on both of my machines and in both cases, it downloaded in about 3 or 4 minutes. I installed first on my Windows 8.1 laptop and it was very slow getting from the activation window to the WinRar window and then that was like it was snail slogging through molasses! On my Window 7 desktop, it worked much faster in all cases.

I did note a slight shift in where the mouse had to be related to the "buttons" on the desktop but setting the flag to ignore high DPI scaling (as expected) resolved that issue.

Other than the fact that it runs slower (that girl sure walked slow) on the laptop, it works fine. I expect some issues like that. The laptop is a much slower and less powerful machine.

But -- I give it a thumbs up because it DOES work on both machines.

I moved the last MysteryTag game to a new game folder (MysteryTag) rather than 1sies now that I've got 2 big games and probably more to come (hint hint). :-)

Thanks!

No problem installing, played it a bit, not insanely hard on my old laptop (Dell Vostro 1000) but I can see why the graphics are a bit hard to see as it is a bit monochromatic. More color variation would make it easier for people with not so great vision, or for older eyes. Also, I'd like to see more text dialogue because I am hard of hearing and play games in quiet mode. Otherwise, seems like an interesting way to pass time.

I also got an error on installation saying the disk was probably full. Knowing this was not the case, I closed the notice and eventually it resumed. VERY SLOW extraction and installation but no trouble after that so far. I agree the text is horrible. Who uses Times Roman for a anything online? we'll see how further play goes. At least I can find some items I need in the same location instead of going back and forth over the whole game with each find as is the case with Brink of Consciousness! thank you and good luck in the exams.

Downloaded this twice. Took forever then got error message setup program failed to launch.

I'm going to add in my two cents. I'm enjoying the game - HOG with a 'story' and various puzzles are ones I enjoy - but here are my points of irritation:

* I am older so the text size and color contrast is highly irritating.

* The level of sensitivity for mouse click areas is too tiny and sensitive. I've frequently been clicking in the right area, but not the EXACT RIGHT SPOT, and that's led to frustration, particularly when I *know* I'm doing the right action in the right area (the key card swipe is a good example).

* The blank screen between scenes is too long IMO.

Good game, but these are areas that could use improvement.

same here! Yes, we're spoiled all right ;)

Another HOG. 'nuff said.

On running activate I received the comment "Unexpected error 0073"

Oh my goodness do ever I feel spoiled! ^_^ 'Insane Cold, Back to the Ice Age' downloaded quickly, installed perfectly onto my windows 8.1 desktop (external backup hard drive)and ran with no errors, lag or graphics issues that I could see. In my opinion the music is a little intrusive but the game play is just what I'd expect from a great professional H.O.G. Thank you GGOTD for another great game from MysteryTag!

The game is defaulted to full screen. Everything is shifted to the left and non playable. Turned off full screen and continued playing for a short while until the game froze. It's unfortunate because this looks like it would be a decent hog.
Regardless, TY to MysteryTag and the GAOTD team.
Sid

I like HOG's.

But this one has a irritating way of 'hiding' things.
1. The cursor (game AND system) keeps flickering in and out of view. Except when it is a hand.
2. All texts are badly readable. Lightblue on medium- and darker blue backgrounds in a spikey, trembling font. All very icey of course, but very irritating and straining.
3. Allready the first screen with hidden objects: there is a coloured (reddish?) word that I CAN NOT READ because of this combination of font, fore- /background colour.

I'll pass this one. Love the effort of searching, but not in this way.

No review from whiterabbit, no download ;-).

Success with the exams!

always avg

Thank you so much for this game.
For reviews,written by players of this game see link:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/8320/insane-cold/?pc

Downloaded fine for Win 8.1 then I started to play it and it said I didn't have BASE.dll. So got the fix for that and now it works. It did take a fair while between the activation and the actual downloading of the game. Been like that for the last couple of games. But if I wait long enough, it does eventually start.