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Check out the end of the review for details of the latest freebies from Indie Gala and Epic Games.

Twisted Lands: Shadow Town

In Brief

A nine year old Hidden Object game.

Introduction:

Gather items, solve puzzles and make spine-chilling discoveries as you explore a deserted island in Twisted Lands: Shadow Town! Why does your heart beat faster when you peer into a dark room? What makes the hair on your neck bristle when something invisible whispers in your ear? Dive into the emotion of fear, and find out, in this spooky Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game!

Edited reference accessed HERE. 7th April 2019

Installation:

Twisted Lands: Shadow Town downloads to a 250 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 approximately 264 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Twisted Lands - Shadow Town

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

Zombies, snakes and murder, oh my! All of this and more awaits in Twisted Lands: Shadow Town, a new hidden object thriller in which the name of the game isn’t to solve the mystery and save the world, but just to find your woman and get the heck out of Dodge. A strong start had my hopes high but in the end, a few too many missteps keep this adventure from being a truly memorable experience.

The last game to come from Alawar Stargaze, Snark Busters: Welcome to the Club, absolutely rocked my socks off, so I was eagerly looking forward to the studio’s next effort. Twisted Lands: Shadow Town certainly hits most of the right notes. It’s easy on the eyes, with sharp, well-defined graphics and a good variety of scenes that range from a cruise ship run aground to a spooky mansion and a mysteriously abandoned town. The hidden object searches are reasonably challenging without being obnoxiously difficult, as are the puzzle segments, although one or two can be a bit tricky unless you have the foresight to do some old-fashioned note-taking – which, for the record, is an idea I’m quite fond of. The story steps awkwardly at times but serves up a sufficiently creepy mystery that follows the descent of an entire island into a spiral of madness and murder that ultimately traps all who wander near.

The biggest problem with Shadow Town is that it’s a two-hour game in a three-hour package. Way too much time is spent moving back and forth between locations for trivial purposes. And it’s not just a matter of running between adjacent rooms to collect a pile of items or wrap up a two-part puzzle; you’ll quite literally be making repeated trips across almost the entire map to retrieve individual objects needed to move the game forward. It may sound like nit-picking but it becomes excessive to the point of frustration, because it’s obvious the developer is just trying to pad out the play time by making you run around in circles.

Heightening that annoyance is the presence of two maze sections, one of which separates two of the game’s primary areas. These “fog-enshrouded paths” are small and fairly simple to navigate, especially with the aid of the hand-drawn maps left lying on the ground at the start of each, but they simply should not be there. Mazes do not contribute to the quality of a game, only to its length; this is highlighted by the fact that these sections can be easily traversed even by the most directionally-challenged players with the use of the hint function, which will keep you pointed in the right direction and lead you through step-by-step. Why even bother with a maze if the string that guides you through has already been laid?

The story has a few gaping holes but still manages to tie everything together nicely with a satisfying twist to wrap things up. The “hero” begins the game as a rather distasteful character, a deep-sea treasure hunter who clearly has no qualms about the legality or morality of his trade as long as he can make a buck from it. But his determination to save his beloved Angel from harm, no matter what the risk to himself, is admirable, revealing him to be more Han Solo than Jabba the Hutt. At the same time, peering too closely at the details is bound to result in a few tricky questions, particularly with regards to the way everything in the game apparently happened in either the early or late 20th century. Unless I missed some devious plot device that explains this apparent time-warp (and that’s entirely possible), the best way to approach the Shadow Town tale is with a quick, light touch.

These may sound like minor things to complain about and in some ways they are. There’s no question that Twisted Lands: Shadow Town brings a lot of goodness to the table. It looks great and it mixes in a decent number of animated cut scenes that bring the story to life. The hidden object searches are conventional but attractive and entertaining. The Collector’s Edition of the game includes a built-in walk through and a bonus chapter set on the same desolate island that also reveals something called Twisted Lands: Insomnia – a glimpse into the future, perhaps? Most hidden object fans will probably find something here to like.

There are other rough spots. The soundtrack has a tendency to become overbearing at times and also has an unfortunate habit of starting and stopping haphazardly, leaving pauses of a minute or more between tracks. Compared to some other Collector’s Edition releases, this one doesn’t offer much in the way of extras. But ultimately, effective horror is all about pacing and that’s where this game really stumbles. The individual components are all quite solid and the big finish, when it finally arrives, is good fun and worth waiting for. But it’s all spread too thin, with way too much time-wasting filler. Twisted Lands: Shadow Town is a good game, but not great. Alawar’s “new level of horror in casual games” will have to wait a little while longer.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Andy Chalk on Sep 23, 2010, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 7th April 2019

Conclusion:

I've not played the game long enough to give a fair account of my opinion (considering I don't enjoy these games much these days having played hundreds of them)

The Gamezebo reviewer Andy Chalk said the game had solid graphics and an engaging story, but far too much running around for no good reason and poor pacing.

Other Reviews and Videos of Twisted Lands: Shadow Town:

You can read other comments about Twisted Lands: Shadow Town HERE and HERE and several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

Written Walkthroughs of Twisted Lands: Shadow Town:

You can find a couple of written walkthrough HERE & 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 Steam as part of the Twisted Lands trilogy bundle HERE for £14.99/$19.99/€19.99/₽419; or If you prefer just the Shadow town version you can get the collectors edition via Big Fish Games HERE for £1080 (or two monthly credits) reduced from£15.42.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Twisted Lands: Shadow Town 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 white-listing 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 Twisted Lands: Shadow Town 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 Twisted Lands: Shadow Town doesn't 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, heavily discounted (up to 95%) 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; she often updates with the latest deals from Indie Gala, the Humble Store and others HERE; plus other community members sometimes post details of free games elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (current deals are usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).

The free game over at Epic Games is now The Witness; a single-player game in an open world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles; (sells for £29.99/$39.99/€36.99/₽699). From the 18th of April Transistor (sells for £15.46/$19.99/€16.79/₽435) is available free HERE; a sci-fi-themed action RPG where you discover the world of transistors; from the creators of Bastion. Indie Gala have removed some of the games that were available last week and added new ones to their free games list, (at least 20 free games are available via their recently added showcase section) that includes adventure, RPG, Simulation, strategy and casual games (most recent first) i.e. Survivalist (a huge open-world Role Playing Game), Galactic Missile Defense - ( an endless/leaderboard-based shooter and tower defense game, where you must protect Earth from the invading Martians), Super Destronaut - (A retro space invaders clone), Siluman Project - (An RPG Maker game where the purpose of the game is to defeat monster girls bosses and reach the ending based on what action do you do), Five Nations - (A futuristic real-time strategy game that follows the events of a mind-bending opera of space about the survival of humanity), False ReBirth - (Another RPG Maker game - A psychological, story-focused game about the last remaining human), GOR - Gorilla Office Rampage - (Top down action game - play as a monkey and you smash stuff), Home is where Chip is - (Casual simulation), Age of Fear: The Free World - (introduction to the series' tried-and-true game play, focusing on non-linear exploration and combat in an Open World style), Die Legende von Saya: Befehl aus der Dunkelheit - (aka The Legend of Saya: Command from the Dark) - (Action adventure RPG), What Never Was, The Last Humans: Awakening, Childhood, Dunwell, Safe Not Safe, Hi Hotel, Bugs Must Die, Cuadradito y Circulito, Hellino, Hovership Havoc and Wake Up , or you can find them all HERE. Finally, there are some excellent bargains on sale via Steam HERE.