Secret City for Android

I enjoyed the game. Not super hard to where I got frustrated. Just difficult enough to keep me entertained. The few issues I had was, it was very difficult to go back to a previous location. I’d either end up clicking on something that’s zoomed in or on my inventory instead of going back to the location I was at before. Maybe a back button might be helpful? And another issue I had was the lock pick puzzle in the bonus chapter. I couldn’t move the 4th pick at all. And it seems to have some kind of glitch. After a few times of inserting the lock pick into the key hole it would make the 3rd and 4th pick go down a peg. Making it even more difficult to try and get the 4th pick to the desired height. Seems I’m not the only one that’s had this issue. Had to spend 10 coins to skip the darn puzzle because no matter what I did the 4th pick wouldn’t move up or down with the arrows. This was definitely frustrating.

I guess by default this game is in “hard” mode and when I say it’s difficult, I mean it’s difficult! The game play itself is pretty easy and intuitive and I find the text to be helpful. It’s also a very long game which I loved. But the in-game puzzles (and there’s a ton of them) can be frustratingly challenging. I had a love-hate relationship with them and had to resort to a walkthrough on 3 to solve. With that said, the game is very well done with lots of variety to keep it interesting! It really was a lot of fun! The inventory is kept efficiently and doesn’t send you back chapters and chapters to go use something you’ve found. You know, like some of those other carpel tunnel inducing games? As some have noted too, the game can get quite dark making it hard to see what your doing so hopefully that is helpful feedback for the developer. Also a snapshot feature would be helpful. I played this one on my Mobile and had zero glitches. Pretty impressive! I’m now a fan of this developer and am off to play their second secret city. Yes, I would definitely recommend this game!

Games like this are syphoning scams. Nope. I’ll stick to the all in one purchase games.

Very bad instructions on some of the puzzles. Gets really annoying trying to figure them out. Towards the end you have to have crystals and mirrors to get the beam to go point in a certain direction. When you get one side done and then you almost get the other side done everything gets screwed up. They do not put that in the instructions though. So stupid and annoying to the point I am about to give all of their games a one star review!! Other than that, it is an ok game.

For the genre, this is really well executed. Puzzles are logical and you aren’t overwhelmed with inventory. At any one time there are only a handful of locations to keep track of. Hidden object scenes are well done too, more interactive and more variety than many other games in the genre. The controls aren’t always well suited for Android. I need to turn the brightness way up to figure out what to look for in hidden object scene. Having important game play elements right at the bottom of the screen (IE. Text for hidden objects, and the main inventory) causes problems. I either couldn’t read it because the iOS bar covered it or I’d constantly bring up the iOS task switcher when trying to select an item. Also some of the contrast in the text and HO outlines is hard to distinguish for these old eyes. One other thing is when I went to pay for hints (which aren’t strictly necessary but I feel the game deserves it), I took the option for fifty ish hints and only afterwards did I see an option for unlimited. It would have been nice to see that earlier but it wasn’t presented to me. So when I’m finished I’ll likely seek out computer versions of the developer’s games because this one is really fun and I’d hate to miss out due to minor frustrations with the controls.