Dream Catcher Chronicles: Manitou

So boring. This game is ONLY hidden object puzzles. NO PLOT, no real scenery or progression of story except little video clips between puzzles. No voices, which in itself is not a bad thing, but in this game it just adds to the misery. Not my type of game.

boring

pretty. thats it. theres one puzzle towards the end which is impossible to win. i have tried and tried but no luck. so im giving up. the puzzle involves colors dropping which you are required to match up, however, the puzzle does so much by itself time is lost, and so you cannot win in the time allotted. frustrating and time wasting.

This could be a good game....
I don´t know and I´ll probably never find out if.
I´ve un- and re-installed the game three times and now I´m giving up.
The games has issues with the full screen (Windows 10 on Tablet) and doesn´t offer any other options screen-wise, it is impossible for me to play, most of the screen is not visible, therefore some of the buttons as well as hidden objects are out of reach, making this game useless for me.
As i said before, this game could be good and fun, I will never know...
For me it is a waste of money and I wish I could remove it from my libary, so that I won´t - in a years time when I might have forgotton about it - install it once again for play and because of the poor programming get frustrated all over again!

Drawings 10/10
Topic 10/10
Story 3/10
Musik 6/10
Realism 3/10 (Native americans in the game look more like animes or europeans for example)
Hidden hint about connection native americans and greys aka. star people 10/10
Difficulty wimmelpicture 9/10 (not too hard and not too easy)
Difficulty puzzles 6/10 (way too easy except one)
almost always the same two puzzles again 4/10
Animals included that dont belong to north america (lioness and chamaeleon) 3/10
3.50 CHF for 2 houres 30/10 ;-)
Little girls kitsch factor 5/10

Overall 8/10

SO i'm glad i got this game on sale, as it defo isn't worth full price.

Plenty of hidden object scenes which is great however some of the items were difficult to see and an iguana was called amaga? Also when clicking an item it wouldn;t register but then when i'm stumped using the hint button it shows the item i had originally clicked. arghhhh.

Storylines okay i guess and arts pretty nice, but too many visual scenes which i wanted to skip and get on with it.

No idea about the pot puzzle, where you put a colour item in and then try and draw a shape, sometimes the shape wouldn't register which i ended up skipping out of frustration.

Wasn't a very long game either.

A great game does not need achievements or trading cards but if that is all one plays for - this game has neither.

I would call this a sleeper, great gameplay, good storyline, and mostly definitely a Hidden Object game. It is fast paced with smooth transitions, so fast and smooth in fact one is at the end (hours later) before one realizes it. It is not a short game though and about the average length for an HO game (around 4 or so hours).

Storyline: Singing Star's husband White Wolf is missing, and she sets off to find him. She goes to the Manitu (element or nature spirits) for help. Her journey involves finding various plants and objects in different locations to use in spells. As the journey unfolds the player meets the Manitu and learns their intentions are not always what they seem.

Gameplay: 98% of this game is HO scenes, no point and click elements or any puzzles. Even the map is only used to move between HO scenes in any order the player choses. There are several HO scenes for each chapter while looking for ingredients and objects needed to make a potion or later at the request of the Manitu. The HO scenes are colorful and detailed. (Even the chapter transition "black and white" ink drawings are quite amazing.)

A few things to note about the HO scene find clues. 1) They are unusual clues, mostly plants and animals most people have not heard about. Since there are no hint penalties I suggest using them. I had to hint and look up some myself. I had no idea an ewer was a pot-like jug with a handle. Some other examples are cane (which means cane sugar plants which look like cattails in fact), puddle (Really? A puddle of water? - How unique!), algae (and not the normal pond scum variety, but the long Sagrasso type that grow like monsterous wide bladed grass under the sea), and of course I can not forget the flying cow. (Totally serious the clue is cow and it is flying and the player has to click on it when it zooms by.) I have not had this much fun playing HO scenes for a while. Such unique and unusual clues. 2) None of the find clues are unfairly hidden either. But in every scene there are one or two that are especially cleverly hidden. Oh the player can see them quite plainly after finding them but they blend so well, one either needs to know where they are there or really has to look for them. 3) The find clues are more and less appropriate to the settings. Or at least to the game theme of Native American indigenous cultures (both North and South America) all jumbled together and throughout time. Basically what I mean is there are no used tires or hammers or bicycles. Very nature oriented with an entire education on plants, animals and birds if one is so inclined. 4) I only found one clue misspelling: broken bow should be broken bowl. It happens (shrugs). Can not complain otherwise about the text.

Remember I said this game is 98% Hidden Object, the other 2% is a mini-game the gamer plays twice and a Match 3 game which has various uses. First the mini-game, it is potion making (in a cauldron). The point of the mini-game is to change the color of the potion to a different color using the plants or things gathered from the HO scenes using a recipe chart and quite literally drawing a magic symbol over the brew. Sounds easy, but it is not. This is a real brain teaser of a puzzle, and if one goofs up one has to start from the beginning again. Fortunately there are only 4 things that can be put in the brew. The gamer only plays the mini-game twice but gathers stuff to make potions often.

Second is the Match 3 game. This Match 3 game is used as a Hidden Object scene, gathering mana orbs to make potions and boss battles. Yes, you read that correctly BOSS BATTLES. Boss battles in a Hidden Object game, my oh my. Then again the player is dealing with nature spirits. I have run into this type of boss battle scenerio before in a game called Cave Quest. But comparing those battles to these, these will kick your butt if not careful. Think Gems of War maybe. Good luck with the battles. They are tough since your opponent starts out with 2-3 times higher hit points then you do. (No skip option either.) My only suggestion is take your time, there is no time limit.

Beautiful artwork, great gameplay, fast moving storyline and 98% Hidden Object. Who can could ask for anything more from an HO game? (That's rhetorical by the way, so do not answer.)

Highly recommend.

This is a decent hidden object game, if you take a few things into consideration.

First of all, although the game has a Native American setting, it has no real resemblance to any real tribe. If you're a stickler for historical accuracy, you may want to skip this. The game is riddled with cliches and downright silliness at times, but if you're not too serious about realism, you'll be fine.

That said, the music and graphics are quite pretty. The game is almost exclusively hidden object scenes with an occasional minigame tossed in for variety. There is no inventory management or item-based puzzles as in most modern games of this genre. This doesn't make it bad, but if you're looking for a more complex game, this isn't it.

The hidden object scenes themselves are nicely done and aren't too easy. There are some naming conventions that might be bothersome to some people, such as using more formal names for animals and plants (I'm well aware of what a Calla lily looks like, but I might be a minority there). However, there is a handy hint button or the ever-present power of Google if anything is too weird. I feel that the quality of the scenes outweighs the sometimes-odd naming.

Lenth of the game is pretty comparable to others of this type, maybe slightly shorter. At the time of this review I believe I'm over halfway through at a little over an hour.

With these things in mind, and with there being no frills, extra content, achievements, or trading cards at this time, I would recommend this game on a half-price sale. Although the game is decent aside from its quirks, it's not $9.99 worth of decent. But I would still recommend it to genre fans, especially people like myself that tend to run out of titles to play!

Wish I could recommend this game as it is a nice story, but some issues are detracting from my enjoyment. First is the screen sizing; When I have the game set to Fullscreen, the third rows of the item lists in the hidden object scenes are cut off from view. When I set the screen size to windowed, the hidden object scenes are small to the point of things being impossible to find. There seems to be no happy medium.

The other issue that is making the game unenjoyable for me is what I can only determine to be translation issues. In one hidden object scene, a vulture was labled as a "griffin." I don't know if the developers were overusing their English thesaurus too, as they also decided to call a mountain goat a "moufflon" (sic), and lilies "callas": both odd choices of words for the two things, and also make finding the items difficult for people unfamiliar with the words. "Mouflon" and "calla," while legitimate terms, would be unlikely choices for native English speakers outside of certain settings.

Regretably, the screen sizing and peculiar wording are both enough to completely overshadow the storyline in this game for me.

One of the gifts of video games is the ability to step into someone else's shoes. You can be another person, live the experience of another culture, explore a whole new mythology. You can experience whole new lives and identities. You can learn something, develop a new mindset to solve new puzzles.

Or you can have a game about Native Americans that includes South American and African world bits and confuses wigwams and teepees and actually has a scalp hanging in the happy couple's home, why not? I've never heard of some of the spirits in this game, and the Native artifacts in this game seem to come from many tribes. I have no idea if the mythology is authentic or not, and nowhere to start looking.

I am going to give up and appropriate someone else's review.

"Pretty simple but fun game with 4 types of mini game: hidden objects, three-in-a-row, original potions puzzle and boss battles similar to PuzzleQuest game."

That person gave it a thumbs up so I'll just take that, too. African animals for everyone!

Pretty simple but fun game with 4 types of mini game: hidden objects, three-in-a-row, original potions puzzle and boss battles similar to PuzzleQuest game.

I'm enjoying this game so far. Some of the lines the main character says are a bit contrived. The hidden object puzzles are somewhat challenging. The scenes are lovely.