Разработчик: Gogii Games
Описание
Features :
• Over 140 breathtaking scenes in a vast undersea temple and cloud city.
• Immersive locations, fantastic story and unique object hunting and mini-games.
• Meet mysterious characters to gain vital clues. Who can you trust? Who will deceive?
• Stop the Evil Empress from destroying the underwater world.
• Escape to the utopian city in the clouds.
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP/Vista/7
- Processor: 1.0 GHz
- Memory: 512 MB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX compatible video card
- DirectX: Version 8.1
- Storage: 200 MB available space
Отзывы пользователей
A cute little point and click game. I enjoyed this, despite not being very good at games of this genre. Completed in just over 2 hours, buy it on sale for 99p.
Visually, the game doesn't look good, but I managed to finish it. Enjoy.
I still love this game. Its not very long and kinda simple but still somehow always worth replaying it. The story is ok and all in one a very nice short trip. I can highly recommend this game
If you like stories, this game doesn't actually have a bad plot. It gets juicier throughout the rest of the games, but for now, play this one if you want to just play the whole series. Boring at times with its repetitive hunting for objects and mediocre graphics, but still a pleasurable experience.
This was incredibly challenging for me. Sometimes it seemed a loss, like things were not explained well enough. Some of the puzzles were more attrition than seemingly logical. Overall, it was satisfying. It's a keeper, and I am looking forward to playing part 2.
I've never played Bioshock but if Bioshock was a HOG this is what I think it would look like. This game had its issues but I still really liked it, it was strange experience while playing because it was a kind of meh game but I still wanted more. The game is voice acted throughout and while it wasn't amazing it was still enjoyable and more frequent occurring than most HOGs. Some of the puzzles were different than most puzzles I've seen in HOGs but were a mix in difficultly and there isn't a "skip" button to get out of some of the more annoying ones. The hidden object scenes were a bit of a challenge at times but still enjoyable except for the text used made it difficult to read what I was looking for, there was a point where I was looking for a "hand" but it looked like it said "band". The map is open throughout the game but every scene only has about one thing you can do or find in it which made it feel empty and the lack of quick travel got me lost a few times trying to find places. Overall, I had a good time with the game and while I can't figure out exactly why I liked it, I think it’s worth the sale price and short play time.
Not a fan. I'm not sure why, but the gameplay felt claustrophobic. Don't like how it looks. The hidden object scenes are horrendous.
First time playthrough: 2 hours 12 minutes
3/10
So, I played this game as a kid on my iPad Mini. You can definitely tell this was made to be a mobile game. Out of nostalgia (and a bit of boredom), I've been playing my favorite HO games when not doing work. Despite being the newest of the games I've played (this and the first two House of 1000 Doors games), this is the lowest quality and does not have a widescreen ability. It also makes it very difficult to leave the game. I played it collectively for maybe two or three hours before finishing. The HO scenes are sometimes nonsensical as well.
Cute and simple. Perfect for pre-teens to help learn how to solve more difficult puzzles. I think the story is cute, and it can be completed in 1 day. I like it
Empress of The Deep: The Darkest Secret (2010)
Hidden objects and puzzle game. No time limits to stress you out, just take your time exploring the world and solve some puzzles. You play as Anna, a woman who wakes up in an underwater city with no memories. With the help of a man named Jacob, you must solve the mystery of who you are and why you are there. Solid game if you like hidden objects and puzzles.
8/10
Launches with a black screen and a white cursor. Unplayable. If I do not press the windows key and terminate the game I will have to do a force restart.
Pros
+60FPS
+Above average voice acting
+Nice pre-rendered graphics
Cons
+Short (barely 3 hours)
+Low-res objects in HO scenes
+Lots of backtracking
+Too easy
Empress of the Deep shows promise but ultimately, I can’t recommend this. As far as HOG’s go, this is a very simplistic one and is too easy. The puzzles are ok, and I came across one or two new kinds. However, they are generally too simple. The handholding is also present in the story. You are told, with a screenshot as well, where you should go next.
Since the game runs at 800x600 resolution, HO scenes are not good. With little detail, it’s hard to pick out the objects.
Graphics wise, I liked it. I was getting some Myst vibes at times from the pre-rendered backgrounds. Some other reviewers compared this story to Bioshock, but I disagree. It’s underwater and there’s a tram that takes you to another area but I didn’t even think of Bioshock until I read the reviews.
Conclusion
Being too easy along with badly detailed HO scenes dragged the game down enough for me not to recommend it. This is routinely on sale for <$1 (50 cents at the time of writing) so if you’re a HOG addict it’s an easy add into your library for 2-3 hours of gameplay.
4/10 Below Average
"We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road." ~Martin Luther
Empress of the Deep is a deeply flawed Hidden Object Game. It's flaw lies primarily in it's mediocrity and refusal to offer anything new to the genre. From an amnesiac character, to following a trail of clues from not one but two unreliable interjectors, damning itself by sidetracking and the highest moment of tension and offering a staid Hidden Object experience with very few point 'n click interactions and some of the easiest puzzles I've ever encountered in the genre. There is nothing exceptional to Empress of the Deep at all, other than the potential it offers in its sequels.
~Story~
Anna awakens in what at first appears to be an underwater tomb, trappings of decayed royalty around her. She knows nothing, remembers nothing and is oblivious until a disembodied voice from a journal indicates she should try to exit the room. As a protagonist Anna is banal... she offers nothing other than the players acumen at resolving her dilemma (ostensibly you are Anna, but even though the game is delivered from Anna's viewpoint, the journal entries and voicework make it feel more like a 3rd person perspective than the 1st person, which creates a rift between the players and Anna's intellect, which makes Anna seem all the more pathetic.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875802607
Yet like the quote above, Anna is 'becoming'. Her realizations are swift, (though the player will deduce them far more quickly, which points towards the absolute cliche that is the plot) and her acquisition of three items, to prove her identity is also accomplished with speed. Of course there is a foil, an evil Empress who seeks to subvert the player and delude them, and this was accomplished fairly well, playing right into the mechanics of the game and expectations of collecting things, and it is this, subversion of the player's expectations that leads me to rate this towards recommended, despite the fact it is so fatally flawed.
~Gameplay~
Empress of the Deep Offers your standard puzzle adventure gameplay. The HUD pops up to display your inventory and items you can use to interact with the world. Items that are collected from the environment around you. The game offers no difficulty modes, so the standard version of highlighting interactive objects and areas is done throughout the game, and is also accompanied by a hint button that refills on a timer. The hints appear as writing that indicates which area you need to proceed to with an image (since the area names are not always quite obvious).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875802439
Puzzles are offered at various stages and are all fairly easy to grasp, and won't offer much challenge at all even to beginner players, and are standard, ranging from connecting ropes to matching games. There isn't much cerebral on offer here.
Many items for puzzles do need to be collected and this is where the hidden object scenes come into play. They are more numerous than their puzzle counterparts but do not offer variety. They exist of wordlists only. The objects themselves are fairly well hidden, but not much wordplay with homophones is done to increase difficulty, instead the difficulty is usually visual with objects being 'ghosted' (made transparent) or turned into shadows. In fact turning objects into shadows seemed to be a favourite trick and can be found in numerous of the puzzles. I didn't find the clicks to be terribly active, sometimes clicking slightly off to the side of the object activated it despite not being directly on it which also made it slightly too easy. There was a misclick penalty which simply greyed out the cursor temporarily, but didn't last particularly long.
Many features of new titles are absent, such as an interactive map (which this game needed badly) even if it would have made the final 'quest' too easy, due to a large amount of backtracking.
The journal was vaguely useful more a notation of the story and the next object to be found, with the occasional cypher or clue, than actually offering further depth or insight.
There are collectable purple orbs as well linked to the main quest, to give scene hunters something to aim for. The game also oddly rewards you with flowers for completing important areas, which didn't really serve much purpose at all, other than to look pretty as a page in the journal. It was this more than anything that summed up the experience of the game as a whole. Decoration without reason or substance.
~Graphics~
Empress of the Deep was released in 2010, and even for the time is rather low on graphical requirements. When sitting beside HoGs of more recent years it has aged incredibly poorly. It's not that the artistry of the game is not well done (it is), it's the fact that the resolution is poor, running at a measly 800x600. Trying to overturn this and run it at higher resolutions makes the images nearly unbearable to look at. Which is something of a shame as the photo composite images and environments are quite amazing to look at. The game is said to have drawn inspiration from Bioshock (which is something I'd dispute) since it's focus is on more classical architecture than the art deco that informed Irrational Games's approach. The environments themselves are quite exquisite, though heavily leaning towards western (specifically European) history as the last remnants of mankind, I kept trying to imagine the museums I had walked through with various civilizations represented, you'll find nothing from Asia, Africa or South America here, which was vaguely disappointing,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1875802721
The largest issue with the artwork arrived from the fact that the characters are clearly hand drawn and stand out rather bizarrely against the photo and 3d composite images. It's not that they are poorly drawn, just jarring. The characters themselves are... cliche, pastiches of tropes you've seen a thousand times over. All the more amusing is the identity of the protagonist and villain, they conform so broadly to their archetypes (maiden and crone) that the narrative resemblance is utterly lost.
~Sound~
The voicework is also highly annoying, whilst the 'good' helper has a welcome warm baritone, the 'little girl' is terribly annoying and Anna's voice actor is so insipid that it underscores just how trite and vapid the dialogue is. The music however was fairly pleasant if not particularly memorable. Smaller sound effects aren't really present either, however there is a fanfare upon completing puzzles or Hidden Object scenes to underscore your 'accomplishment'.
~Conclusion~
Empress of the Deep is not a good HoG, and by all criteria is so mediocre as to be nearly tedious to play through. It's one redeeming feature came near the end of what is a relatively short game, and that was the subversion of the players expectations. Even if Anna's reaction to that scenario was rather ridiculous, as the player I enjoyed it. This is definitely one of the titles that deserve a neutral rating, and I was highly tempted to actually negatively review it but in light of the fact that the second and third titles are fairly good, this one will be recommended as an introduction to the series, rather than for the single sole merit it possesses.
Score: 5/10 ~ The mediocrity of mankind's ark
[quote]If you enjoyed this review please follow my curator Virtual Visions for more recommendations.[/quote]
Since I'm a HOG addicted, I've purchased it without any hesitation. I alredy knew that Gogii Games produced some quality HOGs but this one isn't one of them. To be honest, graphics and voice actiongs are good but at some point the music became annoying. The main weaknesses of the game are the plot and the HO scenes. The puzzles are not perfect also but they are better than these. I've already played the second part of the serie, it was way better. Just for this reason, I'd like to give a thumbs up but how should you recommend a HOG game with awful HO scenes? Again I wish a meh button. Oh Gaben of Olympos, hear us the mortals and give us a fraking meh button. Give it a shot if you grab it from a bundle or so. 5/10.
A couple of HOG gamers persistently suggested Empress of the Deep series and I sincerely tried to like this one. For that purpose only, this is my third playthrough of the game, in hopes of catching a glimpse of what I might have missed before. I know that it takes a maximum of 2 hours to finish the game, so it's not a labor, but the spark simply is not there.
Meet our protagonist: Anna. We watch her drifting into the depths of an ocean in the opening cinematic, and then, she opens her eyes in an odd sarcophagus, remembering nothing of her past. She - who is a bit dim witted, may I say - is told that she just woke up from a century old slumber. She is in a mysterious underwater civilization and two unseen companions welcome her: an old man named Jacob who asks for her to try and gather three royal relics to uncover her own destiny, and a nameless young girl who we can only communicate as a fleeting, creepy voice in our head. One asks for our aid to help the sinking civilization by overthrowing the evil empress and the other asks us to activate 10 uncanny orbs to see something cool. Guess who is actually trustworthy?
The setting - besides being a shameless imitation of Bioshock series - is beautiful, and I'd like to congratulate the visual artist on that manner. It looks old - as if taken from an old Myst game, but pretty enough. Is there anything else remotely interesting or exceptional about this game? No. Sadly, the whole game doesn't go even one step further than being a collection of pretty environment design. Voice acting is tedious. Characters speak as they are about to fall asleep half the time. And other times, you can swear that Bollywood has seen better acting performances, with more feeling. Animations are actually old stop-motion presentations, and they look a bit eerie in play, which is not the intended atmosphere, I think.
HOG scenes are horrendously bad, consisting of cut out stock photographs thrown around in blending colored backgrounds. It is nearly impossible to even recognize whatever you are clicking on half the time, so no one should expect for you to actually search for an item that you cannot identify! You'll quickly find yourself abusing the hint button just to get done with the scene. About puzzles; yes, there are some imaginative logic puzzles. But there is no skip option, so either you complete it, or get stuck on the present point until you manage to solve the puzzle. This becomes disengaging pretty quickly. Gameplay? There is a horrible amount of backtracking for a game this short in playing hours, and there is no usable map option for quick transport either.
Still, my major complaint is about the story itself. At the beginning of my blabbering, I mentioned Anna being a bit dim witted. Well, I underestimated. She is downright stupid. I mean, she keeps seeing her own face on a family portrait, side by side with the same girl, and she doesn't get even slightly suspicious of the mischievous little girl voice, who speaks in a tone fitting for Disney villains! We practically see a portrait of the evil empress, carrying those purple orbs all around her, and we still keep activating them! I mean, there should be a limit to how stupid a character can be! In this situation, she was stupid enough to let a maniac blow up the archive of all civilization...
Hailing from Gogii games, I'm not surprised to see a below mediocre game. Their games tend to be either brilliant, or horrible anyhow. What I was surprised is that there is a considerable amount of gamers who are in favor of the series. I didn't play the rest of the series yet, so I'm still hopeful that this shoddy little game doesn't represent all that there is for me to discover in Empress' world. I'll see for myself, and inform you accordingly.
Update: Please bear with this game, 'cause with the following instalments this makes one great trilogy! I'm still annoyed when I think about this one, but I promise you, losing 2 hours with this game worths it when you experience the rest of the series!
Please also check out Lady Storyteller's Curator page here - follow for regular updates on reviews for other games!
Empress of the Deep is putting you in the shoes of Anna, a young woman waking up with no memories in an underwater city. Guided by Jacob, she must find who she is, why she was awaken and who is behind the purple orbs.
Given the fact that the sequels give you some anwsers, yeah, you're in reality royalty that was destined to be the Empress of the Deep... if only your twin sister, hungry with power, didn't try to kill you. And your enemy is... her.
While the game isn't as beautiful as Artifex Mundi's products, Empress of the Deep is way better than Theatre of the Absurd, published by the same enterprise and based on the same mechanisms. But here, the plot doesn't really suffer of plotholes. Besides, the places are also less dark and way more colorfuls. Not that I don't mind dark settings.
The puzzles aren't hard but I never found a skip button. It was: "solve it or forget about finishing the story". The HOG are challenging because the majority of items aren't really seen immediately. Another regret is that the map isn't interactive: you can't go from one place to another by clicking on it.
The soundtrack is good too. The voice acting is also well done. I mean, you don't know who to trust because Jacob and the one behind the purple orbs have trusting voices.
But the best is perhaps the ending. True, it's a To Be Continued (Song of the Blue Whale is coming after). But it is a quite shocking one.
I recommend it. Because well, who never dreamed of being an Empress in a fantasy world?
Despite the lack of any animation, fuzzy hidden object pictures, cringe-worthy voice acting, no fast travel and backwards-walking that makes up half the game... uhhh... and unskippable credits along with a storyline that didn't even make sense, hmmm.
Oh.. I guess that's it.
If you're a fan of hidden object adventures, I'd probably steer clear of this one. Even on sale.
Nice graphics, standard story. Took me 3 hours to complete. If you can grab this game for $2 or less, go for it.
The strongest word used is "damnable", so I consider it suitable for ages 8+. The hidden objects comprise 50% of the gameplay and aren't particularily challenging, and there's no penalty for using the hint button. The puzzles comprise the other 50% and are based on classic concepts like "tower of Hanoi", which makes solutions easy to find online if you get stuck. This is NOT a challenging game and I suspect the intended audience is tweens through teens.
I appreciate the fact that I wasn't forced to replay any of the hidden object scenes: once I completed a hidden object area, it was done. I was glad to see the game using female voice acting and programmers/designers. Show your tweens that women can be a part of the computer gaming industry.
This hidden object game is a slightly different flavor than the normal variety. It is very puzzle oriented and the puzzles come with no directions. However, if you're familiar with these types of games, you should be able to figure everything out. The story is very cryptic but that actually helps the whole feel of the game, which I liked very much. For an older game, the graphics are quite nice. The hidden object areas are a bit blurry but not bad enough to stump me for long. Even though the game is dated, it DOES have voice acting - sometimes good, sometimes not so much, but always interesting. One thing I absolutely love about Empress of the Deep is that once you've finished everything there is to do in an area, an "Area Cleared" Star appears. You never have to worry about coming back to that area to find or do something else. And it gives a nice sense of accomplishment. I wish more hidden object/puzzle games incorporated that feature. The whole game has a very surreal feel to it. It's not a long game but I enjoyed every minute of it. There are also two sequels to this game that continue the story, if you're curious about what happens next. Because of the length of the games, I'd recommend trying to find them on sale. But they're good enough that I'm currently replaying them all. If you like a game with an intriguing atmosphere and plenty of puzzles, check this out!
While some puzzles are pretty decent, the hidden object part is simply horrible. Most of the scenes represent a primordial soup where you have no choice but to blindly poke around hoping to catch something. No fun in that.
You can't really expect much from a budget HOG in terms of narrative, but many developers at least try to spice up the usual boredom in some or another way. Not the case here, unfortunately. You get all the thickness of undiluted tedium you can get, with no real bonuses to cheer up your miserable in-game existence.
I surely will think twice before buying anything else done by Gogii Games in the future, even if it goes only for half a dollar on a sale, and I suggest you do the same.
Surprising little gem of a casual game. It's an adventure/hidden object mix, which has become quite common, but leans more on its adventure side than hidden object, and instead of heaping in hidden object scenes every few steps, includes a selection of different kinds of puzzles, some of which were fairly unique. The hidden object portion is the standard fare you'd expect, perhaps even a slight bit sub-par with the amount of objects I felt I was squinting to make out (even with a hint, some were still unrecognizable in my opinion).
The adventure portion, however, more than made up for it. It won't shine in the way a full-fledged adventure game would, but as a casual title, it can be clever with the sorts of puzzles it throws at the player and gives a decent number of rooms to explore. This, though, leads to some backtracking, some of which is particularly unnecessary. Without spoiling anything, the ending makes you revisit nearly every screen to click a single object on each, which was a rather bland way of padding the already short game length.
The narrative is decent, but nothing groundbreaking. You'll see any major plot points coming a mile away, but it still gets the job done and gives you a reason to wander the game world. It's also fully voiced, and the actors do well enough a majority of the time.
One thing to point out is it ends with a "To be continued." It does complete its own self-contained story at least, and the next part is available on Steam.
Lastly, it clocks in at a measly two hours. It's worth the ride for fans of the genre, but only on sale. (As of writing this, it's 50 cents, and that's a steal :) ).
Got the game for 50 cents and brought me 2 hours of playtime. Game got full voice acting,interesting and fun puzzles(though some of them are hard to understand what you need to do),and mediocre story. Also there is a marker to tell you if you completed an area or not(completing means you completed the puzzle in there or found a " hidden" item). Puzzle varies with mostly hidden objects but also there are complete a picture,find the difference,find X amount of Y,light an object and such so you gonna have some fun. But also game got some stuff that really annoyed me at the end like misplaced sound effects,annoying movement(to pass through every area till you get to the desirable one) and some puzzles were designed really well and could make you rage a bit.
Overall if you get this cheap - $0.5-1 it will be worth it.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Gogii Games |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 18.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 68% положительных (94) |