Hidden Object Double Feature
^^^ Sung to the familiar Rocky Horror Picture Show tune, of course.
- House of 1,000 Doors: The Palm of Zoroaster
6 hours playtime
- House of 1,000 Doors: Serpent Flame CE
6 hours playtime
So anyway. I realized I was doing that thing. You know that thing? That thing where you keep on buying the games as if you’re playing the games, but actually you’re just buying the games, and then there are more of them than ever? Yes, that thing. That one. So I pointed the computer at some low-hanging fruit, and plucked.
Because of the Nature of the Universe, neither of these games will get tallied in my Backlog Assassins data. I’m playing them out of the House of Snark 6-in-1 Bundle, so the database only sees me playing the hosting bundle game. These are inviso-titles. I can live with it. /shrugs
House of 1,000 Doors: The Palm of Zoroaster Collector’s Edition (2012) and House of 1000 Doors: Serpent Flame Collector’s Edition (2013) are two of the four tales set in the Alawar House of 1,000 Doors game series. Family Secrets and The Palm of Zoroaster are available on Steam as standalone titles; Serpent Flame and the newest, Evil Inside, aren’t. Family Secrets is the clumsiest of the three I’ve played, but all are pretty much middle of the road by-the-numbers Hidden Object games: they branch in predictable, unremarkable ways - explore these four portals, enter these four magical paintings, that sort of thing - and run on second-tier mechanics. Still, the solid keep-it-moving design and general flexibility of the stories keeps things light and fun, and both of these are solid HOG titles.
Palm of Zoroaster is the lesser of the two. We are Kate Reed - we are always Kate Reed - and we are headed back to the mysterious House, where we had recent adventures. The road we’re on catches fire, we crash into a hapless tree, we hidden-object our way across the river on the nearby hand-winched ferry, and we’re off. Four mysterious paintings in the main gallery of the house will open up and allow us to step through into four mysterious lands. In each spot we’ll collect a crystal skull and ultimately Save Everything From Destruction. Along the way we need to pick up 46 morphing objects to be completionists - and that’s a lot of morphing objects. Each time we resolve a world-branch, alas, the painting-portal into that world shuts permanently, so if we - ahem - forget to pick up say two or three or five of these, we can’t go back and get them. Mentioning this for a friend.
Serpent Flame addresses this morphing object issue directly by introducing an icon for the objects on the game map - so there’s an easy at-a-glance reminder about whether or not you’ve cleared your instance of the oddities. Much appreciated. Says my friend. Ahem.
Otherwise, the games are much the same. In the (impressive, for a HOG) opening to Serpent Flame, much of the world has been left in disastrous shape by a swarming attack of, er, Flame Serpents. In order to Save Everything From Destruction, we must enter four mysterious lands, through portals in the basement, and in each we’ll collect an elemental stone. If this sounds familiar, it is. Both games do that thing where items in the Hidden Object puzzles return to the scene when you go through each location for a second time; I hate that. And both have objects repeated from scene to scene - how many pairs of binoculars are in this house, anyway? - as well as items that make no sense for the locations. It’s common, but that doesn’t make it right. Also, both games have bonus chapters that are overlong, underpolished, and fairly tedious.
In quick: the House of 1,000 Doors games appear to be getting better as they move forward. They’re light on good sense, but that’s routine for the genre. There isn’t much here that’s new, but if you like your HOGs then these are pretty good ones.