The Little Shop of Treasures
Score: 85% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: RealNetworks Developer: Mr. Goodliving Ltd. Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: Puzzle
Graphics & Sound: The Little Shop of Treasures is a new hidden item game from RealArcade. To date, RealArcade has done a nice job migrating games such as Tiki Towers and Collapse to the iPhone platform, and they stay true to form again with this port. Graphically, the game looks very nice on the iPhone. There are five different screens in which items are hidden. The scenes, which are slightly larger than the iPhone screen, are stuffed full of various knick-knacks and oddities, ranging from old toothbrushes to Ming vases, all rendered in passable detail. The sound effects, per the norm for RealArcade, are quirky and fun and add a nice little flair to the game. Likewise, the music hovers nicely in the background, finding just the right balance between being noticeable, without ever becoming annoying.
Gameplay: There are two modes of gameplay featured in The Little Shop of Treasures. The first of these is the Story Mode. In this mode, the player must help customers locate those "hard to find" items in the five various shops around town, with the pretense that they are earning money to fix up their own storefront. Frankly, calling this a Story Mode is a bit of a stretch, and really, who cares? No one is playing this game held in rapt suspense waiting to see the fresh coat of paint or addition of the fancy window dressings to a "store" that they will never set foot in. Players just want to find those hidden treasures. There are nearly 300 unique items to be found throughout the game, although "unique" may be stretching it a bit. Often there are several of the same type of items hidden within a given session, the only difference being color and/or orientation on the screen. Players must find a certain number of items within the given time limit in order to advance to the next stage. Finding more items than the minimum awards the players with a higher ranking (bronze, silver, gold). Story Mode takes place over 25 stages, broken down to be five working days across five weeks. All told, this mode can easily be beaten in an hour or so of uninterrupted gameplay. The replayability of the game can be found in Blitz Mode. In this mode, players must find a set number of items, trying to beat a record time in any of the five "shops" found in the Story Mode of the game. This proved to be quite a bit more challenging than the Story Mode and was easily my favorite way to play the game.
Difficulty: As mentioned above, the challenging aspect of The Little Shop of Treasures is really only in the Blitz Mode. Only one time during my play-through of the Story Mode did I fail to find all of the required objects within the given time limit. There were several issues that made playing the game a bit more difficult than it at first appears. The most prominent of these issues is one of vernacular. I found that several items looked very different from what I was initially looking for when I was first given the clue. This is normal in the regard that there are several shapes and types of some items, such as telephones, bells and watches. Not knowing exactly what you are looking for in these cases adds to the challenge and made the game more interesting. However, there are some regionally specific terms that I found a bit confusing, leaving me clueless as to what I was supposed to be searching for and forcing me to use one of my hints in order to make a visual association before I could successfully locate the item. Another contributing factor to the difficulty is how some of the items are hidden. Some are just extremely difficult to find, especially when you take into account the size of the screen in relation to some of the objects you are looking for. Please understand that this is not a complaint. Quite the contrary, I enjoyed this challenging aspect. What I didn't enjoy was trying to find an object that was hidden behind another object and which I had almost no way of visually identifying from the small sliver that was visible. Fortunately, cases of this occurring were few and far between.
Game Mechanics: The mechanics behind The Little Shop of Treasures are very straightforward. A customer tells the player what they are looking for and the player has to then find it on the screen. This is accomplished by dragging the screen to search all of the area in which items are hidden, and then, once identifying the item, tapping it with a finger. Players are given several hints which they can use to help if they get stuck. The hint shows both an image of the item in question (as mentioned above, this can be extremely important) and in which section of the screen the item can be found. Generally a player starts with three hints per round and more can be found in the form of "?" located in the scene. This simple scheme is very effective, although I did occasionally experience a little difficulty in tapping some items, especially the smaller ones. In the end, this is another solid offering from RealArcade. The few flaws aside, at a price of $.99 (as of this review), it is hard to beat The Little Shop of Treasures for those that enjoy this type entertainment.
-The Mung Bard, GameVortex Communications AKA Buddy Ethridge
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