Where Angels Cry

Strays from the typical conventions of the genre, but not a bad game. There are no dedicated HOG scenes -- rather, you look for objects hidden in different scenes throughout the game. That's fine and storywise more logical than the conventional style anyway. The graphics are not as polished or beautiful as in most HOGs, and the characters aren't animated at all, so everything just feels a bit dead, but the game does have its own style that's not too bad. The story is good enough, although it does end very abruptly and anticlimatically. It's a good enough game if you get it on sale.

Easy game with a great story line, puzzles are not difficult but challenges you, good old fashion point and click game!

I love this Angel cry, because it has the mysteries and hidden object to mix with. It given me a hard time partly, but it is great game. I'm not giving up this great game. Thank you for this game. It's an awesome.

Decent enough casual point & click adventure, with somewhat outdated graphics and animation, seamless music, passable story, good puzzles and relatively smooth game flow, and a very little touch of the HO element (plus newly added Steam achievements). Worth the while playing for those few hours, though I would probably recommend buying it at a discount.

This game is one of the first Hidden Object games I played on mobile years ago, it's what got me started on these sort of games so finding this on Steam I bought it for nostalgia purposes. It's a short and easy game to play with in-game achievments only. Not the best out there but it's easy to catch these sort of games on sale, it's something worth giving a go.

Likes:

• I really like the plot line - I do recall the game being inspired from a film
  
• The puzzles are the usual fun - some cliche, others have a bit of effort put in
  
• I also like the addiontal/optional tasks - it does fill like filler but you have the option to do it
  
• Finding the hidden collectables around the areas
  
• The voice acting is also quite amusing
  

Truly, this game is proof of miracles. The year is 1286, and through the good workings of our Lord, tomatoes have arrived in the Alps centuries early! Provided this is Italy (they really aren't clear) tomatoes arrived in 1548. Why care about such a trivial detail? Because it's a period piece or supposed to be.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is not a hidden object adventure. This is a click and point fetch quest in the mysterious part of the Alps where a character may sound Russian, Italian, or maybe a bit of Bronx thrown in? There's even an Irish accent at one point, because hey, why not? It's honestly hard to believe this is the same studio that turned out the sequel.

Here, apparently, you are investigating the loss of a brother of the unnamed order. Orders always have names, but not this one. Nor does this order have a patron saint, I'm just saying. Anyhoo, the wolves eated him up. Or he ran away. No one knows or seems to care, but the new boss man forbids a search. Hmmm.

There is also a statue that supposedly weeps blood, I say supposedly because the dried blood looked like red paint. It's honestly puzzling if this game meant to be this funny but I'd say wait for a deep discount.

For the learned men of their time I wouldn't trust any of these monks to read or write. They aren't exactly what I'd call the brightest and I feel more like I should be a sweet old gran investigating a ghastly murder in a tea parlor. If not for everyone starting to speak like ye olde Shakespeare in the park extras. Several centuries before his birth, I might add.

As for gameplay itself? After a while it dawns on you there are no hidden object scenes and it's just a weary and uninspired slog where you go through each scene carefully with your pointer to pick up objects, some of which don't even appear on the screen. Many are in plain sight though. So it feels kind of lazy. Some puzzles solve themselves and most were frustrating variations of mini game standards.

Taking it all in, I'll have to give it a thumbs down. It's one of those games I stubbornly completed just to see the ending. Then I stared at my screen wondering why I had to struggle through so much blandness to get to it.

Oh, watch out for the collectible angel statues. Not for an award, but because the homely suckers need some love.

A subversive masterpiece.

Look, no spoilers, but this is a game where you take the role of a Vatican detective sent to a monastery to secretly investigate the mystery of a statue that weeps blood and a monk who recently vanished, and within minutes you open a trap door at the foot of the statue--which is not even hidden--and inside there is the ghost of the missing monk, just chilling out, and he tells you immediately who done it. The entire game is like this and it's played completely straight.

If that setup doesn't give you a chuckle, this is not the casual puzzle adventure game you're looking for.

The bulk of the gameplay consists of playing look n' find in the background art as you do literal chores for the monks and villagers. Eventually by doing this you arrive at puzzles which range from bad to moderately challenging. Myst it ain't, but the simplicity of the puzzles rhymes with the absurdity of the plot.

I paid $1 for this on sale, but I'd have paid full price if I knew I was striking comedy gold.

This game failed to function twice on me. I'm giving up. First, I had collected 3 nails, and I put them into the horseshoe. I went to find the 4th, only to have the game refuse to let me use the 4th nail, meaning I could not advance further. I restarted the game, and this time when filling the pot I realized I was missing the watercress. I found it, went back, only to learn that now 3 of the flowers I put into the pot moments before had disappeared. Again, I could not advance any further without the items that somehow disappeared.

a decent HOG with no HO scenes which is a welcomed change for my self.

Pros.
nice simple story. not too complicated
decent voice acting with different accents (at least they tried rather than having nothing or just boring actors reading scripts)
some challenging puzzles
have an HD mode!
have cut scenes


Cons.
the protagonist does not have a voice?
the antagonist only appear at the end and you cant even interact with him.... -.-"
kinda short (2 hours and 30 mins) (i was enjoying the time and didn't feel it tho)
no bonus chapter

overall i recommend the game. i give it 7/10

Although I normally love this type of game and have an absolutely stupid number of them, this particular one is not passing muster with me. Skip to the end for the TL;DR version of this review.

I could forgive the mediocre graphics. They seem simplistic and lackluster compared to some of the vibrantly detailed comparable games, but they get the job done.

I could also forgive the simplistic and unoriginal puzzles. After all, most of these games recycle the same types of puzzles over and over again, and it wouldn't be the first time that I came across a tedious Tower of Hanoi puzzle. If you're looking for actual hidden object scenes, look elsewhere; I didn't find a single one in this game.

These things aren't egregious for a simple time-killer of a game. I can forgive them.

What I cannot forgive is the game-breaking bugs that will force you to either start over from the beginning or quit the game in disgust. I got to a point where I absolutely could not find another item I needed, so I gritted my teeth and used the hateful "HINT" button (I really dislike using hints!) so I could progress.

The hint took me to a place and told me to use the object that I couldn't find in the first place. You heard it correctly, the hint told me to use an item I HAD NOT PICKED UP YET and could NOT find. After further research, I discovered that there is apparently some sort of bug where necessary items are in the same screen/scene as minigames, and if you don't pick it up immediately before finishing the minigame puzzle, you are completely borked. Utterly, thoroughly, and irrevocably borked. But the game doesn't realize you're borked, and acts like you are holding it the whole time. Baffling.

So you can either restart the game, or quit in disgust. I chose to quit in disgust. The game is simply not compelling enough or of good enough quality to wade through it a second time and pray the same thing doesn't happen again.

Had this not happened, I would have finished, and given it a conditional recommendation (try it out if you're out of other comparable ones to play, pick it up on a big sale, use it to kill some time as long as your expectations aren't high, etc.). But with these bugs (and the fact that it has happened to other people in different parts of the game as well, so it's not an isolated error), I am changing this to a fervent "not recommended" verdict.

TL;DR - The mediocre graphics and puzzles are not enough of an excuse to pick up a game that could easily force you to restart multiple times if you happen to hit one of the several game-breaking item bugs.

Don't let the "Hidden Object" tag deceive you! Where Angels Cry is a mediocre point and click adventure with the environment progression of a HOG, but... without any actual HOG scenes whatsoever. Sure, it contains a selection of unimaginative puzzles and constant item collection - and it almost excites you with the promise of a medieval mystery as it starts - but sadly the game cannot avoid ending up as a short and tedious adventure with a distasteful plot presentation.

It is the Year of Our Lord, 1286 and as I have stated before, we are promised a medieval mystery. We take the role of a nameless monk who'd be sent to a secluded monastery set high in the Alps from Vatican, to investigate the murder of a fellow monk and the miraculous phenomenon of an angel statue crying blood as we are already there. So far, so good. We have The Name of the Rose atmosphere mixed up with Wainwright's Stigmata storyline. Yet, the actual thing here has little to do with either of these fine stories. No one knowing your true identity, you are mostly free to investigate the monastery that consists of 4 areas and a village nearby. With each passing moment and each new discovery, my expectations diminished with the game until the last scene - which was the moment that I threw my already diminished basket of expectations out of the window.

Here in this paragraph, I'll be ranting about story and concept build up, so whomever would like to try this game and avoid spoilers, please skip ahead or stop reading. First of all, I know that the given concept here must have been tempting to hurl in all medieval clichés, but there really should be an orderly and meaningful way to do that instead of all this soup of terms like "sin", "temptation", "sacrifice", "Angels", "Templars" etc. Whomever arranged the storyline, clearly has a vague outline of the concept and kept throwing in these notions until they somehow stuck together to make a setting. The storyline is so badly arranged, it crumbles to pieces the moment you'd ask an intelligible question like "why the f*ck the Spear of Destiny is here of all places?" or "what has done the prior abbot so meaningful and beautiful that an angel would descend from heaven to cry for him?” See, all these questions have no satisfactory answers. There is just the accumulation of medieval motifs, hoping to build up a storyline eventually.

Environment art is considerably dull and badly rendered compared to pretty screenshots that we see in the store page. Those are taken from the iPad/Android version with enhanced graphics. Environment design itself is somewhat alright, but nothing actually breathtaking. Apart the main character, all others are voice acted properly but the dialogue text itself is agonizing, ridden with the unnecessary - and narratively false - amount of usage for words like "nay", "pray tell", "alas" for everyone around to establish a false sense of authenticity! It was hilariously contradictory to see a simple peasant woman capable of using Shakespearean terms - completely wrong though!

The game consists of 7 short chapters which would give you approximately 3 hours of gameplay. You are to walk around, collect random items disguised in a similar color palette environment, use them in appropriate places and solve a selection of easy puzzles now and then. That's basically it. We have already an achievement system here in the game which has never been converted to actual Steam achievements sadly - lessening to need for exploring the game to an unnecessary extent.

I hear that the game has a sequel - which would be far better than this, I hope. Even if you are strictly into medieval concepts like me, I wouldn't recommend the game. For casual HOG lovers, there are surely greater games you may explore. For the adventure gamer: avoid the game like the plague.

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• Mixture of hidden object, point & click, and puzzle
  
• Pixel hunting can be annoying, but the game offers hints and an option to highlight interactive elements
  
• Voice acting between passable and bad, but nothing painful (except one voice)
  
• Story casual, mildly interesting
  
• Items that were not in a scene will show up later, which means you have to look at each scene repeatedly as if it's the first time you see it. Unusual, but you get used to it.
  
• Puzzles are the strong point of this game, engaging and varied (don't be fooled by the Towers of Hanoi early on, the following puzzles are much better)
  
• Very nice music
  
• Graphics are okay, nothing special, good enough for this type of game
  
• Nice in-game achievements but no Steam achievements
  
[*]Between 2.5 and 3.5 hrs playtime

The scenery is interesting, but that's about all there is to this incredibly short point-and-click adventure game. The voice acting is sub-par, and the story flimsy. Most of the action consists in collecting random objects that everyone has carelessly strewn about the monestary. The logic puzzles are mostly achievable and mildly diverting, except for one mini-game near the end that consists of a bejeweled-style "battle" with a Knight Templar. It perhaps wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't a timed exercise. I nearly didn't finish the game on account of the task, but finally decided to skip it to press on to the uninspiring end.

This game has a beautiful story line (if you're into angels and religion.) For a point and click hidden objects, and a puzzle game. It's quite entertaining. Although it is quite short, its fun to do all the achievements and want not.

I bought this title at the same time as another title by this company, Black Rainbow. This one is much better as the storyline is more interesting and the setting is in a mediaeval monastery and village - what could be better!

The best aspect of this game is the artwork. Backgrounds are nicely drawn and provide a good atmosphere.

The game is very simple though and too easy to complete. I played on the hardest of 3 difficulty levels and did not need a walkthrough or hint of any form at any point.

In fact, one of the most annoying occurences of this game is that it really dioes its best to try to give you hints, even when you don't want one. It has a hint timer and then a stupid book that keeps shaking and desperately wants the player to open it to read an obvious hint or blatant answer. I think it would have been much better to do away with the book and the hint timer on Challenge difficulty mode.

The story is ok, but a bit daft, but serves the purpose. The ending is poor, as it is so abrupt with absolutuely no confrontation or one last big puzzle. One of the most disappointing endigs I have seen in a game.

The puzzles are either find inventory items (very easy) or minigame tasks, which are almost all very easy apart from one, which took me about 45 minutes and that was a slider to get a square block past smaller blocks and out of the puzzle frame.

Some of the voice acting is cringeworthy, particularly the attempt at an Italian accent by the person who voices the monastery cook.

It is a simple, casual game and not a full on adventure game. However, I am glad I played it.

I wouldn't recommend paying too much for it though.

Unfortunately, the worst of a lot of things; pixel-hunting for hidden objects, the same puzzles several times in a row, and an ending that's going to confuse (and/or offend) people of a certain belief. While not offended, I was certainly confused by some of the logical implications.

Thanks to game layout, I usually started collecting puzzle parts before I found any use for them, which made me one of the most puzzling things in the game, since I would wander in and start taking random things. And who the heck kept taking the bucket right back off and hiding it again? I just put that together for the third time in about six hours!

Probably the sort of game someone might do in-between while doing something else, or stopping and starting frequently .

I like casual point and click adventure games, and picked up this and Nightmares from the Deep on sale. I enjoyed the latter, but this? There is hardly anything here. No story, the object hunting is tiresome, ridiculously short, and the puzzles unoriginal. (Tower of Hanoi? Really, guys?)

Give it a wide pass even if on sale.

Its a decent hidden object game. For 5 bucks I felt it was money well spent.

The voice acting was ok, the storyline was somewhat interesting but I kinda felt urged to continue to play just to find more objects and puzzles. The storyline wasn't really motivating.

Its certainly not a triple A title but I enjoyed most of the puzzles and digging around for hidden objects.

This is like a stocking stuffer for people who enjoy hidden object games, I would definitely recommend it for anyone with modest expectations.

A rather short, but well made adventure. If you like games like Myst or The 11 Hour, this is something for you. It has some nice puzzles, minigames, dialogues, finding and combination of items and all of them are possible with logical thinking. Of course, it also has some strange puzzles where my first thought was "that was unnecessary complicated", but they were not too much weird, like using a rubberduck to build a trampoline. The price of that game is really surprising. The voice acting is well done, it has beautiful music which fits perfectly into the game (for the most time) and quite decent graphics, even though the world looks rather stiff sometimes and they could have animated a little bit more. But for just 5 euro you cant do anything wrong and i would say the game is even 10-15 euro worth.

So far this is a pretty well executed casual point and click game developed by a very small team compared for the price.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this game, it is a casual game and a small casual game gem for the price, or while waiting for the 2014 game of your choice. It will transport you in that world.

The game definitely has cinematic ambition for mood, plot, etc..
Settings are well thought and bring good mood.
Designs are well created.
Voice acting....while it is pretty good acting and it is the team's choice, I believe it is better to stick with original voice actor instead of trying to pull accents even though it is supposed to be in the alps, hopefully it does not dither to suspension of disbelief but it definitely can be confusing for very short time, so my definite choice would have been "speak English or Italian for a good majority of the acting and elder monk(s) or special key role(s) (for example) can use a mix.
Character animation are limited and that is a good thing in this case and game.

Total hours played does not say much about my experience. I stumble on this game on Steam while working on Photoshop, Maya, Mudbox, and Articydraft open at same time, although I repeat again this game may suffer of a little - here and there, it definitely is worth it overall and I had to voice up before I go back to work or it would grind me all day long ;-)