Jane Angel: Templar Mystery:

In Brief:
Jane Angel: Templar Mystery is a Hidden Object games released over a decade ago that has two modes of play, timed and untimed, interspersed with mini games and story boards.

You can see a video of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE

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Jane Angel: Templar Mystery is available in the Steam store for £3.99, the Steam community give it a mixed reception. You can see the 32 reviews posted since it was release don Steam in 2009 HERE. You can also see Big Fish community members comments and issues about today's game giveaway HERE

Introduction:
Jane Angel , an FBI agent and an art expert, is investigating the case of medieval coins contraband. All the clues show that Jane has found the way to discover the Holy Grail hidden by the mysterious Knights Templar. Where could the Holy Grail be found nowadays? Was it brought to Colombia by Columbus under the Red Templar’s Cross on his sails? Was it buried under Roslyn Chapel in Scottish Mountains? Are Maltese Knights, Hospitaller considered to be the keepers of the Holy Grail? Join enigmatic adventure! Help Jane to find the answers…

Key Features:
1) ... variety of geographic sets: Los-Angeles, Colombia, England, Scotland, Malta…
2) ... 7 different mini-game types (including puzzles, 3D puzzles, hexagonal lines, tags, words & codes…)
3) ... 3 unique game mechanics (in addition to a traditional object search): puzzle-then-seek (searching for the objects on 3 pictures after collecting them as a puzzle), finding differences (placing the objects in their proper places), historical hidden (searching for an object that can’t belong to a specified historical epoch, e.g. “an aircraft in The Medieval Ages”)
4) ... 30 levels, 24 unique locations, 15 scrollable locations
5) ... A Strong storyline with 24 cut-scenes
6) ... 2 game modes: story-driven and free-play, time trial for every particular location!

Reference accessed HERE 13th June 2021 posted by Whiterabbit-uk

The Game:

I often say I don't enjoy playing Hidden Object games much these days, but I must admit to actually liking Jane Angel: Templar Mystery. The HOG scenes are relatively challenging at times (if you don't use any hints) but are easy enough for HOG Noobs (if there is such a person) and the puzzles that arise from them are nicely linked to the games story, for example after completing the first HOG scene at the airport I was asked to find several pieces of an airline ticket to complete the puzzle. Following that a mini game popped up where I had to assemble the ticket pieces into the whole. Fairly simple to do, but I liked the links between the HOG's and the puzzles.

Some of the scenes are scrolling scenes where you have to click and hold your LMB then drag the scene to expose more locations. This can actually help in finding some items because if they are in part of the scene that is hidden, they will appear greyed out until you move the scene to where they are visible. To make things even easier, when the object you are looking for is partially visible it will be in between the black and light grey colours of the visible and invisible.

There are mini games included with this HOG which I've already mentioned above, also included are lab mini game for example creating colour chains that include the same coloured balls that are adjacent to the ball you start with. Move the ball to an adjacent free cell. You will see colour chains you need to collect on the left hand panel where the search list is located. You can see the chain length by the number drawn on the cell where you want the ball to be placed. You can only move balls if there is a free path of empty cells between the old and new locations.

You'll also find spot the differences and logical chains, which are partially explained via the images I've included below. Logical chains for example are explained thus:

At the end of a location scene you will create an object usage sequence to reveal a mission target. Choose the first object in the sequence then click on one of the yellow tickets. If you select the correct ticket tied to the sequence, i.e. if you've chosen the first object in the sequence, the yellow ticket will show a number one. If you've chosen incorrectly no number will show. . While creating n object usage sequence you should discover new evidence.

Each chapter of the game is laid out on a map table with each location once unlocked visible on the table as well as in a journal that is located in the bottom right of the table. If you choose to play the timed mode a clock with a digital timer is located in the top right of the table. This is also visible in the un timed mode, but remains at 00:00. Interspersed between each scene is a story board giving you more information about the story.

Conclusion:
Overall a well constructed hidden object game. There's nothing really new introduced, but it's well organised and the story is interesting enough for me a with known HOG Phobia to actually enjoy it. ;) My recommendation, even if like me you don't particularly enjoy the genre; download it and check it out during a coffee break or on a rainy day.

Issues:
Nothing of note; however I did get several crashes while taking screen captures. The game would drop to the task bar whenever I took a screen capture and one in three times the game would crash on me and I'd have to restart. That said; this is unlikely to happen unless you have a habit of pausing the game by dropping it to the task bar. you may then find when you bring it back all you get is a white screen, bringing up the task manager will tell you that game game has stopped responding.

Other Free Games:
The latest game from Epic Games is called Control a third person action adventure. There's also another game that was added yesterday called Genshin Impact an open world anime RPG adventure. Both are available free until the 17th June.

Next weeks games include Hell is other Demons an action-platform shooter, with Roguelite elements and Overcooked! 2; Journey back to the Onion Kingdom and assemble your team of chefs in classic couch co-op or online play for up to four players. Hold onto your aprons … it’s time to save the world (again!); both will be available next week Thursday 17th June at 4pm UK time/11am EST

Also from Epic, If you play online with friends there's a decent PvE/PvP free FPS game called Scavengers with a coop mode (I checked it out recently and it looks fantastic as well as plays well) and you can still get the clicker RPG Idle Champions as well as other multiplayer games. I've been posting redeemable codes for free chests that contain various buffs and other items for Idle Champions (time limited for 5 to 7 days from the day of posting) over in the forums HERE. They contain various items that boost your heroes abilities and health as well as affect your group of heroes in game, for example potions that boost health or DPS, contracts that can improve armour or weapons already used by the heroes or other contracts that add specific amounts of gold to your bank as well as items of jewellery, armour or weapons that buff your characters stats. I don't usually play clicker type games, but this one is well supported by the developer and has a massive following. I'll be posting codes for as long as I continue to play the game. I've posted some help sheets and links to a game wiki via the above link as well

Please see Delenn's threads for Steam and Non Steam freebies HERE and HERE respectively. Delenn has been updating these regularly for years now. It’s worth adding these links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, it’s yours to keep. Delenn has recently posted details of more Steam games that are temporarily free. One may be until it leaves early access??? - i.e. Tower Ball - Incremental Tower Défense plus a reflex game called Keyboard Killers are still free. Delenn posted details of a free origin came called Battlefield 4 which is available for free if you have an Amazon Prime account (If you like FPS games, it's a brilliant game to own. (not sure if it's still live).

Please also check out Delenn's thread about the charity bundle over in the forums that costs $5 (or as much as you wish to donate over $5) and includes over a thousand games HERE; Dana also posted a link to the bundle a few days ago.

You'll find hundreds of freeware games of all arcade and indie genres on Itch.io and Caimans Games as well as other sources. Please do check out the game discussion forums for older posts HERE (the sticky section is useful). Many of the earlier posts may be out of date with respect to the links I and others have provided to the free games; however, you only need to know the name of the game to find most of them via other sources. Many of those games from 2008 to around 2017 were posted as part of a project to supplement the lack of weekday games when the game giveaway went to weekend only games around Easter 2008 (mainly instigated due to the financial crisis of 2008) until November 2018 when Falcoware stepped into the weekday slot; however, from around 2015 onwards we did start to get the occasional Steam key for various games offered as limited giveaways, with a restriction on the number of keys available (anywhere from 25 to 2000+). These included over 60 decent AAA games and indie arcade games ; for example some of the better AAA games included , lucky Warhammer: Vermintide 1 & 2 plus DLC for version 2; Dreadlands, Mount & Blade: Warband, Immortal Unchained and Conan Exiles.

I've not posted details of any Indie Gala freebies since my older computer went on the Fritz back in October last year. Since then Indie Gala have added quite a few more free games, some of which are definitely worth downloading. You can find the latest freebies HERE and their showcase list, which includes all the freebies still current; (many of which have been included for a couple of years now) HERE.

It’s worth adding these links to your favourites and checking regularly for available freebies. Most are only free for a specific time. If you miss the deadline you’ll miss out. Once added to your account, they are yours to keep. :)