Uncover a mystery and save a town from a curse in 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville! Free on GOTD today!

#44

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

I've been unable to moderate for over 14 hours (my wife took me out for my birthday, which is in a few days), and have returned to over 100 comments that need moderating. To do it properly is going to take me several hours and it's already midnight, so I am going to focus on those that need to be answered before the giveaway ends later this morning. If the following comment answers that problem, it will be left until later in the week.

For those with problems installing the giveaway, please check the FAQ's thread over in the game discussion forums (I've linked to it in my reviw). More than likely you will find a fix for your problem there. If you are unable to install the game at all, for example you get the error message that it is corrupted or some other message that is stopping the installation, it's more than likely your anti-malware suite blocking the installation. This is because giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware, so your securtiy may have blocked it. There are two options to fix this; either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily while you install the game. Actually, there is a third option. you can download the game 24/7 directly from MyPlayCity, but you will need to make sure you uncheck the check boxes. These have been removed in the giveaway version.

I will get to every comment, but it may take me until later this week. If you have made a comment about the game that is appropriate, you should qualify for one or more of the games i've posted over in the game diuscussion forums. Please leave me a list of those you prefer. I will try to give you your first choice, but no promises. I've linked to the thread at the end of my review. I've added more games and intend to add even more before the next game giveaway. There are over 230 games listed at the moment and i 'may' be adding Itch.io keys and 'possibly' a few uPlay keys for games like Assassins Creed etc. The more expensive games in my lists will only be awarded to comments that give a good account of the game and with possible improvements included.

I still have to send out some keys to a few community members from last weeks comments. You will receive those in due course. I've been extremely busy recently, so can only devote a little time presently..

<blockquote>...............................Moderator Comment...............................</blockquote>

<blockquote>I've been unable to moderate for over 14 hours (my wife took me out for my birthday, which is in a few days), and have returned to over 100 comments that need moderating. To do it properly is going to take me several hours and it's already midnight, so I am going to focus on those that need to be answered before the giveaway ends later this morning. If the following comment answers that problem, it will be left until later in the week.</blockquote> 
<blockquote>For those with problems installing the giveaway, please check the FAQ's thread over in the game discussion forums (I've linked to it in my reviw). More than likely you will find a fix for your problem there. If you are unable to install the game at all, for example you get the error message that it is corrupted or some other message that is stopping the installation, it's more than likely your anti-malware suite blocking the installation. This is because giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware, so your securtiy may have blocked it. There are two options to fix this; either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily while you install the game. Actually, there is a third option. you can download the game 24/7 directly from MyPlayCity, but you will need to make sure you uncheck the check boxes. These have been removed in the giveaway version.</blockquote>
<blockquote>I will get to every comment, but it may take me until later this week. If you have made a comment about the game that is appropriate, you should qualify for one or more of the games i've posted over in the game diuscussion forums. Please leave me a list of those you prefer. I will try to give you your first choice, but no promises. I've linked to the thread at the end of my review. I've added more games and intend to add even more before the next game giveaway. There are over 230 games listed at the moment and i 'may' be adding Itch.io keys and 'possibly' a few uPlay keys for games like Assassins Creed etc. The more expensive games in my lists will only be awarded to comments that give a good account of the game and with possible improvements included.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I still have to send out some keys to a few community members from last weeks comments. You will receive those in due course. I've been extremely busy recently, so can only devote a little time presently..<blockquote>

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Reply | Comment by Whiterabbit-uk – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Whiterabbit-uk,

Happy Birthday!

Reply | Comment by Paula Flinn – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+5)

Whiterabbit-uk, Happy Birthday! thanks for all you do for us.

Reply | Comment by Barbara Novak – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#1

More Free Games

See the end of my review. :)

1 Moment of Time: Silentville

Apart from the advertisement (see above image) when you first install the game, all other extra's associated with free game sites like MyPlayCity have been removed apart from the browser opening when you close the game down. It's totally innocuous

In Brief

Overall I'd give this game a 7.5 out of 10 for it's game play, fun factor, and re-playability.

Suggestions:

For those who don't like Hidden Object games such as 1 Moment of Time: Silentville, instead of posting a few words saying you think this is a waste of time, or other words to that effect, would you instead give some feedback detailing why you don't like the game and how it could be improved from your point of view. If you don't like this genre at all, explain why. There are thousands of subscribers (at least there used to be) to the game giveaway of the day every weekend which makes this an ideal forum for giving developers ideas as to what their consumers (i.e you) would like to see in a game. For example, you could suggest extra content such as mini games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you.

If you miss today's game giveaway which was given away by MyPlayCity with some of the unwanted extra's removed you can stillget the game for free 24/7 from MyPlayCity HERE; however, please do be aware of the issues surrounding games from such sites compared to the game giveaway site - see forum post about problems and the weekly roundup of games, both of which I used to include with my reviews, (see below for links)

Installation

In the unlikely event that you get any activity from your anti-malware programs it may be because while installing this software, the activation module phones home to the giveaway site to confirm activation (not sure of the exact process); this may set off some overly sensitive anti-malware programs. Please ensure you've thoroughly checked the game before reporting that it has malware because this may put off other users from downloading the program as any mention of virus immediately halves the download numbers on this site.

The site has been up since the 2nd Dec 2006 and there has never been any malware ever downloaded with any game given away, though there has been many users reporting false positives, that have been proven to be nothing more than poorly set up anti-malware programs.

The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed during the installation wizard. The C drive may be different depending upon if you have more than one hard drive installed and whether your OS is installed to the C drive or a different one like mine (which is the F drive, though I always change it to my G drive which is where I prefer to keep all of my games):

The downloaded zip file is over 500MB in size and unpacks to a read me, setup.gcd security file and a dual activation and set up module. The game installs to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\1 Moment of Time - Silentville

There are shortcuts installed to both the desktop (the game, one to MyPlayCity's home page and another for playing online games). The latter two can be deleted with no effect to the game. There's also a shortcut installed to the start menu/programs list; you'll find an uninstaller in the Start Menu/Programs folder and a link to MyPlayCity's' site. The installed game takes up of disk space. The game works on all my platforms (The game works on both my Win 7 and Win 10 computers. I no longer have any computers with XP, Vista or win 8.1 installed.

Just a note to newcomers, when the game has been installed you'll get a pop up asking if you want a shortcut to the game giveawayoftheday placed in your favourites/bookmarks, this is quite innocuous, however beware of the Install software Informer button that's to the left of the install bookmark button. The program (Software informer) isn't ad-ware, it's actually quite a useful program that informs you about updates to programs you have installed on your computer, but many users don't like the program, so I thought it prudent to warn you, just in case you end up accidentally clicking on the button and installing the program. You can also set up a Firefox permatab from this window.

Introduction:

Welcome to Silentville – a town locked in time with no past, present or future. Will you be brave enough to step on a cursed land and solve the mystery? A spectacular Hidden object game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville will impress both grown-ups and children. Silentville was a small town where nothing ever happened. Its most distinctive feature was that it was silent. But one awful day a storm suddenly broke up out of nowhere. The frightful thunder was rumbling and the lightning was seen all across the sky. Since that very moment people and animals started disappearing. Solve the tragic mystery in the wonderful game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville! Choose the mode you like. Casual mode has all the features that help you during the game (hints, tips, light-overs), while in the Expert mode all these features are unavailable. You will start from a train station. Unlock new misty locations one by one, search for the hidden objects that will be very useful, assemble different mechanisms and solve puzzles. You will talk to the citizens that will try to explain you what happened. Everybody remembers the terrifying storm, since which they can stay only in one place keep doing the things that they were doing. Someone is smoking one and the same pipe, a gardener keeps cutting the same bush. What dark forces made the town fall into tragic non-existence? Get lost in time with the fabulous game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville and solve all mysteries!

Reference accessed HERE 5th June 2016

If you have a problem installing or activating or getting 1 Moment of Time: Silentville to work, please visit the problems section, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, which you can find HERE and the recent games deals (now called The Weekly Roundup of Game Deals) is HERE.

The Game:

The aim of todays Hidden Object offering 1 Moment of Time: Silentville is the search for the missing inhabitants of Silentville after a strange storm makes them vanish. Searching for missing people tends to be a common theme running through hidden object games . At this point, having looked for countless villagers, patients, kids, parents, damsels in distress and significant others, I was hoping upon firing up 1 Moment of Time: Silentville for a new spin on the “missing persons” idea. Alas, while Silentville does offer an interesting approach to cinematics and a few interesting puzzles, in the end it fails to bring much new to an overused story concept.

The game starts fairytale-like, with a narrator explaining how the quaint village of Silentville—once an idyllic, happy place—was beset by an inexplicable storm. And how after the storm, its inhabitants vanished one by one. You arrive soon after the storm and set to work searching the abandoned town for clues to the villagers’ disappearance. Soon enough you realize that rather than vanishing, the villagers have instead been trapped in specific locations where they’re forced to continually relive a single moment in time. Despite their atemporal state, you can speak to these people and gather their impressions of what happened the day of the storm. While you’d expect these anecdotal fragments to blend smoothly together to form a single flavorful narrative, what they actually do is congeal into something more like a series of unappetizing lumps.

The story is mostly nonsensical and vague, with people in a tiny village referring to one another in oddly generic terms such as “the mine owner” and “the rich man on the hill.” This lack of specificity runs throughout the story, making it feel lazily conceived and worse, providing little in the way of logical motivation for doing anything. The effect of this is that roughly half way through, I found myself not caring to figure anything out on my own and instead using the hint button to teleport as fast as possible to my next nonsensical objective. Of course, even this strategy wasn’t foolproof since the hint button let me down on several occasions, repeatedly highlighting something I didn’t have the tools to complete.

Because of these things, 1 Moment of Time: Silentville feels sloppily made; add to that the consistent crash I experienced (until I downloaded a patch), the clumsy English translation (for instance, tutorial text that read, “objects hidden beside doors”; also a baffling hidden object scene that referred to a hand drill as a “wimble”), hard-to-read font in the hidden object lists, scenes that are only narrowly interactive, and some clunky puzzle controls and you have a game that really could have used another month or so of work before being released.

Although these things undermine the game and prevent it from being more than fair-to-middling, there are a few things it does well. The villager interviews are handled through beautiful hand-drawn sketches and because of this, the sequences build on the game’s fairytale foundation and provide some much-needed individuality to the game’s graphics. Supporting this, the game’s narrator and voice acting are pretty good, and the music is pleasantly quirky. Gameplay-wise, on occasion, there are some interesting puzzles (several plant-related ones in particular) and it’s obvious some real effort was made to make the hidden object scenes more interesting by making them not just about finding single items, but about matching items and using them together.

Despite this, 1 Moment of Time: Silentville sells itself short. By failing to provide a hero for us to identify with, or motivation to complete its tasks, it prevents us from caring about what happens and quickly becomes tedious. Further, it tells a disjointed story, gives us useless hints and subjects us to largely lackluster puzzles. Although its sketchy cinematics are cool, and both the hidden object scenes and some puzzles are interesting, they’re just not enough to carry the game and ultimately, leave us feeling that this is one moment of time that’s been seriously misspent.

Edited eference accessed HERE 5th June 2016

Other Reviews:

You can see some mini reviews of today's game via the Big Fish community HERE (just scoll to about half way down the page to see the reviews as well as answers to some issues and other comments about the game in the Big fish forums HERE
Video - includes spoilers:

You can see video's of game play HERE (full walkthrough), HERE (chapter 1 walkthrough), HERE (chapter 3 walkthrough), HERE (part 1 of 2) and HERE (part 2 of 2).

Useful Information:

The problems section that used to be posted here in the Game review is now included in the Game Discussion FAQ's thread; which you can find HERE.

I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly round up of game deals, formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) HERE.

The latest free game over on Origin has just changed to Nox An excellent action/RPG hybrid with very unique gameplay. Your name is Jack Mower, a 20th century dude who just happened to be sucked into the world of Nox via his TV set. The world is in danger and you have to save it! But before you embark on your epic journey you must choose your path: warrior, wizard, or conjurer.

You can get it HERE. Please note that you do require the Origin game platform to be able to download and install the game. If you own the Standard version of Battlefield Hardline on Origin there's also a free dlc

If you are having problems installing the game check thA Hidden Object Gamee thread I've linked to above. If you can't find any fixes check the comments made below and over the last few weeks for suggestions. Thank you.

If todays game wasn't of interest to you, you may find games either free of for less than the price of a cup of coffee from your favorite coffee house via the 'Weekly Roundup of Game Deals' thread which you can find HERE.

I'm giving away around 100 Steam keys and 120 plus Desura keys

I am going to be giving away more Steam keys today from my own personal collection of spare keys that I have accumulated over the last several years. Most are from indie bundles that I have purchased, some are from pre ordering AAA games and others I've got for free for applying for them, or reviewing their games. I have at least 4 to 5 thousand keys (probably more), some of which I've decided to give away.

I will be awarding keys to those that give some appropriate feedback for today's game giveaway. (maybe even two keys if the comment is good). If you think you will qualify for a key (any positive or negative constructive comment) please DO NOT post any requests about this offer here just post your comment about the game here. Please post a list of the games you would like in the thread I created specifically for this personal giveaway HERE. If you are unable to access the forums, then just list the games you are interested in at the end of your comment. I've listed the games I'm going to give away over in the game discussion forums, so if you think you qualify for a free key (anyone who has posted appropriate comments about the games being given away this weekend), please leave a message with your giveaway name and preferences in the thread I've created. List as many of the games as you wish from the list, in the order you prefer them. If you win a key I will send it via the email you have used to post comments here or via the email (if different) that you used to create a forum account. For exceptional comments I will be awarding two keys (assuming there are enough to go around) If you have used one of those emails that are not real, I won't be able to send you a key. This isn't a trick to get your email, I'm a volunteer here and have no ulterior motives regarding the keys I'm giving away, nor am I interested in your email. Basically I've been at a loss as to what to do with the spare keys I have for several months now. I was originally buying them to give to my children and others for my back up Steam account and for Steam friends birthdays etc, but with the number of indie bundles now available each week, many of which I've purchased just to get one key (which was still a lot cheaper than buying the game via Steam or other outlets) I've ended up with thousands of spare keys over the last five years since the indie bundle concept started with the first Humble bundle. I will be adding more games to the list over in the forums HERE as and when I have time today.

Again,I must reiterate, please DO NOT post comments about this personal giveaway here in this comment page because this page is for today's game giveaways and not mine. You must post your name and games you want in the giveaway forums via THIS thread. Thank you.

More Free Games

There are three free games available over on the Cubic bundle page, Aircraft War X (Itch.io key) and two Steam keys for Why so Evil and Under Zero. You can find links to all three giveaways on THIS page, all of which require you to join various steam groups, and other things such as subscribe to channels etc. I found some were common to all three, so got my tick with just one mouse click. I use accounts specifically set up for these give aways and have accrued 35 Steam keys worth over £200 and a few Itch.io keys over the last several months just to spend a few moments using accounts specifically set up for these.

More Free Games

<blockquote>See the end of my review. :)</blockquote>

1 Moment of Time: Silentville
<ul><blockquote><a href='http://postimage.org/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s33.postimg.org/qz92wsjsv/1_moment.jpg' border='0' alt="1 moment" /></a></blockquote></ul>
<blockquote>Apart from the advertisement (see above image) when you first install the game, all other extra's associated with free game sites like MyPlayCity have been removed apart from the browser opening when you close the game down. It's totally innocuous</blockquote>
<ul><blockquote><a href='http://postimage.org/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s33.postimg.org/53rwc3j27/1_moment_003.jpg' border='0' alt="1 moment 003" /></a></blockquote></ul>

In Brief

<blockquote>Overall I'd give this game a 7.5 out of 10 for it's game play, fun factor, and re-playability.</blockquote>

Suggestions:
<blockquote>For those who don't like Hidden Object games such as 1 Moment of Time: Silentville, instead of posting a few words saying you think this is a waste of time, or other words to that effect, would you instead give some feedback detailing why you don't like the game and how it could be improved from your point of view. If you don't like this genre at all, explain why. There are thousands of subscribers (at least there used to be) to the game giveaway of the day every weekend which makes this an ideal forum for giving developers ideas as to what their consumers (i.e you) would like to see in a game. For example, you could suggest extra content such as mini games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you.</blockquote>

<blockquote>If you miss today's game giveaway which was given away by MyPlayCity with some of the unwanted extra's removed you can stillget the game for free 24/7 from MyPlayCity <a href="http://www.myplaycity.com/silentville/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>; however, please do be aware of the issues surrounding games from such sites compared to the game giveaway site - see forum post about problems and the weekly roundup of games, both of which I used to include with my reviews, (see below for links) </blockquote>

Installation

<blockquote>In the unlikely event that you get any activity from your anti-malware programs it may be because while installing this software, the activation module phones home to the giveaway site to confirm activation (not sure of the exact process); this may set off some overly sensitive anti-malware programs. Please ensure you've thoroughly checked the game before reporting that it has malware because this may put off other users from downloading the program as any mention of virus immediately halves the download numbers on this site.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The site has been up since the 2nd Dec 2006 and there has never been any malware ever downloaded with any game given away, though there has been many users reporting false positives, that have been proven to be nothing more than poorly set up anti-malware programs.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed during the installation wizard. The C drive may be different depending upon if you have more than one hard drive installed and whether your OS is installed to the C drive or a different one like mine (which is the F drive, though I always change it to my G drive which is where I prefer to keep all of my games):</blockquote>
<ul><blockquote>The downloaded zip file is over 500MB in size and unpacks to a read me, setup.gcd security file and a dual activation and set up module. The game installs to:</blockquote>
<ul><blockquote>C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\1 Moment of Time - Silentville</blockquote>
<blockquote>There are shortcuts installed to both the desktop (the game, one to MyPlayCity's home page and another for playing online games). The latter two can be deleted with no effect to the game. There's also a shortcut installed to the start menu/programs list; you'll find an uninstaller in the Start Menu/Programs folder and a link to MyPlayCity's' site. The installed game takes up of disk space. The game works on all my platforms (The game works on both my Win 7 and Win 10 computers. I no longer have any computers with XP, Vista or win 8.1 installed.</blockquote>
<ul><blockquote><a href='http://postimage.org/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s33.postimg.org/gez5e7fb3/1_moment_012.jpg' border='0' alt="1 moment 012" /></a></blockquote></ul>

<blockquote>Just a note to newcomers, when the game has been installed you'll get a pop up asking if you want a shortcut to the game giveawayoftheday placed in your favourites/bookmarks, this is quite innocuous, however beware of the Install software Informer button that's to the left of the install bookmark button. The program (Software informer) isn't ad-ware, it's actually quite a useful program that informs you about updates to programs you have installed on your computer, but many users don't like the program, so I thought it prudent to warn you, just in case you end up accidentally clicking on the button and installing the program. You can also set up a Firefox permatab from this window.</blockquote>

Introduction:
<blockquote>Welcome to Silentville – a town locked in time with no past, present or future. Will you be brave enough to step on a cursed land and solve the mystery? A spectacular Hidden object game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville will impress both grown-ups and children. Silentville was a small town where nothing ever happened. Its most distinctive feature was that it was silent. But one awful day a storm suddenly broke up out of nowhere. The frightful thunder was rumbling and the lightning was seen all across the sky. Since that very moment people and animals started disappearing. Solve the tragic mystery in the wonderful game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville! Choose the mode you like. Casual mode has all the features that help you during the game (hints, tips, light-overs), while in the Expert mode all these features are unavailable. You will start from a train station. Unlock new misty locations one by one, search for the hidden objects that will be very useful, assemble different mechanisms and solve puzzles. You will talk to the citizens that will try to explain you what happened. Everybody remembers the terrifying storm, since which they can stay only in one place keep doing the things that they were doing. Someone is smoking one and the same pipe, a gardener keeps cutting the same bush. What dark forces made the town fall into tragic non-existence? Get lost in time with the fabulous game 1 Moment of Time: Silentville and solve all mysteries!</blockquote> 
<blockquote>Reference accessed <a href="http://www.myplaycity.com/silentville/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> 5th June 2016</blockquote>

<blockquote>If you have a problem installing or activating or getting 1 Moment of Time: Silentville to work, please visit the problems section, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, which you can find <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/11647" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> and the recent games deals (now called The Weekly Roundup of Game Deals) is <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/458939" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.</blockquote>

The Game:

<blockquote>The aim of todays Hidden Object offering 1 Moment of Time: Silentville is the search for the missing inhabitants of Silentville after a strange storm makes them vanish. Searching for missing people tends to be a common theme running through hidden object games . At this point, having looked for countless villagers, patients, kids, parents, damsels in distress and significant others, I was hoping upon firing up 1 Moment of Time: Silentville for a new spin on the “missing persons” idea. Alas, while Silentville does offer an interesting approach to cinematics and a few interesting puzzles, in the end it fails to bring much new to an overused story concept.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The game starts fairytale-like, with a narrator explaining how the quaint village of Silentville—once an idyllic, happy place—was beset by an inexplicable storm. And how after the storm, its inhabitants vanished one by one. You arrive soon after the storm and set to work searching the abandoned town for clues to the villagers’ disappearance. Soon enough you realize that rather than vanishing, the villagers have instead been trapped in specific locations where they’re forced to continually relive a single moment in time. Despite their atemporal state, you can speak to these people and gather their impressions of what happened the day of the storm. While you’d expect these anecdotal fragments to blend smoothly together to form a single flavorful narrative, what they actually do is congeal into something more like a series of unappetizing lumps.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The story is mostly nonsensical and vague, with people in a tiny village referring to one another in oddly generic terms such as “the mine owner” and “the rich man on the hill.” This lack of specificity runs throughout the story, making it feel lazily conceived and worse, providing little in the way of logical motivation for doing anything. The effect of this is that roughly half way through, I found myself not caring to figure anything out on my own and instead using the hint button to teleport as fast as possible to my next nonsensical objective. Of course, even this strategy wasn’t foolproof since the hint button let me down on several occasions, repeatedly highlighting something I didn’t have the tools to complete.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Because of these things, 1 Moment of Time: Silentville feels sloppily made; add to that the consistent crash I experienced (until I downloaded a patch), the clumsy English translation (for instance, tutorial text that read, “objects hidden beside doors”; also a baffling hidden object scene that referred to a hand drill as a “wimble”), hard-to-read font in the hidden object lists, scenes that are only narrowly interactive, and some clunky puzzle controls and you have a game that really could have used another month or so of work before being released.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Although these things undermine the game and prevent it from being more than fair-to-middling, there are a few things it does well. The villager interviews are handled through beautiful hand-drawn sketches and because of this, the sequences build on the game’s fairytale foundation and provide some much-needed individuality to the game’s graphics. Supporting this, the game’s narrator and voice acting are pretty good, and the music is pleasantly quirky. Gameplay-wise, on occasion, there are some interesting puzzles (several plant-related ones in particular) and it’s obvious some real effort was made to make the hidden object scenes more interesting by making them not just about finding single items, but about matching items and using them together.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Despite this, 1 Moment of Time: Silentville sells itself short. By failing to provide a hero for us to identify with, or motivation to complete its tasks, it prevents us from caring about what happens and quickly becomes tedious. Further, it tells a disjointed story, gives us useless hints and subjects us to largely lackluster puzzles. Although its sketchy cinematics are cool, and both the hidden object scenes and some puzzles are interesting, they’re just not enough to carry the game and ultimately, leave us feeling that this is one moment of time that’s been seriously misspent.</blockquote>

Edited eference accessed <a href="http://www.gamezebo.com/2012/06/19/1-moment-time-silentville-review/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> 5th June 2016

Other Reviews:
<blockquote>You can see some mini reviews of today's game via the Big Fish community <a href="http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/7237/1-moment-of-time-silentville/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (just scoll to about half way down the page to see the reviews as well as answers to some issues and other comments about the game in the Big fish forums <a href="http://forhttp://forums.bigfishgames.com/forums/show/2891.page" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> 
Video - includes spoilers:

You can see video's of game play <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUU3p6d_ffI" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (full walkthrough), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYrxeOlNrI0" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (chapter 1 walkthrough), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYOvJxnq_Q4" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (chapter 3 walkthrough), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IezILjZJ5rE" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (part 1 of 2) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9uy_1mOqe0" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> (part 2 of 2).

Useful Information:
<blockquote>The problems section that used to be posted here in the Game review is now included in the Game Discussion FAQ's thread; which you can find <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/11647" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.</blockquote>
 <blockquote> I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly round up of game deals, formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/458939#post-569898" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The latest free game over on Origin has just changed to Nox An excellent action/RPG hybrid with very unique gameplay. Your name is Jack Mower, a 20th century dude who just happened to be sucked into the world of Nox via his TV set. The world is in danger and you have to save it! But before you embark on your epic journey you must choose your path: warrior, wizard, or conjurer.</blockquote>
<blockquote>You can get it <a href="https://www.origin.com/en-gb/store/free-games/on-the-house" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>. Please note that you do require the Origin game platform to be able to download and install the game. If you own the Standard version of Battlefield Hardline on Origin there's also a free dlc </blockquote>
<blockquote>If you are having problems installing the game check thA Hidden Object Gamee thread I've linked to above. If you can't find any fixes check the comments made below and over the last few weeks for suggestions. Thank you.</blockquote>

<blockquote>If todays game wasn't of interest to you, you may find games either free of for less than the price of a cup of coffee from your favorite coffee house via the 'Weekly Roundup of Game Deals' thread which you can find <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/458939" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.</blockquote>

I'm giving away around 100 Steam keys and 120 plus Desura keys

<blockquote>I am going to be giving away more Steam keys today from my own personal collection of spare keys that I have accumulated over the last several years. Most are from indie bundles that I have purchased, some are from pre ordering AAA games and others I've got for free for applying for them, or reviewing their games. I have at least 4 to 5 thousand keys (probably more), some of which I've decided to give away.</blockquote>
<blockquote>I will be awarding keys to those that give some appropriate feedback for today's game giveaway. (maybe even two keys if the comment is good). If you think you will qualify for a key (any positive or negative constructive comment) please DO NOT post any requests about this offer here just post your comment about the game here. Please post a list of the games you would like in the thread I created specifically for this personal giveaway <a href="https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/466145" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>. If you are unable to access the forums, then just list the games you are interested in at the end of your comment. I've listed the games I'm going to give away over in the game discussion forums, so if you think you qualify for a free key (anyone who has posted appropriate comments about the games being given away this weekend), please leave a message with your giveaway name and preferences in the thread I've created. List as many of the games as you wish from the list, in the order you prefer them. If you win a key I will send it via the email you have used to post comments here or via the email (if different) that you used to create a forum account. For exceptional comments I will be awarding two keys (assuming there are enough to go around) If you have used one of those emails that are not real, I won't be able to send you a key. This isn't a trick to get your email, I'm a volunteer here and have no ulterior motives regarding the keys I'm giving away, nor am I interested in your email. Basically I've been at a loss as to what to do with the spare keys I have for several months now. I was originally buying them to give to my children and others for my back up Steam account and for Steam friends birthdays etc, but with the number of indie bundles now available each week, many of which I've purchased just to get one key (which was still a lot cheaper than buying the game via Steam or other outlets) I've ended up with thousands of spare keys over the last five years since the indie bundle concept started with the first Humble bundle. I will be adding more games to the list over in the forums <a href="https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/466145" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> as and when I have time today.</blockquote>

<blockquote> Again,I must reiterate, please DO NOT post comments about this personal giveaway here in this comment page because this page is for today's game giveaways and not mine. You must post your name and games you want in the giveaway forums via <a href="https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/466145" rel="nofollow">THIS</a> thread. Thank you.<blockquote>

More Free Games

There are three free games available over on the Cubic bundle page, Aircraft War X (Itch.io key) and two Steam keys for Why so Evil and Under Zero. You can find links to all three giveaways on <a href="https://cubicbundle.com/bundles" rel="nofollow">THIS</a> page, all of which require you to join various steam groups, and other things such as subscribe to channels etc. I found some were common to all three, so got my tick with just one mouse click. I use accounts specifically set up for these give aways and have accrued 35 Steam keys worth over £200 and a few Itch.io keys over the last several months just to spend a few moments using accounts specifically set up for these.

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Reply | Comment by Whiterabbit-uk – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+7)

Whiterabbit-uk, Where did you download the patch for crashes? I'm sure that would interest others here?
Also, there is a walkthrough on Bigfish website you didn't mention:
http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/walkthrough/1-moment-of-time-silentville-walkthrough/

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

I though I'd posted the BFG walk through? :)

Reply | Comment by Trying 2 b Helpful – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Trying 2 b Helpful,

Hi,
the latest NVidia graphic patch for my graphic card.

Reply | Comment by Whiterabbit-uk – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

#62

This is long after the fact and likely won't be seen or addressed by now I figure, but I acquired the game and started in on it over a few days... I get as far as the 'house' behind the gate that the key needed to be made for. I go upstairs to the the room with the globe, the fireplace, and the box in the middle of the room. There's a puzzle on the top of the box involving reassembling a globe map of some sort. Here's where it all went to hell... since I wasn't sure how the original was supposed to look, I figured maybe my journal would have an image to go by or something, but because the damn icons are overlapped I ended up hitting the map scroll which doesn't allow canceling out of it afaik. As a result, once I was able to get back to the room the puzzle to open the box has vanished and I can't proceed in the game whatsoever anymore. Using the hint shows nothing can be done in any area. Needless to say, I'm unsure what to do and I sure as hell won't restart the game and waste all the time and moving around just to get back to that puzzle and have it phuc me again.

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

Thank you for your feedback Jon, please excuse my very late reply. I abandoned moderation last sunday. We had family visiting and when i finally sat down to moderate there were seven pages of comments. Just a couple can take me upwards of two hours to reply to, so i turned off my computer and went to bed early for a change. The only thing I can suggest is to post the problem in the main game forums as the community is more likely to see and answer. Once a giveaway is over, the page is rarely visited again.

Reply | Comment by Jon – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#61

Downloaded the game twice on the day it was issued.
It would not open.

Reply | Comment by barbara berg – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#60

The download took almost a day, instal was also slow, and loading the game the first time was slow.
However, once past the first intro of the game, it speeded up when I returned to continue playing. It's a very enjoyable game, good graphics, clear images. good puzzles. Nice storyline. All in all a good game. Thank you and thank you sponsors, but please please speed up your download times because not everyone would wait a whole day.

Reply | Comment by SaNad – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#59

When I open the game from the shortcut, a UAC dialog box opens asking if I want to the allow the program to make changes to my computer. Is this normal and if so why does the game need it?

Reply | Comment by Francie – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#58

Happy Birthday Stephen! Hope the Exams are going well and Your Family is not too stressed, just as ever supportive and hopeful (we cannot pass these exams for them, unfortunatelly..:)
I had this Game for few years now, but this Giveaway reminded me to look for it on my PC and start playing again. Good game, good game:) Recommended, and thanks for a decent as usual Review.

Reply | Comment by fran – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

#57

Downloaded fine on win10 pro,x64. I could play this HOG- some I find tough. It worked for me I went so far played again and went even farther. I only give this game a 7 though, good point is playable, good graphics, good story or puzzles- makes a person think (I guess yu are supposed too). Not realy a fan of HOG's.

Reply | Comment by Philip – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#56

Installed fine on windows 10. Played it and played it...and going to play it now :) It's fun but annoying. lol! Thank you very much.

Reply | Comment by Marshell Wooley – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#55

I pretty much buy games exclusively from "Playrix" and "Alawar"; if it's a really good game that either Playrix or Alawar doesn't have I will I will buy games from "Big Fish".

This looks like a really good game, however, I just do not feel it is safe to download anything from "MyPlayCity".

I know, I know; opinions are like, "insert your favorite saying".

Reply | Comment by JonE – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

#54

Very, very disappointed. I tried 6 times to download Silentville and all 6 times it "failed" . With such a long download time I left my machine and returned to it later only to find that it has "failed" over and over.
I really want this game. Is there any other way to still get the free download?? Thank you.``

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

Hi gman, it is available 24/7 from MyPlayCity. I do mention this in my review. The main difference between the MPC version and the giveaway is that the check-boxes have been removed, otherwise it is exactly the same game. You will still get your browser opening to MPC's home page when you close the game down. Otherwise it's absolutely safe. If you have to download another large sized game from the gamegiveaway site I would advise using a download manager. These usually are able to resume downloading after a break, and can also download them much faster. There are free ones available.

Reply | Comment by gman – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#53

It was six hours into the giveaway and the download still took two hours.
I just played the first hidden object scene. One of the items I needed to find was a knife. I saw a dagger... no, not that... ah, there it is... no... the box cutter? YES! I don't understand why the people who design these games do this: if one of the items is a knife then don't put knives in the background too. If you have to find a clock then don't have clocks in the background. Am I the only one who thinks this makes sense? It can't be that hard.
It displays in windowed mode on my Windows 10 laptop which makes it unpleasant to play. Full screen worked on my Windows 8.1 desktop but it was stretched to 16:9 ratio and had a thick black border. Changed my secondary monitor (a 4K TV) to be the primary monitor it looks okay on that. I would have preferred to play it on the laptop so I could play it in other rooms but playing it on the big screen in the living room will be okay. All screens are set to 1920 x 1080 resolution.
When I closed the game and the URL launched it tried to install an add-on to my browser: not quite what I'd call "innocuous" because I'm not sure if I managed to stop it.

Reply | Comment by Jerry – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#52

Only took 7 minutes to download but there is something about it that AVG does not like & disabled it. No real loss I didn't like the look of it.

Reply | Comment by Larry Carter – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#51

Installed without any problem to windows 7. Find items have a little twist. One thing I knotice playing a game is that first time player might have hard time finding exit. It does not exit from Esc or book icon, but from upper rigit corner menu. It is little hard to knotice. It should be more easy to exit from game.

Reply | Comment by jugem – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#50

Took three tries to download, though I think my connection was to blame. Installed without issue, and have played through the first few rooms, and enjoyed them. Graphics and sound effects are great. I like the greater focus on the "repair" part of the hidden objects searches, and the minigames that I've encountered have been interesting.

I appreciate the map, though I prefer them to be a bit more exact, but I like how the hint seems to teleport you to the nearest area of interest if there's nothing to do in the scene you're in.

So far, the plot hasn't been too creepy (I'm not a fan of creepy), and I've found the mystery intriguing. We'll see if it becomes one of my favorites or not!

Reply | Comment by Kendra E. Ardnek – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#49

The game installed without problems. BUT...
I had a problem with the game just after the first 3 minutes. After i finished the first riddle, the game hang up on me. As it turned out later as a coincidence, a fortunate rollover with my mouse, a very secretly hidden OK-button revealed! It looked like this just before that:
www.screencourier[.] com/image/tzrrpisu3qdhpx82p0peagcwt9
Well, as you may imagine, thats the "special kind of secret hidden object" i would really like to avoid next time. :D Just so you and the developers know now, and maybe can fix it.

Reply | Comment by Burni – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#48

HI,
It uploaded easy and ran smoothly on windows 8.1. A little tightness with the custom cursor. I don't have much time
to play right now and will try more later. Most of the hidden items have a task with them, so takes longer, but gives you something to figure out!! Will play again in a bit to find out where everyone disappeared to!! Thank you! Lee

Reply | Comment by Lee C. – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#47

Please, GameGiveAway moderator, I have been unable to successfully activate "1 Moment Of Time: Silentville" because of difficulties accessing your server BEFORE the key expiry deadline. I will very much appreciate if GameGiveAway will avail me the key for this game that i downloaded and sent for Activation BEFORE the eligibility deadline. Please.

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

The giveaway team don't get keys for these games. This giveaway was donated by MpPlaycity. it's freely available from their site 24/7, just make sure you uncheck all of the check-boxes during installation. Otherwise it is exactly the same as last weeks giveaway.

Reply | Comment by yufanyi robert – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#46

I was glad to see this game today. I just finished it and found it quite fun and challenging. All in all a nice day of playing to wind down from a frantic week.

I know many complain about this type of game but I love them. I don't like shoot em up games but don't feel the necessity to complain. I am just happy with the chance to get some games I like for free. I also appreciate White Rabbit's help for us all.

Reply | Comment by Margie Hillebrecht – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#45

In the I-spy/repair scenes, putting things together to collect them is a nice change of pace. For the most part, the graphics are very crisp with a lot of attention paid to detail. Improvements could be made in a few spots where the contrast makes it difficult to see the objects being hunted. I absolutely love the smoke crossing off the item lists....a really nice touch.

The music has a very somber quality to it most of the time. It seems to be fitting to the storyline. At times it gets a little loud over the speaking, but can be turned down in Options. The music gets a little too chordy occasionally for my taste, but it is sparingly.

The sound effects are realistic and do stand out. The story teller has a nice voice and speaks with a great deal of emphasis. This did pique my interest. I think the story line could be improved by smoothing it out. It seems very abrupt at times.

Overall, I love the graphics and like the music. I give this a thumbs up and an 8.5/10. It is definitely a keeper for my library and I look forward to finishing it. Thanks MyPlayCity for the gift today and as always, thanks GGOTD for all you do. Stephen, I loved the review and found it quite helpful.

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

Thank you for your feedback Paula, only just moderated your comment from yesterdays. Been out all day. :)

Reply | Comment by Paula Flinn – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#43

I'm sure that by the time this comment is seen, it will be too late for anyone to do anything about the problem I'm experiencing, but I thought I'd at least let you know what's happening on THIS side of the modem...

I went ahead and downloaded this incredibly HUGE install package - even though it took a large bite out of my monthly bandwidth quota. My experience with the actual download is apparently better than some previous commenters, as it only took 35 minutes, and not the multiple hours that some have reported.

Needless to say, it takes a while to decompress a 545MB zip file too. Three files were extracted, the setup.exe and setup.gcd files, along with readme.txt - the typical package normally received from this site - into their own independent folder on my desktop.

I then launched the setup.exe file (running as administrator to ensure permissions were sufficient), and after a couple of minutes the typical dialog box popped up saying that the program was "successfully activated," and the usual webpage was displayed upon closing the gray dialog box.

At this point I expected an installer program to launch (or at least be visible somewhere), but NADA! There have been no recent modifications or additions to Program Files or the (x86) that I've been able to identify, and I've given up trying to find any if there are! I see that other commenters are having a similar experience, so I have a feeling there must be something wrong with the installer bot - and solving that issue is WAY above my pay grade, and my motivation at this point is sagging beyond the lowest point of the scale.

I appreciate the fact that some really attractive-looking games are offered here - I just wish they would WORK once in a while!

FWIW, I'm running an HP laptop with AMD processor, 6GB RAM using the Windows 8.1 OS. I would really appreciate a response before this giveaway ends, but I really don't expect one since there's just under 6 hours left, and then there's the factor of time zones and the like.

Bottom line - thanks for wasting my time and bandwidth!

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

Thank you for your feedback Don, over 6500 community members have downloaded this file and only a few community members have reported problems installing it. It is not the fault of the files you have downloaded, but more than likely an issue with your set up. Possbly a conflict with other programs. The most likely culprit is your security. I'v e just posted about this in a comment, but will repeat it for you. The giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware, so your security may have blocked it. The only way around this is to either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily. I hope this fixes the problem for you. I know it can be frustrating, especially if you are on a limited bandwidth contract.

I'm sure that by the time this comment is seen, it will be too late for anyone to do anything about the problem I'm experiencing, but I thought I'd at least let you know what's happening on THIS side of the modem...

I went ahead and downloaded this incredibly HUGE install package - even though it took a large bite out of my monthly bandwidth quota. My experience with the actual download is apparently better than some previous commenters, as it only took 35 minutes, and not the multiple hours that some have reported.

Needless to say, it takes a while to decompress a 545MB zip file too. Three files were extracted, the setup.exe and setup.gcd files, along with readme.txt - the typical package normally received from this site - into their own independent folder on my desktop.

I then launched the setup.exe file (running as administrator to ensure permissions were sufficient), and after a couple of minutes the typical dialog box popped up saying that the program was "successfully activated," and the usual webpage was displayed upon closing the gray dialog box.

At this point I expected an installer program to launch (or at least be visible somewhere), but NADA! There have been no recent modifications or additions to Program Files or the (x86) that I've been able to identify, and I've given up trying to find any if there are! I see that other commenters are having a similar experience, so I have a feeling there must be something wrong with the installer bot - and solving that issue is WAY above my pay grade, and my motivation at this point is sagging beyond the lowest point of the scale.

I appreciate the fact that some really attractive-looking games are offered here - I just wish they would WORK once in a while!

FWIW, I'm running an HP laptop with AMD processor, 6GB RAM using the Windows 8.1 OS. I would really appreciate a response before this giveaway ends, but I really don't expect one since there's just under 6 hours left, and then there's the factor of time zones and the like.

Bottom line - thanks for wasting my time and bandwidth!

<blockquote>...................Moderator Comment........................</blockquote>
<blockquote>Thank you for your feedback Don, over 6500 community members have downloaded this file and only a few community members have reported problems installing it. It is not the fault of the files you have downloaded, but more than likely an issue with your set up. Possbly a conflict with other programs. The most likely culprit is your security. I'v e just posted about this in a comment, but will repeat it for you. The giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware, so your security may have blocked it. The only way around this is to either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily. I hope this fixes the problem for you. I know it can be frustrating, especially if you are on a limited bandwidth contract.</blockquote>

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Reply | Comment by Don – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#42

I found the solution I have AVG antivirus on my PC and disabling it allowed the setup screen to appear and the game is now installing. Check your anti virus software and see if that is the problem

Reply | Comment by Peter Wales – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+4)

Peter Wales, Thank you for your suggestion! It worked for me as well!

It seems to me that a conflict with an anti-virus program should trigger some sort of an alert to the user so that the user would have the choice of whether or not to allow an action should proceed.

However, that is a fault within AVG, and this site nor the developers of this game bear no real culpability with regard to this type of issue. All anti-virus programs yield any number of "false positives" as a demonstration of "over-caution" on the part of the makers of the protection software, but most will have some method of notifying the user whenever a blocking event takes place.

But that's a conversation to be had elsewhere... Thanks everyone so much for responding, especially in such a timely manner!

Reply | Comment by Don – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#41

I downloaded this during off peak time & it took only 7 minutes!

Reply | Comment by Larry Carter – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

#40

I have downloaded, installed and activated 3 games recently, and none of them has installed. I get the response, the game is successfully activated, but it doesn't install. What am I doing wrong?

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

The issue is usually your anti-malware suite. Giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware becasue malware is often hidden by Themida code. So your security may have blocked it for that reason. The only way around this is to either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily. :)

Reply | Comment by Peter Wales – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+3)

Peter Wales,

Try disabling your antivirus before running setup. This is what I have to do and it works. Sometimes it takes a few tries for it to work for me though. I'm using AVG.

Reply | Comment by Paula Flinn – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#39

I really wish that I could get the programs to install. I would have loved the last few games and this one seems really good. I only get the activation part but it does not install the game.

Any help would be great.
Thanks

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

Hi Lakoi, Because giveaways are protected by a wrapper, which contains Themida code, it can often be mistaken for malware, so your security may have blocked it. The only way around this is to either make an exception via your anti-malware suite or turn it off temporarily. :)

Reply | Comment by Lakoi – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Lakoi,

It sounds like you need to disable your antivirus. I use AVG and it was doing the same thing. Sometimes, I still have to run setup a few times for it to take. Hope this helps.

Reply | Comment by Paula Flinn – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#38

I've played for half an hour or so, and find it is a little different to most HOGs. I like the extra difficulty of assembling the items.
The game did take a long time to download, tho and when closed it takes me to the myplaycity website which I don't really like.
Gameplay could be improved by speeding up the moving between scenes.

Reply | Comment by Cathy Leov – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#37

I was actually really sad to give this one a thumbs down. I have a Win7 comp, AMDFX 4100 Quad Core, 16GB ram, fiber internet, dual monitor and there's nothing this game did right. The download was 515MB which is more than the 24.5MB that it was said to be. I thought, okay, I have fiber so I top out at 50MBPS download. Most offices don't download this fast. Nope, the most I got was 24.5-30 KBPS so it took 4 hours to download. Skip ahead and I finally install the game. It popped up with the message "Unable to execute file:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\1 Moment of Time - Silentville\install.url

ShellExecuteEx failed; code 1156.
An error occured in sending the command to the application"
It ran anyway.
It has not one extra link but 4, 1 for online games, one for Klondike Online, one for MyPlayCity and then one for the game. I clean up my desktop, close the MyPlayCity window and get to the game. The game opens in my primary monitor and turns the alternate monitor into 640x480, windowed. So everything is the same size but it's a tiny window with black outline while the game is full screened. Weird. I push on. I get through the intro and do a few puzzles inside the train station. I get to the point where I earn the anti rust spray and it kind of locks up. I can move my mouse and highlight Hint, the book opens, the map twitches when I go over it but I can't click anything at all. The only way out was 3Key and kill game.exe*32. I might try it again but I doubt it. I think this one is destined for deletion. I don't regret giving it a try though. Just not working properly for me.

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

Thank you for your feedback Keisha, my fault re the wrong size quoted. I meant to proof read the review i posted, but had the opportunity to go out for the day, and needed to leave right away becasue we first needed to drop my daughter off at archery. I've only been back an hour and realized I'd not corrected several mistakes including certain coding that had moved parts of my review over to the right. Just corrected those now.. :)

I was actually really sad to give this one a thumbs down.  I have a Win7 comp, AMDFX 4100 Quad Core, 16GB ram, fiber internet, dual monitor and there's nothing this game did right.  The download was 515MB which is more than the 24.5MB that it was said to be.  I thought, okay, I have fiber so I top out at 50MBPS download.  Most offices don't download this fast.  Nope, the most I got was 24.5-30 KBPS so it took 4 hours to download.  Skip ahead and I finally install the game.  It popped up with the message "Unable to execute file:
C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\1 Moment of Time - Silentville\install.url

ShellExecuteEx failed; code 1156.
An error occured in sending the command to the application"
It ran anyway.
It has not one extra link but 4, 1 for online games, one for Klondike Online, one for MyPlayCity and then one for the game.  I clean up my desktop, close the MyPlayCity window and get to the game.  The game opens in my primary monitor and turns the alternate monitor into 640x480, windowed.  So everything is the same size but it's a tiny window with black outline while the game is full screened.  Weird.  I push on.  I get through the intro and do a few puzzles inside the train station.  I get to the point where I earn the anti rust spray and it kind of locks up.  I can move my mouse and highlight Hint, the book opens, the map twitches when I go over it but I can't click anything at all.  The only way out was 3Key and kill game.exe*32.  I might try it again but I doubt it.  I think this one is destined for deletion.  I don't regret giving it a try though.  Just not working properly for me.

<blockquote>...................Moderator Comment........................</blockquote>
<blockquote>Thank you for your feedback Keisha, my fault re the wrong size quoted. I meant to proof read the review i posted, but had the opportunity to go out for the day, and needed to leave right away becasue we first needed to drop my daughter off at archery. I've only been back an hour and realized I'd not corrected several mistakes including certain coding that had moved parts of my review over to the right. Just corrected those now.. :)</blockquote>

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Reply | Comment by Keisha – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

#36

Thanks looks attractive for a HOG and easy enough to stick with it. d/l still bit slow but ok. Helpful
reminder to adjust the res & compat for full screen if desired.

Reply | Comment by beergas – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

#35

Thanks!

Reply | Comment by Mrbd – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)

#34

Passing on this because I already have too many HOGs (and supposedly better ones - thanks for the excellent useful review), tho it IS a nice looking one and a couple mini-games look interesting.

Reply | Comment by wyrwolf – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-4)

#33

Plus points: Nice graphics, decent sound, nice idea with having to assemble the Hidden objects before you have "found" them, some nice puzzles albeit simple
Min points: dark items and small items can be very hard to find. Not all descriptions are clear enough on what they should be, story is not polished.

Despite the min points I think it is overal a nice game which I will try to finish on both settings, if I would have bought it however I probably would go for a refund

Reply | Comment by Mavadelo – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

#32

Took me some hrs to download which should not be the problem on my part but I don't care anyway.
Installed without a problem on Win10.

I lovelovelove HOG - so I am very happy about this one. Love the dark story too, graphics are great, it's a bit slow but as I have open Farmville in the browser it could be slowing down everything.

Can't say anything about the music cause I can't listen at the moment.

Thank you very much for this excellent game of my preferred genre.

Reply | Comment by Anu – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

#31

Over 10 hours downloading...

Reply | Comment by lla – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

#30

Thanks for the comprehensive review Stephen. It looks like a game I will appreciate because I don't have to shoot, run, jump or use the keyboard to get to my objective. I can't yet comment on its flaws or merits as it's still downloading. However it usually takes me about a week to work through one of these games so giving a critique on day one is really impossible for me. I have downloaded games from MPC before and have not had any problems. So thank you to all the sponsors and GOTD for this offering. (It's still downloading with 20 minutes to go. Time for a cup of tea!)

Reply | Comment by DJ – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

#29

I bought this game awhile back. I agree that this was one of the games where the storyline took a back seat to the flashy stuff (like graphics and soundtrack) and, as a result, it took me a long time to get around to completing it but, when I finally did, I decided I quite liked it after all. The idea behind the story was nicely creepy - it was too bad it was never quite fleshed out.

The graphics were very nice for the most part and did a lot to set the mood.

While the voice actor was pretty good, it was really obvious towards the end of the game that there was only one guy doing all the voices and they started sounding the same to me.

If I didn't have it already, I would still jump at the chance to get this HOG for free despite its flaws.

Reply | Comment by karolb – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

#28

My kind of game. I like the 'darkly' styled HOGS. Downloaded in 30 min from GOTD.....thanks!

Reply | Comment by BlkPanther – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

#27

I started download at 10.30 had a PC freeze so had to restart download at 12.15 but at 18.35 it finished and installed. This must have been the longest download I have had but looking at the game as a whole well worth while, thank you :0)

Reply | Comment by LVB – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#26

The game wil not play in fullscreen. Selecting fullscreen in the options menu has no effect. I have win 10, is there an solution?
Evert

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

Hi Evert, it could be that the resolution you have your monitor set to isn't native to the game so it defaults to windowed mode. I have my main monitor set to 1920 x 1080 and it works perfectly in Full Screen.. :)

Reply | Comment by Evert – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Evert, Exact same problem on my Windows 10 laptop. Makes it unpleasant to play. Full screen worked on my Windows 8.1 desktop but it was stretched to 16:9 ratio and had a thick black border. Changed my secondary monitor (a 4K TV) to be the primary monitor and now it looks okay. I would have preferred to play it on the laptop and be able to play it in other rooms but playing it on the big screen in the living room will be okay. All screens are set to 1920 x 1080 resolution.
When I closed the game and the URL launched it tried to install an add-on to my browser: not quite what I'd call "innocuous" because I'm not sure whether I managed to stop it.

Reply | Comment by Jerry – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Jerry, I solved the problem by rightclicking on the exe file and in the contexmenu you can have windows repair the problem. I dont now if this works in win 8.1. It did work for me.

Reply | Comment by Evert – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#25

1 Moment of Time: Silentville is a beautifully laid out visual game with a deeper story line than most HOG's. Really nice graphics on my Win 10 Pro 64bit machine, with a GTX970. Playability was smooth and sharp.
While HOG are not my favourite genre, this one has several things going for it, such as the tutorial that you can choose to add in the beginning, better explanations such as the 'eye' definition at the beginning of the game and such.
The only suggestion I could see is making inventory items have a small color coordinated dot or square in the corner according to what area they are to be used in, although that might make it to easy for the regular players of HOG games, and might be geared more towards me.

Didn't play through the whole game yet, so can't comment on storyline accurately yet, but I'd sum up this review by saying, a more complete, a bit better depth than the usual HOG game, and worth a look at if you even casually like playing these or storyline games as well.

Reply | Comment by JBurt – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#24

It took an age to download, which could have been due to either the server or our rubbish internet connection, and then quite a long time to unpack and install. AVG had to be disabled.

The graphics are lovely, but the rest seems a bit hit and miss. It would help if there were arrows at the sides of the screen to show where to click to move out of the current 'room' because clicking in the wrong place means you then have to go back again, and it's slow.

I quite like the concept of multiple tasks in the HOG scenes, but it takes a bit of getting used to.

I think I'll enjoy the rest of the game, so thanks GGOTD for a few hours entertainment.

Reply | Comment by Mum – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#23

:)

Reply | Comment by Cipek – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-3)

#22

Just upgraded to 42 meg fiber broadband so no chance on earth I am waiting 4 hours for something to download at 28k

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

The reason it's so slow Dave is becasue there are up to 50 community members downloading at any one time early on in the giveaway and even more at times. The giveaway servers only have a certain bandwidth, which is shared among all those that are downloading. If you download later in the day, speeds are much faster. I downloaded the game in just a few minutes becasue I was the only community member downloading a the time (I downloaded it on Friday a sI have access to the downloads before it goes live, so know no one else was downloading.. :)

Reply | Comment by Dave – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Moderator, I have no idea what country your servers are in so later in the day might be early in the morning or 12 noon in some other country.

I have not had such a slow download on any other games given away.

Thanks anyway but its all academic now as the giveaway is over.

Reply | Comment by Dave – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#21

Even on my high-speed connection, took 2+ hours to download. Played for about 30 minutes. Nice graphics! This one's a keeper. Thanks GGOTD!!

Reply | Comment by Lara – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#20

I must have played a demo of this game before because I remember the beginning. I don't know if it was on my "to play" list and I never got around to it or if I gave up in utter frustration. I don't own it, unless I had downloaded it from MPC and just deleted it. In any case, here are my thoughts:

I LOVE the story line. Most of these HO games follow a fairly standard formula: a loved on (usually a child or husband - says a lot about who usually plays these) is kidnapped/lost/in danger by Generic Bad-Guy/Strange Force, often supernatural/fantasy in nature, and you, as the playable character, must find/save the person. For once I didn't try to click through the opening cut-scene (I'm not sure you can). There was a small girl in it and I was a afraid this was going to be that tired formula but instead you are thrust into this strange world with no mention of why she is missing and are trying to discover what is going on with you and everyone else. Once you reach the train station you are told the story about what is going on in town by one of the non-playable characters via voice-over and on-screen text. The voice-over actor is OK, not the worst but certainly not the best. I tried clicking through the screens after I read the text to skip the accompanying animation but couldn't. On retrospect, this wasn't too bad. I settled down and allowed myself to enjoy what they did. Had the voice actor or animation been terrible I would have been annoyed, but as such I was able to get into the story a bit better than I usually do.

I haven't played too much past the first HO scene, but so far this feels more like an adventure game than an HO game - a big plus in my book. You need to find items along the way outside of HO scenes to progress and they tend to make sense (a key for a lock, a knob for a door missing one). Where they are found varies, but at least I'm not trying to open a door with a magically stone that I had to make out of pixie dust.

The only real complaints I have for this game right involve the HO scenes (and one is a big one). For some reason they used a blue font for the items that aren't hidden; black for hidden ones. My eyesight is pretty good and I'm having a hard time deciphering what the text reads. The font is small and the game is generally dark in nature at this point and that blue text just gets fuzzy. Really fuzzy. It's a terrible color to put ANY text in, especially when that text is small.

The first HO scene is EXTREMELY dark and everything blends into the background. Most of the items you need to find require them to be put together in some fashion (head on a doll, collecting multiple tickets). This was a blessing in a way as the text was in black until the item is put together, but given how muddy the graphics were I didn't so much find an item by site but rather stumbled on them when the cursor changed shape. At one point I used the hint system and when I saw what I needed I knew I would have never spotted it, not because it was so cleverly hidden but because the colors matched the background so well it blended right in.

I ran into my first bug when I finished this first scene and you can see the screen in question in WhiteRabbit's review. You are rewarded with a red box knife at the end. My screen didn't display the "OK" text to continue with the game. I clicked in all the places where an "X" would normally be hoping to continue and in the end I just shut the game down via Windows. If someone runs into this problem maybe you'll be able to continue by clicking where the "OK" is placed. When I started the game back up I was brought to that exact screen and the "OK" was present.

I played a little bit further and there are mini-games scattered throughout. I didn't think this game would have a map system but just after this you are rewarded with one. It isn't detailed the way some maps are today; you don't get to jump to a particular room or (so far) indications that there is something to do somewhere. If you open the map in the station room where you find it, most of the rest of the map has fog over it, except for the station itself. If you click on the station, you'll be transported to the outside of the station where you started. It's a basic map that allows you to jump from general area to general area so you don't have to backtrack through a bunch of scenes, but that is it.

Overall, just for the story line I'd recommend this game as it is different from the usual fair. The game mechanics work as expected and with the exception of that one issue work very well. For those who like the old adventure games, this has a similar feel to it. However, it IS dark and difficult to see individual items. It's the color palette more than anything else. Some of the screenshots in WhiteRabbits review look better, so it may improve outside this area. Those with bad eyesight may find this game more frustrating than not.

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

As always an excellent review of the game Melika. Thank you for taking the time to give the community feedback. Very much appreciated. I wish there were more comments like yours. :)

I must have played a demo of this game before because I remember the beginning. I don't know if it was on my "to play" list and I never got around to it or if I gave up in utter frustration. I don't own it, unless I had downloaded it from MPC and just deleted it. In any case, here are my thoughts:

I LOVE the story line. Most of these HO games follow a fairly standard formula: a loved on (usually a child or husband - says a lot about who usually plays these) is kidnapped/lost/in danger by Generic Bad-Guy/Strange Force, often supernatural/fantasy in nature, and you, as the playable character, must find/save the person. For once I didn't try to click through the opening cut-scene (I'm not sure you can). There was a small girl in it and I was a afraid this was going to be that tired formula but instead you are thrust into this strange world with no mention of why she is missing and are trying to discover what is going on with you and everyone else. Once you reach the train station you are told the story about what is going on in town by one of the non-playable characters via voice-over and on-screen text. The voice-over actor is OK, not the worst but certainly not the best. I tried clicking through the screens after I read the text to skip the accompanying animation but couldn't. On retrospect, this wasn't too bad. I settled down and allowed myself to enjoy what they did. Had the voice actor or animation been terrible I would have been annoyed, but as such I was able to get into the story a bit better than I usually do.

I haven't played too much past the first HO scene, but so far this feels more like an adventure game than an HO game - a big plus in my book. You need to find items along the way outside of HO scenes to progress and they tend to make sense (a key for a lock, a knob for a door missing one). Where they are found varies, but at least I'm not trying to open a door with a magically stone that I had to make out of pixie dust.

The only real complaints I have for this game right involve the HO scenes (and one is a big one). For some reason they used a blue font for the items that aren't hidden; black for hidden ones. My eyesight is pretty good and I'm having a hard time deciphering what the text reads. The font is small and the game is generally dark in nature at this point and that blue text just gets fuzzy. Really fuzzy. It's a terrible color to put ANY text in, especially when that text is small.

The first HO scene is EXTREMELY dark and everything blends into the background. Most of the items you need to find require them to be put together in some fashion (head on a doll, collecting multiple tickets). This was a blessing in a way as the text was in black until the item is put together, but given how muddy the graphics were I didn't so much find an item by site but rather stumbled on them when the cursor changed shape. At one point I used the hint system and when I saw what I needed I knew I would have never spotted it, not because it was so cleverly hidden but because the colors matched the background so well it blended right in.

I ran into my first bug when I finished this first scene and you can see the screen in question in WhiteRabbit's review. You are rewarded with a red box knife at the end. My screen didn't display the "OK" text to continue with the game. I clicked in all the places where an "X" would normally be hoping to continue and in the end I just shut the game down via Windows. If someone runs into this problem maybe you'll be able to continue by clicking where the "OK" is placed. When I started the game back up I was brought to that exact screen and the "OK" was present.

I played a little bit further and there are mini-games scattered throughout. I didn't think this game would have a map system but just after this you are rewarded with one. It isn't detailed the way some maps are today; you don't get to jump to a particular room or (so far) indications that there is something to do somewhere. If you open the map in the station room where you find it, most of the rest of the map has fog over it, except for the station itself. If you click on the station, you'll be transported to the outside of the station where you started. It's a basic map that allows you to jump from general area to general area so you don't have to backtrack through a bunch of scenes, but that is it.

Overall, just for the story line I'd recommend this game as it is different from the usual fair. The game mechanics work as expected and with the exception of that one issue work very well. For those who like the old adventure games, this has a similar feel to it. However, it IS dark and difficult to see individual items. It's the color palette more than anything else. Some of the screenshots in WhiteRabbits review look better, so it may improve outside this area. Those with bad eyesight may find this game more frustrating than not.

<blockquote>...................Moderator Comment........................</blockquote>
<blockquote>As always an excellent review of the game Melika. Thank you for taking the time to give the community feedback. Very much appreciated. I wish there were more comments like yours. :)</blockquote>

Save | Cancel

Reply | Comment by Melika – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

Melika, Hi Melika I had the missing OK as well a few times, however hovering over the place where it should be always produced the ok button afterall

Reply | Comment by Mavadelo – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

Mavadelo, I just got notified of your comment. Thanks for letting us know it can happen a few times and that hovering in the correct place will reveal the button. The hard shut-down didn't save my progress.

Reply | Comment by Melika – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

#19

Upon attempting setup..checksum error! Suggestions? I don't want to wait for another 1hr. + d/l. Thanks

Reply | Comment by bluzedrumr – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#18

My download is clocking between 2 to 10 hours and barely moving, so I've cancelled for now and will try again later. Guess the traffic to the site must be much greater than the amount of comments I can see here.

HOGs are in a genre that pretty much played out in terms of unique game features, so I usually play them for the interesting characters, graphics and story. Although, according to Mr. Whiterabbit, it falls down quite a bit in story, it seems likable enough otherwise, so I'd like to give it a try.

Only one HOG I've played involved plants in a puzzle, so I'm very curious to see how the mini games in this one are implemented.

Thanks for the great review as usual. Wish I could have started playing right away.

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

Hi Dana, traffic is always really high for the first half of the giveaway. I'd consider using a download manager as the giveaway is downloaded in several parts then joined together onc completed. also, with a download manager, if for some reason the download is interrupted, you can usually resume where it stopped. There are free ones available that do the job adequately. I use a commercial one called Internet download manager which can be set to download as many as 16 packets at a time, Though I have it disabled for the game giveaway and use the windows down-loader. I usually download the evening before the game goes live as I'm given access to the download via the admin panel. :)

Reply | Comment by Dana – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#17

Very good - so far - hidden object game. I had no difficulties installing it on my Windows 10 64 desktop. The "usual" MyPlayCity links to change home page etc have been removed for this giveaway. However, I was disappointed that, after it installed, I was taken to MyPlayCity with a comment to the effect of "Almost done. Just click to install extension" and an arrow pointing to the top bar of Opera. I just ignored it and it never installed but the game still plays fine.

The graphics for this game are very good. Interesting story line. It appears that the hidden object portions are going to be more difficult than your usual HOGs. I'm playing casual mode and had to use the hint button twice to complete the first scene! Maybe it's just I'm not fully awake yet, but I can see this game being more challenging than most.

For me it will be a keeper as I love HOGs. Thanks GGOTD team. I can live with the browser popping open when I finish playing as it's just a click to make it go away again.

Reply | Comment by granny483 – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

#16

Installing went very well, but AVG detects a virus e-and shuts the loading of the game. The game doesn't start.

Reply | Comment by Véronique – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#15

took 8 minutes to dl using IDM

Reply | Comment by swammpy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

swammpy, thanks for the IDM suggestion, installed that and it changed a 4-6 hour download into about what it is reporting to be about 25 minutes. Not as fast as your dl, but a whole lot better than tying up my PC for 4 hours. :)

Reply | Comment by Karen – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

To be fair, I downloaded IDM and the game took 20 minutes instead of hours. However, it's not as good as the 5 minutes from Big Fish and now I have another piece of software installed on my machine that I won't use that often.

As for the game, I really like HOGs and this one installed on Windows 10 just fine and plays well, so far.

Reply | Comment by Marcy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+1)

Marcy ,
IDM will do more than you think itll download videos from video sites an bbc i player itll grab web sites but hey what do i no?

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

IDM is a great piece of software. Purchased a license a couple of years ago.. :)

Reply | Comment by swammpy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Karen,
give it chance keep running it to dl anything on the web then youll get an update soon update but dont upgrade yet you got 30 days free then up too you too buy but honestley the fastest dloader i no wish i had the cash to buy the liecence

Reply | Comment by swammpy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-1)

Marcy ,
lots of malware in bigfish sorry

run this and youll be suprised

the free edition

http://www.superantispyware.com/

Reply | Comment by swammpy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-4)

swammpy, I have no use for any of the things you say it can do Just this download.

Reply | Comment by Marcy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (-2)

swammpy, Been using Big Fish for many years and have never had malware or anything else in any of my downloads.

Reply | Comment by Marcy – 8 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (+2)

#14

very nice game should be windows 10 friendly though screen resolution needs to be set so DPI checkbox is ticked in compatability mode so it is in full screen
other that that it is a very good graphics intensive game
thank you so much GOTD