Giveaway of the Day - Mysterious City: Golden Prague

Mysterious City: Golden Prague: A Review

This game received 73% of 772 votes with 176 comments the first time it was given away back in August 2008 then 62% of 655 votes in March 09. You can see the comments by following the links below.

August 2008 HERE and March 2009 HERE

The download size is 38.9Mb and once installed is almost 48Mb.

As with many games of late, this game doesn’t install shortcuts to either the desktop or the start programs menu. It installs the game to C:\Games by default. If you go into the games folder you should find the games folder, which is labeled Golden Prague and not Mysterious City as you would expect. Open up the Golden Prague folder and right click on the executable file that looks like quarter of an astronomical clock. Scroll down to ‘Send To’ then click on ‘Create Shortcut)’ You should then find a shortcut on the desk top. If you want a shortcut in your start menu I wrote a short tutorial that can be found in the game discussion forums:

Tutorial for creating Desktop and Start Menu Shortcuts

Quote:

Enter the world of Mysterious City: Golden Prague as your peaceful morning is interrupted by a frantic knock on your door. Your beloved professor has gone missing from the museum where he was last seen. With only a week until the magnificent golden clock is scheduled to open, it’s up to you to explore the beautiful and historic city of Prague; from the intriguing museums and mysterious castles to its mysterious underbelly. Discover the clues the professor left, and piece together what happened before it’s too late!

Reference accessed 28th August 08

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The Game:

There are nearly 50 levels divided up into seven stages (days). Each stage has seven or eight levels and you have 30 minutes to complete each stage. You can access hints at any time but they have a time cost of two minutes. If you click randomly too quickly you will be awarded a time penalty of 30 seconds which you can ill afford to lose. Throughout the game you are frequently awarded wallpapers that you can peruse via the gallery link which is accessed from the main menu. You can set any of the wallpapers you’ve unlocked as your current wallpaper. (You can also copy all of the wallpapers directly from the games installed folder if you can’t wait to win them in game). I wanted to see what there was for the purpose of this review and was really impressed with many of the images. Some of which are stunning and all of which are taken in and around Prague. (Though I’ve never been so can’t say for certain that the images were taken in and around Prague – according to a few comment’s made by community members from the last time this was given away, the game bore no resemblance to Prague, however the clock face images are certainly the same as the one found in the Town Hall in Prague). There’s also thumbnail images of all the different levels you’ll come across in the game. Each stage is introduced by a cartoon strip style story line. You can quickly skim over these if you wish by clicking on the screen, though personally I find such additions to a game adds to the overall enjoyment and dept of the game.

In the time I was able to play the game over two hour periods (after downloading the demo from two different distributors) I saw three game types. These were the traditional hidden objects screen where you have to find a multitude of objects amongst a particular scene. The objects are cleverly hidden against straight lines and curves as well as colors. The second style of board was a ‘find the difference’ type and the third was finding the shape of the object.

There are three mini games to be found during game play, which I presume are offered at the end of a stage. Unfortunately, because I never finished a stage, (I was literally seconds off finishing the last level in the first stage, but ran out of time over the 30 minute period), I never saw one. From reading several reviews of the game there are other styles of levels as well and include ones where you require a torch to find the objects and others where the image is done in monochrome, so such objects that require color are much more difficult to find.

Game Mechanics:

You will find the usual music and sound sliders in the options menu, as well as toggles for windowed mode, hints, wide screen and a custom cursor. The game is fully mouse controlled apart from inputting your profile name. You can create multiple profiles if you wish.

If you fail to complete a level be it from level 2 onwards to level 8 in each stage you have to start from the beginning. Each level remains the same with respect to where the hidden objects are placed, but if you have to replay a level, or play it using a different profile you’ll get different lists of items to find, though the spot the differences levels are the same whenever you have to replay them.

Music

The music is very pleasant to listen to; a sort of pseudo classical tune that is (IMO) ideal as back ground music for such a game. Though if you wish you can change this to whatever you want provided you have an audio converter to convert your MP3’s etc to the ogg format; (you can download a couple from the giveaway freeware library). Once you’ve converted your favorite music you will have to rename the tracks to the ones found in the music folder.(I’d recommend backing up the originals if you do go ahead and change the music, though it shouldn’t be necessary) There are five tracks in total. If you have Winamp installed you can listen to music files in the ogg format if you wish.

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Possible PROBLEMS and FIXES:

If anyone is getting run time errors a couple of community members previously posted possible fixes. One is to do with changing your screen resolution to the screens native resolution (Caulbox comment #75), if you’re not sure I suggest trying each resolution until you get one that works and the other by finding your game.xml and editing the contents to put the game into windowed mode. (Andy comment # 52) Also rebooting your computer seemed to work for others – though it only appeared to be a temporary thing if you left your game unattended but open for a while. (Cheryl comment #167)You can find those posts by following the link below to the original comments section:

Colin comment #38 suggested installing the latest shockwave program. He found the fix on another site and said it fixed his version of Mysterious city. You will need to restart your computer once shockwave has been installed.

Jackie suggested updating your direct X files (which is always a good idea) comment #96

And I’d also suggest updating your graphics drivers and doing a defrag as a badly fragmented drive can cause errors.

The only problem that can’t effectively be fixed is the poor collision mesh. You’ll find sometimes clicking directly on an item won’t work and you need to click several times to get it to accept. This can be annoying, especially if you happen to be near the hint button and waste a hint; (which as previously mentioned will cost you a 2 minute time penalty).

Finally, sometimes objects are hidden underneath the timer clock and/or the map and hint icons

See previous comments for fixes

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System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 750 MHz
• 256 MB RAM
• Free hard drive space: 40 MB

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Resources:

Other Reviews:

Read reviews at iWin

Read review at Gamezebo

Read user reviews at Gamezebo

Video:

Watch Video HERE

Watch video HERE

Images:

See Images all on one page

See Images as a slideshow

Useful trainer for creating a time freeze:

Because this game is times you may find the following trainer useful (first mentioned by caulbox I think). It works by freezing the time so that you can spend some more time on each puzzle. It wont freeze the time if you use a hint though. Each hint will give you a 2 minute time penalty. I’d advise only using this cheat if you get really stuck as there’s nothing so frustrating as havin to repeat the same level over and over again, when sometimes it may be one of those problems when the object was hidden under the clock, map or hints ico.n:

Freeze time trainer:

Get freeze timer HERE

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Conclusion:

As a first for the game giveaway project this hidden objects game is okay. It has several of the elements of the best hidden objects games that I’ve personally played such as Magic Encyclopedia, Treasure Masters and Unicorn Castle, as well as others such as the Dream Chronicles series, the Hidden Expedition series and The Little Shop of Treasures games. However there are so many hidden Objects games around now that it’d take me ages to check my arcade games folder for all the different ones that are available (not that I have them all) for me to make comparisons with. I don’t think it’s up there amongst the best, but it is still a worthwhile challenge, especially with the 30 minute limit on each stage. That makes using the hint button very expensive.

The mini games are relatively easy, which is a shame as I’d much rather have games like those found in Treasure Masters or Magic Encyclopedia, whose mini games are quite challenging.

I do think the game would be much improved if an un-timed mode was added as I felt I was rushing all the time. It would have been nice to be able to search for the objects in a leisurely manner, otherwise I couldn’t really fault the game.

It did worry me that the game demo I reviewed crashed a few times during game play, and also that some objects were badly labeled. These alone would put me off actually purchasing the game. For example in level four I was asked to find a cigarette, which turned out to be a silver cigarette holder. When I fist saw the word ‘rook’, I assumed it was going to be the black bird, but it was actually the chess piece. Several community members complained about this previously and on reading some reviews on the web, there were several complaints about this with other objects badly named; for example:

Quote:

I also found myself somewhat distressed over object descriptions, which were often entirely inaccurate. I’ve no problem with clues meant to be vague or misleading—such as “clippers” (which could mean anything from nail trimmers to sailing ships) – but I do not appreciate being asked to look for objects that simply don’t exist in the picture.

I was once told to find a “horn” that turned out to be a flute, a “tennis ball” that was really a baseball and a “sphinx” that was in actuality a mummy’s casket.

Reference accessed 28th Aug 08

That aside, I’d still download this and check it out. It’s just about worth a reasonable 7 out of 10 when comparing it to the full spectrum of hidden objects games that are available now. If you’re not familiar with hidden objects games and want to explore them further I’d certainly recommend any of the ones I’ve mentioned above. If you want something challenging, go for the Dream Chronicles duo, both are beautifully crafted and quite challenging.

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Other Games for free

Gametop have now added Around the World in 80 Days which is a decent Match 3 game. I know it’s not the same as a Hidden Objects game, but I’ve noticed several community members mention that they would like to see it repeated here. The main difference between this free version and the one originally given away here apart from the fact that the one you can download is installable at any time is that when you close the game down you’re browser is opened to Gametops home page; however it’s innocuous. Nothing is changed on your computer. Well worth the minor hassle for a great game for free.

See image of the original

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Wow! This is only the third or fourth time this game has been up here. I gather they can’t sell it and they can’t give it away…so have fun, folks!

Mod Comment:

Read my comment from yesterday about the difficulties of getting commercial games for free (and with no adware) in the present economic climate. Surely a repeat better than nothing at all. There are always new members joining, so at least they gain.