I played for awhile, then ran into a glitch. When I got to the hidden-object scene where the birds used to be (they move once you put some bird seed in their feeder), one of the things I was supposed to search for was a "fetlock," which is part of a horse's foot. I didn't see any fetlocks, so I clicked on the hint button, which highlighted ... an empty patch of table. I clicked on that empty patch of table, and nothing happened. I clicked hint again, and yep, it was circling that empty patch of table. I clicked everything on or near the empty patch of table, and absolutely nothing happened. I can't finish the game, because the hidden object scene won't complete.

Up until then, it was seeming like an unusually creative game, but this glitch looks like a game-breaker.

Thanks for your response, WR; just to clarify, I'm NOT on XP but Win 8.1 and I had NO problem installing, only running past that certain point in the game, which I see others are having as well. So I'm guessing there is definitely something wrong with the download; just wondering if anyone got all the way through the game. Uninstalled now.

Yes, I did check the FAQ.
And Snodgrass gave a good idea I can try. But the game runs fine on windows 10. Thanks!

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



To everyone who commented thank you. Sorry my moderation wasn't up to scratch on this one and to those who were not able to get the game to work. We have another decent game next week. :)

Well... tried on 2 computers, disabling security suites (they had no problem with ) and over and over again "failure to launch". What other possiblities are there? Simple... don't install. Pitty for Alawar if it is a software problem. If so I won't buy Alawar Games or Big Fish games anymore.

I too cannot get beyond the showing the movie, when I put the film in the projector the movie starts playing and nothing I press does anything the boy, hint, menu nothing seems to do anything have played to this point three times now and every time it hangs at this point. Any solutions as yet or is this just a case of delete this game.

Love these type of games but at 1.1Gig the giveaway will be over before its downloaded as my internet speed is crap :(

Game itself is really fab!:) One could say it has dark and gloomy essence, but it doesn't matter, as given tasks soon take over and engage player into thinking: hello?, this is rather unusual way of 'going about business' in regular (if you like) HO-type game?.. It's different indeed. Packed with mini games (less HOs, in first Chapters anyway) and requiring to choose alternative steps when asked by Characters what you want from them.. So it seems player has a lot of freedom and a lot of guessing what might be useful to collect (even if it's impossible to know straight away what for, it'll all be revealed in due course, lol:) Help button is very useful here, but it gently guides when in doubt where to go next rather than being too much relayed on. I will naturally play more of Kronville in coming days. It helped me not only to read brilliant (as ever!) Presentation and Comments here, but comments on this Game's homepage. They confirm unorthodox and refreshing approach to the way this game was designed. Thanks GGOTD and Alawar for this New Year Gift!:) Game Recommended.

Nope, I have 4GB RAM on my XP SP3 system...

Solution: Start the game again, then click on "rest & sit down", the goes goes on.

The moment I saw that this game was from Alawar, I hit the download link without hesitation! You (Stephen) have procured many terrific games from Alawar for distribution on this site in the past, and for that I truly thank you! I don't know how you do it (find vendors of such high-quality games, that is!), but I'm sure glad you do!

The only drawback to quality games with hi-res graphics is the file size of the complete package. Unfortunately, my situation is such that the only choices for internet service are my current provider with (up to, but typically much slower) 6Mbps DSL, or satellite dish (which costs twice as much while delivering half the speed). I live in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, on the eastern side of the Central Valley of California. The cedar trees, majestic peaks and pristine mountain streams that are ice-cold and brimming with feisty rainbow and brown trout are worth the sacrifice of bandwidth.

As such, it only took roughly 50 minutes to download the file, and about another 5 to decompress it. Once unpacked into the appropriate folder, the game appears to run just fine on my HP quad-core laptop running Win 8.1 with 6Gb RAM. I did encounter a snag point where I get the film projector to work and attempt to communicate with the boy, but once the exclamation point is clicked the game appears to freeze altogether with no response to any commands or clicks whatsoever. I don't know if it's a quirk in the game or in the configuration of my specific machine.

I realize that the giveaway will be over by the time this comment is posted (if at all), but I wanted everyone to know that in my humble estimation, Alawar produces high-quality products, and if you see one being offered here you should jump on it with both feet! (That's assuming you enjoy Hidden Object Games, that is.) Thanks once again for the good stuff, Stephen, and keep it coming!

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

Hi Don, thank you for your comment. It sounds beautiful where you live. I moved away from my home county many years ago and now live close to the Cheshire plain in the UK. I used to live surrounded by hills with rolling green fields to one side; any direction was a site to behold, whereas now I can barely see any hills at all, and those I can see I have to lean out from my balcony.

Anyway, I must say that I personally don't get any of the games. The giveaway team are the ones who get the games. Sadly they never post comments here. I'm just a volunteer, who has been posting here since the sites inception. Though I didn't start posting regular reviews until the site went from a daily giveaway to weekends only back in March/April 2008. I just moderate these comments, administer the forums and post regular reviews of the games.

This download has been stuck on 'activating" FOR OVER 20 MINUTES NOW AND NOW I'M OUT OF TIME! IT DIDN'T USE TO TAKE SO LONG TO ACTIVATE. After that it gave a file write error instead of installing the game.

PLEASE RUN THIS GAME AGAIN and this time, please make sure activation and install work properly.

I'm really disappointed at having worked so hard and waited so long to get the game to download and set up, and miss this game altogether!

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

Sorry to hear you missed out. Unfortunately the giveaway team close down activation immediately after the giveaway ends. Prior to the main site being updated, you used to get at least an hours grace to activate, but that's no longer applicable. I don't know why they changed it. I'm sure we will see the game again in the future. Alawar have been giving games away since the first year of the project.

The main problem with such a large file size is the number of concurrent downloads really bottlenecks the download speeds.

Failure to launch here also.
Have tried to activate for four hours now. am giving up and going to bed now.

Glad the clock is not on east coast time. Finally finished and installed at 00:35am, should be an interesting game. Tnx.

When accessing the download it gets a file error. Using 7-Zip extractor, to see the file in the setup.exe, I find the following:

All files are broken.

25 MB connection, it has taken an hour to DL so far and it's only gotten 388 MB. I don't think this is going to finish DL before the give away times out. ................abbreviation removed............... ?

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

This is the largest file ever given away via the game giveaway. They only have a certain bandwidth. The more community members downloading, the slower the download; so far there has been almost 17.5 thousand downloads of this game. Spread over the 20 hours since the giveaway started that would be an average of 12 community members every minute starting a download. It took me over an hour to download this file when only myself was downloading and i have a 100MB connection. If it took everyone an hour to download it would mean over 600 community members are downloading at any one time. These sorts of numbers cause a bottle neck and slow downloads to a crawl.

I usually warn the community via the forums when a large download is imminent so as to forewarn them to start downloading early.

Please do not swear even with abbreviation as this is a family site. thank you.

p.s.

I hope you manage to get the game downloaded in time.

Tes, I get exactly the same thing. Downloaded twice with the same result both times. (Windows 10)

Can't right click to run as Administrator.

Running Windows 7 32-bit and am using Chrome as my browser.
Don't use IE at all.

I rarely have problems with any of the games offered and this is the first time I've ever gotten this error.

I guess there is no solution to it.

I also had the "failure to launch" issue but was able to complete the installation by turning off security. (I use BitDefender and have never had a conflict before.) I am also stuck at the point where you show the movie to the boy. Everything locks up here and I can go no further.

I think it might be due to the size of the installation file and antivirus software working overtime with what are (I hope) false positives.

Like many others, "Failed To Launch the Program"; XP SP3. When I install any program I turn all other programs off; nothing running in the background except OS essential. I've installed GGOTD programs the same way again and again and again with no problems.

I will just have to call this a loss and see if there are further problems in the future.

Hi,
It downloaded fairly quick on 8.1 and no problems opening.
Play started smoothly. Seemed to get tied up when looking at the film,
not sure if that was part of the game or a glitch, because it began moving
soon after. The story seems blah so far. I think it may be that there are
a lot similar games like this, where find one thing leads to another etc.
Thanks for another game and Happy New Year!!!

I had a lot of trouble downloading this file. The first time, it failed. The second time, I got a file but the decryption wouldn't work. The third time, I was able to register and install it, but had to reboot the computer because Avira antivirus complained three times there was a virus in the setup.exe file. I think Avira is suddenly very strict because they had some critics, I saw the info but forgot the details. Anyway, I had to reboot at the end because my computer was frozen by all the security alerts. It looks like the program might not be worth all the effort because the puzzles are, well, puzzling. And I mean like, not enough instructions! Sometimes there aren't any at all. My second comment is that the storyline appears not quite as dire as the first few scenes would indicate. It has fantasy elements that could be intriguing, but I won't find out today as I have run out of time to play, what with all the work getting it going and other stuff I have to do. I would say, this is a reluctant keeper.

Win10 Home 64bit. File didn't take long to load. Activation did take a bit longer than usual so I waited until it did and was then able to begin the game. Nice playing game. A lot of chopping around the game but will see how it all pans out in the end. Great game. Thank you.

After more than an hour downloading onto my aging WinXP laptop I got the same message while running the setup. I might be running out of hardrive space with all these free Giveaway games :-)

@Midnight,
Do you by chance happen to have an older XP system or Vista with Internet 6 or 7, you must update to Internet Explorer 8 or higher.

Try right click, Run as Administrator.

Took about 4 mins to download on a 90mb connection. Install took a long time on Win10, AMD A8, 6gb, R5, Dolby Audio. Loads quick. Superb graphics. Very good audio. Seems to be near one to one collection to use RPG HOG. No problems. No glitches.

Ohhh the graphics look so wonderful, downloading now and can't wait to give it a try.

"Checking giveaway avability..." then "Failed to launch the program" too for me (XP user) :(

I have the same problem (Windows XP SP3, antivirus deacivated) (sorry for my English).

Downloaded in about 10 min. Flawless install on win7.1, 64 bit. Thank you for this HOG.

Win 7 Pro 64. I started with no message at all, setup just remained in memory doing nothing. Rebooted, then I also got the 'failed to launch' message - usually I have no problem. Deactivated Bitdefender, (Windows Firewall already off) and all other security packages, rebooted (I have admin rights) - still nothing. Downloaded again, started the process again - no change. Process Lasso dl's and installs impeccably. This is a GAOTD problem.

downloaded fine, but when I go to activate ( run it) it hangs on the activation screen.
downloaded a second time, same trouble
win 10 8 gig memory , should be enough but!!!

Never could get it to install on my Win 7 machine, so I installed to my Win 8.1 laptop then moved via shared network drive onto my Win 7 machine. Runs fine. An alternative to using a flash drive.

Thanks for the game - looks fun!

Well, no responses, but I see others (i.e. Arnold) are having similar issues with the game just stopping at some point...I wonder if anyone has actually played all the way through successfully. Additionally, my neighbor (also Win 8.1) went to download this, but when he went to install, it just hung at the activation screen where it contacts the server to verify. I told him to try later, that the servers might be busy, but hours later, still no joy for him. And when I finally deleted the game and reinstalled it, I, too, got hung at the verify screen. With all the issues, it does seem like this download has problems, unusual for me on this site, and especially with Alawar games which usually work great.

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

Sorry I wasn't able to help and thanks for your comments. Been a little distracted over the last day with getting ready for my sons party etc. Slept for the last four or five hours. I had no problems installing the game on two of my computers (win 8.1 and Win 10. Not tried on the Win 7 computer. No longer run XP, so can't check for that OS.

For the most part the Alawar games are great but this one is not. The graphics are very good; I was impressed with their quality! The flow of the game suggests it was created by someone who has little or no experience with games of this sort. The creator presumed the player would be able to follow the creator's logic but that just isn't happening. The flow is not intuitive. I played for an hour and a half and decided this game is not worth completing. Sorry. I do suggest the creator study the flow of other successful games you've offered and even learn about human intuition and man-computer interaction, then rewrite this game. Get friends to play it and make suggestions for improvement. I do think if this is done the product will be quite successful. Don't give up! Work at bettering your games.

Thanks, WR, for all you do for us gamers. Wishing you and yours a healthy, prosperous and rewarding New Year.

Same error as yesterday: “Failed to launch the program” after connecting to GOTD.
Additionally the usual virus warning pops up...

Downloaded 1 GB for nothing. Thanks!
GGOTD - your wrapper really really sucks. Big Time. :-(

Thanks Alawar and GGOTD for a fantastic game. I really like the sound effects...they add to the game's enjoyment. The music is very nice in the background. I love the graphics. They are crisp and detailed. This one will keep me focused for quite some time. It is a keeper and I can see myself replaying it.

Thanks Stephen for the walkthroughs and videos. I always like to have those bookmarked just in case. You do a great review too.

Happy New Year to all!

Downloaded fine on Win7 with 4GB of RAM. Required AVG to be disabled to run SETUP. Took a VERY LONG TIME to activate (be patient!) and show the WinRAR dialog.

As other have said, there are some daft things in the game, but no worse than most other HOGs IMHO. Still the usual quality alawar product and I ghave had no problems with it

Note to XP users: I suspect you need MORE THAN 2GB of system RAM to be able to ACTIVATE this game. Perhaps that's why folks with older XP boxes may be encountering install problems? I don't install GGOTD on my remaining XP box, so that's just a hunch on my part. Certainly this Win7 box went up to almost 3GB of PHYSICAL RAM used during activation; even though the installed game needs only 1GB or RAM according to the makers.

Surprisingly fast download - got the same false positive as # 2 mentioned. By disabling Avira installation went as fine as always.

Cool storyline, great graphics. Works without a problem so far on Win10.

Thank you very much for this great game.

Happy New Year everyone!
Well that was a long download, but it was well worth it. Graphics look great and Alawar usually provide great games. It doesn't look like a game you can play in your spare 5 minutes, so I'll make some time soon. Looking forward to some great entertainment. Many thanks Stephen for the great screen shots which persuaded me to attempt the long download. Thanks to GGOTD and Alawar.

just downloading Project Lasso, Np,...wtf?

failed to launch, repeatedly, have not had problems with any before, I run Bitdefender Internet Sec. 2016

Thanks! After turn-off Avira, installation (and game) are OK.

Tried and succeeded in downloading/installing on both Windows 7 desktop and Windows 8.1 laptop.

In both cases, I used DTA to download. The laptop took 7 - 15 minutes (I don't know, I was doing other things while it was downloading and I didn't hear the little chime). I have no idea on the desktop from this morning. I started the download and then went to have breakfast. It was done when I came back.

The activation phase in both installs seemed to take forever. Much slower than normal. The install itself was slow but that didn't surprise me.

As an extraction install, I just pointed it to my other Alawar games and let it go. After testing by executing the main program manually, I just created a shortcut and went with it.

No problem. Just ran both installs to the point that I was pretty sure it was working. No ideas of later problems.

It's a keeper for my "collection". It makes HOG number 508 for me out of 1375 games (1371 on Win 7 and 1350 on Win 8.1).

I too am getting Failed to launch the program, XPSP3, bit annoying as I have a monthly download limit, would not have wasted over 1gb usage, if I had known.

Downloads and runs fine on Windows 10
At a bit of a loose end today so finished it this afternoon - no problems as far as I could tell
(fortunately it lets you skip any games if you don't like them - I hate those sliding square ones so I have to admit I 'tested' the skip button a few times :-)

So I'm getting the failed to launch error on a Windows 7 (64-bit) machine with security down as well. Welp.

Took your suggestion and installed Chrono download manager for my Chrome browser. One hour and 6 minutes download; installed perfectly. Needed to make a shortcut for my desktop and to choose to change the profile as it goes right into the game. Didn't play for too long at this time but this is NOT a game for children unless you know your child can handle it. would recommend you play through before evaluating. thanks so much for your help.