Panopticon: Path of Reflections was originally given away on the 19th June 2016 HERE; where it received a positive 79% from 109 votes with 155 comments.

Panopticon: Path of Reflections

In Brief

Panopticon: Path of Reflections was originally released as part of the Alawar catalogue of game titles, Panopticon Path of Reflections is now available from the Avanquest GSP label and some of the Free game sites. You can also buy it via Steam as part of a 6 in 1 bundle (on sale for £3.14), together with five other HOG's . This is a Hidden Object Adventure game. In this game you take on the role of Senior Inspector John Perry who has been set the task of investigating the mysterious disappearance of the stage magician Andy Fox and his assistant during a performance.

The game is well-designed with a good mixture of adventure, puzzle solving and hidden object game play. The game requires a 1.6GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM, 1.4GB of hard disk space and support for Direct 9.0c running Windows Vista and later. If you require a written walkthrough you'll find one HERE; via game house. I've posted some links to videos below that may hel if you are stuck. You can read a Steam community members review of the game when they purchased the 6 in 1 bundle HERE; they scored it a 3 out of 5

Introduction:

Reveal the mystery of the great invention of Tesla in the amazing hidden object game Panopticon: Path of Reflections! Get ready to take part in the breathtaking adventure together with inspector John Perry and discover the truth! Are you fond of detective stories? Welcome to the game Panopticon: Path of Reflections that is filled with mysteries and try your luck at looking for the truth! Transfer to the 1886 and join the sensational investigation ever! Do you like circus? Here you will get to the backstage and get to the core of several of tricks! Are you ready? Then let us start! In the game Panopticon: Path of Reflections you become the witness of the famous mystification of Andy Fox and his assistant Angela Forest who disappeared during the performance into the thin air in front of everybody. People like sensations but it was really strange because nobody has seen the pair of illusionists since that performance. The police is stuck, it's time to help! Set off to the famous House of Illusions where Andy lived and investigate it! Here you will probably find lots of interesting, so keep your eyes wide open. Explore the time machine, find the letters from legendary Tesla and go to the amazing travelling circus! A great variety of hidden object scenes awaits you in the game Panopticon: Path of Reflections, explore them carefully not to miss the clues and do your best to complete different mini-games! There are lots of them: place tiles on the game field to combine the same suits or rotate fragments of an ancient drawing to open the lock to the mysterious House of Illusions. Keep in mind that everything there can be interpreted by different ways that's why look for false bottom to everything in the game Panopticon: Path of Reflections! What was Andy's plan and why he had simulated his disappearance? Explore miraculous locations in which the unexpected is real, and employ your skills as a virtual sleuth to solve cunning puzzles in the ravishing game Panopticon: Path of Reflections!

Introduction accessed HERE 19th June 2016, reposted 5th July 2020

If you have a problem installing, activating or getting todays game to work, please visit the problems section, which I've now incorporated into the FAQ's thread, which you can find HERE.

The Game:

As usual with games in this genre, you get the opportunity to make a number of adjustments to the game’s environment and difficulty level. Slider bars are available to set the volume levels for background music and sound effects including the spoken dialogue that features in the game. There are options to play the game in full screen mode with a custom cursor and keeping the aspect ratio. You can also opt to play in Casual mode with a fast Hint and Skip recharging plus sparkles to identify active zones or Expert mode with a slower recharge and no sparkles.

An introductory sequence, featuring spoken dialogue and animated characters, lays the groundwork for the story line before you are called into action. You can skip this sequence and any subsequence conversational interludes with a mouse click. There is an optional tutorial that explains about the different mouse cursors which indicate when specific actions are available and other aspects of the game.

For most of the game you will be in Adventure mode as your characters investigates different locations in alternate dimensions that you access through a strange machine. The view of the current scene will feature a journal in the lower left corner while the right corner holds the rechargeable Hint feature. The space between these two tools will be taken up by an inventory which remains concealed until its area is invaded by the mouse cursor. Generally items in the inventory serves a single purpose but occasionally there will be an object that can be used more than once and it will automatically return to the inventory after each use. Concealed in the top left corner of the screen is the game’s menu option and this, like the inventory, appears when the mouse cursor approaches it.

The various scenes, whether in the House of Illusions or one of the alternate dimensions, that you need to visit in order to solve the mystery, are well drawn with some interesting animations. From time to time you will encounter other characters. They are always willing to chat with their dialogue delivered by a voice actor. The dialogue will also appear on screen in text format. These characters are generally willing to provide assistance to help you with your task but they do expect you to perform a task for them, such as supplying a monocle, thimble or tarot cards, before you get their help.

Hidden Object game play follows a fairly standard pattern. You will be asked to find 15 items presented in a text list that are located within a cluttered, close-up scene. Some scenes are reused but there is variety in the list of items to locate. Occasionally some of the items in the list will be coloured yellow to indicate that an additional action will be required before the object can be located. You might need to open a container, create a pair of objects or repair a particular item. As a reward for finding all the objects in a list, you will receive one of them to be added to the inventory.

As there is no map feature, you might feel that you are left to your own devices with regards to plotting a route between locations. Fortunately the Hint feature can offer assistance as to which direction to move to next. In such instances, the Hint feature will not need to recharge after being used. The Hint feature will also pinpoint areas of interest and, sometimes, indicate the tool or object you need to use as well as identifying an object not yet found in a Hidden Object scene. It will not help when you are attempting to solve a puzzle.

Some effort has been made to integrate the numerous puzzles into the game’s story line with its emphasis on magic. While the Hint feature is disabled during puzzle solving, there is a Skip option plus outlines which can appear to help with positioning when you need to create something.

Original review Edited and accessed via Game Chronicles on the 18th June 2016. however, the review appears to have been removed from their website following their site being moved to a new provider.

Other Reviews:

You can see mini reviews HERE and BFG's forums where the game is discussed in detail HERE

Video's:

You can see several videos of Panopticon: Path of Reflections game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and several videos in a series of walkthrough videos HERE

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway

Don't forget to check out the giveaway forums. Delenn has usually posted the latest freebies. This weeks Epic Game giveaway is Hue. We were supposed to be getting Conan Exiles, but it seems Epic games doesn't have it themselves yet. They have instead added an extra game to next weeks offerings which will be the excellent cooperative zombie shooter Killing Floor 2, Lifeless Planet Premier Edition and The escapist 2. This weeks free game is Hue an award-winning puzzle-adventure, where you alter the world by changing its background color; full colorblind support is also included). Just pop over to the game discussion threads HERE and HERE for links to most of the free games.

There's also a couple of new additions to the Indie Gala developers freebies HERE and HERE (Snow White Solitaire Charmed Kingdom, Adam Wolfe (Complete Edition) and Spirit of Xanadu, plus a couple I've previously missed in the showcase section called Temper Tantrum and Last Man Standing).

Finally, the legendary Steam Summer Sale started on the 25th June and runs until the 9th July. .

Please Stay Safe everyone