Giveaway of the Day - Spirit of Wandering: The Legend

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W.R.

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of potential cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain why your reasons for the feedback you post. Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment. Thank you.

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Today’s review is just a repeat of the last time this game was give away. Plus it has been mainly lifted from Gamezebos review of the game. I don’t like doing that, but needs must. I was too tired to put my thoughts down last night (what’s new), I ended up staring at the monitor trying to play the game (to remind me of what it was like) and trying to figure out what I was doing, so decided to use Gamezebo’s review as I did the previous two time this game was given away back in September 2010 and again April 2011 I hope you don’t mind. All work used has been referenced to ensure the original authors have been acknowledged. Now go and download this reasonable HOG and enjoy this very pleasant Saturday

If you miss todays game giveaway it’s available 24/7 from both MyPlayCity and Gametop (though from Gametop it’s got a slightly different name). You can download it via HERE from Gametop. I no longer reference MyPlayCity games since they changed their policy on toolbars and home page changes; basically you have to allow them to install their games. Gametop still have the possibility of installing toolbars etc, but you get the option to deselect them. MyPlayCity gibves you the impression that you can deselect, but they still intall and change without your permission (though I’m sure written deep within the EULA their will be an obscure passage that mentions it.

Spirit of Wandering

Installation

The downloaded file is approximately 74.1 Mb in size and unpacks to a dual activation and set up module and a read me document that tells you how to install the game and gives you the terms and conditions. By default the game is installed to:

C:\Program Files\Playrix Entertainment\Spirit Of Wandering

But you can change the installation path during the install wizard. A shortcut is installed to both the desktop and start menu programs list. You can uninstall the game via the start menu programs list if you wish.

The game plays fine on XP Pro 32 bit with Service pack 3, Vista 64 bit Home Premium with Service pack 1 and Win 7 Ultimate and Pro 64 bit versions (I don’t have a home copy). Not had time to test it on Vista yet.

Introduction

Join an adventurous captain’s search for her lost love in this romantic hidden object challenge featuring tropical locations, cursed sailors and the power of true love. Sail the seas with the captain of the Spirit of Wandering to a variety of locations and search for hidden items that will free her cursed crew and point the way to her missing love. Decipher brain-bending riddles and use magical tools to discover precious items drifting between this world and the next. Featuring gorgeous scenes, an original story and hours of hidden object fun, Spirit of Wandering – The Legend seeks to answer the question: Can true love really conquer all? Even death?

Reference accessed
HERE 9th April 2011

Despite this game being available for free 24/7 from the likes of Gametop, MyPlayCity and other free sites the advantage of downloading today’s game from the game giveaway project is that your browser won’t be opened every time you turn the game off; whereas thefree games site’s versions do open your browser.

The Game:

The following is a large part of a review posted over at Gamezebo. I left it too late to write much of my own thoughts on the game other than to say it’s a hidden object game.

Hidden object fans will swoon over the romantic hidden object adventure Spirit of Wandering: The Legend. It’s the tale of a female pirate captain who loses her crew – including her lover, Jack – during an attack by the infamous ghost ship the Flying Dutchman. The crew aren’t dead, but merely imprisoned in the spirit world, which means the captain must use her compass and Jack’s magic orb to get them back.

Since spirits have a tendency to return to familiar places, the captain travels to locations that were important to her six crew members in an effort to pull them back into the world of the living. In order to do this, she must recover a series of items, including special “cherished” items that were especially important to each crew member.

Each location is split into several sub-scenes that contain a blend of normal and cherished items to find. Cherished items are unique in that they phase in and out of the real world, and can only be seen by holding the magic orb in front of them. To active the orb, you’ll first have to find a short list of normal items and click on them with the mouse to cross them off a list. Once the orb is activated, it acts like a homing beacon. By listening to verbal cues and watching as the flames of the orb burn brighter, you can pinpoint the local of the cherished item and get it to show up.

When the cherished item is found, a new set of normal items appears, and the cycle continues until all cherished items are found in a given scene. The system works very well. Cherished items are identified by picture, while normal items are identified by a textual description which adds variety to the searching.

Item descriptions are more imaginative than the usual fare – expect to search for “Grecian pitcher of brass,” “the curved blade of a soldier,” “a pirate’s hand pistol,” and “the bust of a nobleman.” Some descriptions border on riddles: “The home of golden bugs,” for example, refers to a green shield adorned with gold scorpions, while “a container for timely sand,” refers to an hourglass.

The lists of items are logical in the context of the game, and all adhere to an old-fashioned sea-faring pirate culture – for example, there are no CDs, computer, cars or telephones to find here. Rather, you’ll be searching for things like quill pens, compasses, candlesticks, coral and wooden clocks.

When a crewmember is found they will reveal the location of a treasure trove. Treasure troves are fun mini-games where you’re presented with a screen full of gold pieces and treasure, and have to try to click on as much of it as possible in 60 seconds. Replenishing your gold allows you to use your compass to give you hints if you get stuck finding a normal item. As you move the compass around the screen, the needle will rotate to point in the direction of an item.

Spirit of Wandering is bolstered by gorgeous graphics and suitably stirring music that uniquely complements each level. The game offers eighteen scenes set across six locations that include a pirate port, a primitive island village, an underwater grotto and the decks of the Flying Dutchman itself, as well as six treasure troves. This is a respectable number of levels considering that, unlike other hidden object games, you never re-visit the same scene twice.

What’s more, the story is well-crafted and engaging. You’ll get to know the six crew members you’re looking for quite well by the end of the game thanks to colorful descriptions written in a diary-style book, and cherished items that are matched to each crew member’s personality. Khikaru, for example, is the ship’s look-out so it makes perfect sense that his cherished items are a spy-glass and a sexton for navigating.

While I would whole-heartedly recommend Spirit of Wandering: The Legend, there are a few issues worth noting. The first is that the riddle-like item descriptions, while clever, can often refer to more than one of the items on-screen. Finding which of the ten pots that the clue “a clay pot with a handle” actually refers to is a matter of trial-and-error that requires a bit of patience. Other times it’s a simple case of two or more identical items – like barrels and beaded necklaces – appearing in different locations.

Players also can’t expect to rely too much on hints, because it costs the hefty sum of 60 gold coins every time you use one. If you get stuck, you can exit to the map and try another location, or just wait it out – if you wait long enough, the game throws you a bone by briefly highlighting a hidden item. There are no time limits in Spirits of Wandering, so you can take as long as you like, however, if you randomly click on the wrong things too many times in rapid succession, you’ll lose some of your precious gold.

Once story mode is completed, players can go back and play scenes individually in Advanced mode.

Reference accessed HERE Sept 18th 2010

You can check other people’s views on this game HERE

Music:

If you don’t like the music you can change it for something that you prefer, but first you must convert the music to the ogg format then re-name each piece to one of the following: 0.ogg, 1.ogg, 2.ogg, 3.ogg, 4.ogg, 5.ogg, gold.ogg and menu.ogg. You can find the music folder via the path:

C:\Program Files\Playrix Entertainment\Spirit Of Wandering\music

As a precaution I’d back up the original music, but if you do forget, you can get the original files by downloading the version from Gametop or MyPlayCity and using the files from that version. If you don’t have a audio converter, you’ll find freeware versions such as Audacity HERE or others via Google.

Images:

You can see several images as a slideshow HERE

Video:

You can see video of Spirit of Wandering’s game play HERE and HERE

System Requirements:

* Windows XP/Vista (and it also works in Win 7)

* 600MHz or faster Processor

* 128MB RAM

* DirectX-certified Sound Card

* 32MB Video Card with 16-bit Color and 3D acceleration

* DirectX 7.0 or better

Conclusion:

This is a reasonable Hidden Object Game (H.O.G.), though there’s nothing remarkable about it. There has been a plethora of HOG’s released over the last few years, many of which are much better than this one (IMO); that said if you like the genre then you’ll find this is a decent game. I got bored pretty quickly with the game, but then I had reason to be because I’ve played too many of the games over the last few years and was also very keen to return to some of my more recently purchased games such as Crysis 2, Need for Speed: Shift 2, Shogun 2: Total War and Dragonage 2, consequently I was impatient to finish the editing of this review. Unless you absolutely hate HOG’s I recommend you download this free game.

The quality of presentation and the overall game play deserves at least 7 out of 10 as does the music. As mentioned above, this game is now available from sites like Gametop 24/7, so if you miss today’s giveaway, or lose it to a format you can still get a copy from that free game download site

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

If you are having problems unzipping the game giveaways zip file, for example getting a message saying the file is invalid try using a different file archiver such as 7-Zip, J-Zip, CAM UnZip, Hamster Free Zip Archiver, GZip, B Zip2, peazip, ZipUnzip, FreeRAR Extract Frog, RAR File Open Knife, ALZip, The Extractor, RarZilla Free Unrar

Okay, that should be enough. there are actually many more free versions available. also there are other commercial titles such as the well-known WinRAR, Stuffit, WinAce, NXPowerlite and Corel Winzip Pro, but IMO 7-Zip is probably one of the better freebies. I did purchase a copy of Stuffit when it was on sale a few years ago, but didn’t like the interface for some reason, so hardly ever use it.

If you are posting requests for help late in the day I would suggest posting in the main giveaway forums in the game Game Discussion . If you’ve installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn’t guaranteed. It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them as well.

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Alternatives:

You can get over 20 reasonable quality Hidden Object games for free from places like Gametop or MyPlayCity. More have been added since this game was last given away. The following is a list as of the 10th April 2011:

1 Penguin 100 Cases
Antique Shop
Atlantis. Mysteries Of Ancient Inventors – Journey game
Confectionary
Coyote’s Tale: Fire & Water
Great Secrets – Da Vinci
Herod’s Lost Tomb
Hidden World Of Art
Hidden World Of Art 2: Undercover
Holly: A Christmas Tale Deluxe
Kellie Stanford: Turn Of Fate
Lost City Of Z
Magic Encyclopaedia: First Story
Matchmaker: Joining Hearts
Mystery Of Cleopatra
Mystery Of Unicorn Castle
Natalie Brooks: Secrets of Treasure House
PJ Pride Pet Detective
Simajo: The Travel Mystery Game
Spirit Of Wandering
The Mystery Of The Mary Celeste
Time To Hurry: Nicole’s Story
Zeal

That said I will no longer recommend downloading from MyPlayCity (MPC) because they have changed their tactics yet again. Previously you were forced to install both a tool bar and have your home page changed before you could play most of their games, but about 18 months ago they stopped that practice and in fact you no longer had to even uncheck boxes (like you do for games over at Gametop and other free game sites). Unfortunattely a few weeks before Christmas they reverted to their previous practice but this time even when you uncheck the boxes for the MyPlayCity tool bar and Ask home page, you still get both the toolbar and a second browser opening to the ask.com home page.. This may not include all of MPC’s games, but you’ll probably find all of the new games will have this annoyance. You still get unlimited access to the games, so if you don’t mind the home page change, which you can get rid of, and have a toolbar in your browser which can be turned off via the View/toolbars check list then you’ll find a decent number of HOG’s availble to you. MPC recently hit the 500 games mark, so there’s a lot of games to choose from now. Remember , these are generally sold elsewhere.
There is an alternative to MPC via Gametop, but they also try to install toolbars. Thankfully you can stop those by unchecking the boxes during installation. Unfortunately Gametop seem to have lost a large number of the games they used to offer. Both sites offer commercial games by paying the developers a retainer for being able to give them away. They are not technically free, but you can play them for an unlimited amount of time and they are available from these sites 24/7. The only drawback apart from the risk of installing toolbars is that your browser will open to the home page of either site depending which you got it from. There are a couple more sites like this such as FreeGamePick, all with the same risks. The actual games are fine to play and don’t hold any malware. You can go to the Gametop site HERE

Finally if you are looking for something else check out the game discussion forums and the free games synopsis. We’ve posted a couple of thousand free games over the last three years, some of which are fantastic. All of the major game distributors such as Steam, Direct 2 Drive (soon to combine with another site), Impulse and GOG all have some sales with savings as good as 75% in some cases. You can check out all of the main distributors via the Didematic Site