About This Game The Hope Lake Boarding School was abandoned long ago, when one of its teachers drowned by accident. Many years later, all of the female students began to disappear, one by one. Visit the place where it all began. Try to pick up the maniac's trail and put a stop to his crime spree. Game Features: - 48 locations - 8 hidden object scenes and 26 unique minigames - an interactive map - a flashlight, an essential item for every detective - two game difficulty levels 7aa9394dea Title: Hope LakeGenre: Adventure, Casual, IndieDeveloper:Far Mills, MysterytagPublisher:RunServerRelease Date: 3 Jun, 2016 Hope Lake Download Windows 8.1 Hope Lake is a pretty dodgy HoG. There's a lot of laughable logic (which is nothing new for the genre, to be fair), mislabeled items in the hidden object scenes (which is annoying AF), weird word usage ("caster" instead of "wheel" - though I guess it's nice for expanding your vocabulary) and the same song plays from beginning to end. The art is nice enough at least, the puzzles were fine, and the story was okay. It didn't smack you over the head with explanations, but I actually kind of missed the usual narmy *find clue* "Gasp! This must be why the villain is such and such!".Anyway, if you play a ton of HoGs just kind of on principle, this is perfectly acceptable, but there's a lot better out there. I wish there was a "take it or leave it" option, but I guess I'll go with not recommended since I'm not exactly raring to get people to play it. I'm just trying to make leaving reviews a habit from now on.. It took about 4 hours to finish, its was a good game but has some big preoblems. Sometimes when the search says a word it does NOT mean that word. It would say literally bottle but mean the coke can or say key and mean a wrench. but then in the next puzzle say key and mean a doll. But other then that it was a nice little time waster. Frame rate is waaaaay too high (in the 350-450 FPS range), especially for a game like this. Have to take frequent breaks so the game doesn't fry my computer. Game settings are minimal at best with zero options to adjust graphics for performance.Story is pretty good and the clues you find along the way add to it. However, the technical issues make this a big nope.. Ok, so I started out really quite liking this game. It was dramatic and pretty visually good. The music was ok too. Yes, the story was all a bit standard about some nutter kidnapping women and I had to solve the case, but all in all it looked like it would be ok.Then I started getting tired of all the usual failings of a hidden object\/point-and-click adventure game. The fact that you have to return to locations just because a new version of the hidden object puzzle has now activated is typical of many but the more you see it the more you realise how lazy it is.And then there are certain points where the game is just sloppy and broken. One hidden object puzzle requires you to put two keys in a chest to get an object inside. The keys are very close to the back arrow, and low and behold if you accidentally click on those you can no longer get the object inside and so not complete the puzzle. The solution to this common problem (see Steam forums)? To restart the game from the beginning and do it all over again!As the game goes on, the development gets even sloppier. Hidden object puzzles with objects that simply don't match their description. I have to find a cog? Ok, so I'm looking for something metal, round and with teeth. What? You want me to click on a brooch? How was I ever meant to know that was a cog??? And WHY do I get a puzzle which has a bow as an object to find and yet the perfectly serviceable bow tied in ribbon simply isn't the one I'm lookng for, it's actually the violin bow. How is that fun???I hate leaving games incomplete unless I can help it, or there's a real chance of throwing my monitor through the wall, but it doesn't really get any better from this point. It will kill a few hours, but given there are so many of these types of games, you could definitely do better.. I really wanted to like this hidden object game, especially given how useful and pleasant the map system is (it prevents backtracking, which is for me the major flaw of the genre).But absolutely nothing makes sense.Among things that made all suspension of disbelief impossible for me: An armed sheriff decides not to go look for the missing girl (who was just abducted) with his deputies but instead ask Random_private_detective. Random_private_detective goes on the hunt for a dangerous psychopath and his victim armed with only her id card and her high heels (also, her attire isn't appropriate for the task, the location or even the weather). Oh, scratch that, she leaves the card in the car, so she only has her high heels. Random_private_detective has never heard of forensics, so she manipulates all the evidence without gloves. To her defense, seeing the behavior of police, I doubt this fictional world has a court system. The armed psychopath knows full well that Random_private_detective is trying to corner him and save his latest victim, but instead of running away or getting rid of the evidence, he sneaks around Random_private_detective for hours. During that complete waste of his time, I counted 4 miserable attempts (the falling tree, the well, the fire and the box) at Random_private_detective's life that he did not bother to follow through because... because. Meanwhile, Random_private_detective who does not seem to be a psychopath, has no hesitation gunning down the bad guy who has let her and Emily live. Random_private_detective seems to have enough foresight to guess which items will come in handy to open mysteriously sophisticated locks before seeing said locks, but she will again and again get rid of useful items like hammers for the pleasure of seeking new ones later on. Oh and she has never heard of brute force algorithms, so forget trying to crack a 3-digit code. The bad guy keeps closing doors right in front of Random_private_detective, but a second later, when she tries to open the door, she finds out its lock is broken and its parts are scattered around the property... How does that work? Why did he prepare so many locks and scatter their parts? Did he never lock anything before Random_private_detective arrived or is he continuously breaking and repairing his own locks for fun? Random_private_detective, despite her attire, is actually customer of the year at Home Depot. She spends so much time dismantling and building stuff, I bet her agency is called DIY Detective. She will however rarely break objects to get their content, because it makes much more sense to rummage through the area for hours for a key (or even create one with a mold) than cut or break open a bag, book or coffin. Especially considering that the victim is still alive and could have been killed any minute if logic existed in this world. Most mechanisms make as little sense as the characters. Most puzzles left me speechless because there seems to be absolutely no link between the solution and the opening of the container. Worst offender: the puppet show... I mean, why does it move on its own? how does it detect that you give the right items or not?? how come you get an eagle figure at the end??? HOW DOES ANY OF IT WORK?! Despite her considerable DIY expertise, Random_private_detective is no MacGyver. Not only can she never substitute a component with another (why on Earth would one need specific branches to fix a rope ladder? and need to cut them with a chainsaw? with a killer sneaking around and planks laying around everywhere), she sometimes has clearly suicidal tendencies... Worst offender: Would you go down into the well the killer just threw something in instead of using the hook to try to get the objects back up? Once stuck in the well, would you destroy its walls in the hopes that it would fill quickly enough for you to get out but not cave in on you?So, the story is complete nonsensical BS, the characters act like they have expired yoghurt instead of brain cells, most of the puzzles make no sense... but even the hidden object scenes are a bit flawed: item names are often used to mean different things from one scene to the next. A bow will be a bow tie in one scene and a violin bow in the next. A key will be a regular one in one scene and a monkey wrench in the next. And so on and so forth.Those flexible definitions would not be a problem per se, if there was not regularly multiple items fitting the same definition in a single scene... The game will often ask you to find a key or mask, present you with 2 or 3 of them and then you have to try them all to find which one the game arbitrarily decided is the right choice.All in all, I cannot recommend this game. It was clearly made by a motivated team who (mistakenly, imo) think they understand what hidden object games are all about, but it is a mess.
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