The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure

In Brief

The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure is a nine year old Hidden Object Match Three cross with building elements and mini games included.

Installation Issues:

The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure downloads to a 45.7 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is 49.6 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\The Enchanted Kingdom - Elisa's Adventures

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game; the name of which may vary each week can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation. There are details in the read me about this issue.

Introduction:

Elisa was just a peasant girl when the king died and one of his advisors told her he believed she was the rightful heir to the throne. To prove her worth, Elisa must conquer a fearsome dragon, face off against a giant plant and bring down a wicked witch, all while gathering the resources to rebuild what was once a glorious realm. All kinds of fun await the brave of heart in The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure, a delightful Match 3 game for the whole family!

Reference accessed HERE. 16th February 2019

The Game:

Building a kingdom is a tough gig. After all, you have to match all those tiles, unscramble those pictures and build production facilities in less than two seconds. Okay, it’s not necessarily tough, but it sure is fun, and The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa’s Adventure is definitely fun if not deep.

In the kingdom of Arroyo, the King is looking for someone to take the throne when he is gone. The one who finds the Royal Ruby will inherit the kingdom. Rian, the royal scholar, believes he has found the heir to the kingdom in a peasant girl named Elisa. Elisa, without batting an eyelash, goes off with him to find the Royal Ruby, bringing peace and prosperity in her wake as she solves problems from one land to the next. With the help of bumbling mage Maron, the trio work to set right all the issues of the population, though they may not be what they think.

The story, while amazingly predictable, is filled with lovely touches. For example, one town is afraid of a giant squid that has washed ashore. Elisa, using a magic bracelet to speak to him, realizes he is scared and wants to go back out to see. Another has her helping a dragon who just has heartburn, which is why he’s burping fire. Sure, it’s light, but it makes the story more believable as Elisa increases her renown.

However, no game would exist without its game play, and The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa’s Adventure delivers solid, varied game play. In order to rebuild the towns, Elisa travels from location to location on a world map, collecting resources and building new production facilities to complete a set of tasks in each land. To collect resources, Elisa plays two basic kinds of puzzle games. Either creating a chain of three or more tiles or swapping tile match-three gam eplay to break gold tiles underneath, Elisa is able to rebuild each town.

The chain building is simple if uninspired. Making matches of four or more adds coins which can be collected to buy items at stores, while making multiple matches in a row builds a meter that awards various power-ups. These include traditional tile breakers, cluster bombs or breaking whole columns or rows. Again, you’ve played it before, but it’s still fun.

The swapping, on the other hand, is a chore. The levels aren’t vertical but V-shaped. So when tiles are cleared, they sort of fall in two directions simultaneously. “Sort of” if only because if you can understand the gravitational pulls in these levels, you are a better player than I. These levels suffer particularly from the “one more tile in the corner to break” problem typical of match-threes. Thankfully, an abundance of power-ups helps alleviate this slightly, but why the levels have to be “unique” when it becomes frustrating is confusing.

Other levels, like talking to animals or helping Maron, add different challenges. A decent hidden-object section, word puzzle or jigsaw puzzle is a welcome variation. Again, these are not necessarily spectacular, but are solid and well-done. A generous hint system ensures nobody will get stuck, but know that no game is skippable.

Once the raw materials are collected, they can be processed further. Logs can turn into boards, ore can turn into metal bars, and coal can become bricks. Obviously, it takes more raw materials to make processed goods, and those good are required to complete each land. But if you’re at all low, you can press a “Play” button on the map, and Elisa will go to wherever she needs to go next.

The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa’s Adventure is always pretty both visually and aurally. The detailed, cartoon-like graphic have lots of personality, and the soundtrack is medieval, lush and orchestral. The presentation is only marred during the cut-scenes, when the music mysteriously stops playing and the characters become two-dimensional paper figures that disappear when they turn. Add in the occasional typo (“Your our new mayor!”) and it’s a bit of a disappointment.

In the end, The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa’s Adventure ends up being a mixed bag. The graphics and sound, variety of game play and fun story are all very compelling reasons to play. Some of the more frustrating elements, unskippable mini-games and low-quality cut-scenes drag down an otherwise fine game.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by David Stone on Apr 5, 2010, edited and re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 16th February 2019

Conclusion:

Although a little dated by todays arcade standards, especially the story board sections of game the hidden object and various match three games are decent enough for me to keep this in my library. I wasn't impressed with the few mini games I played as they were basic jigsaws and compare the differences puzzles. The most annoying thing was the inability to skip them

Other Reviews and Videos of The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure:

You can see other comments of The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventures HERE and HERE

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE part 1), a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI9ReVrD-YQ" rel="nofollow">HERE (part 2), HERE, HERE (Italiano/Italiana), HERE (Deutsche) & HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try whitelisting the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If The Enchanted Kingdom: Elisa's Adventure doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).