Available now at Big Fish Games!

Another Spooky Investigation

Riding strictly with the pack of mysterious mystery solving, Epic Adventures : Cursed Aboard, sets you on who dunnit to some one, somewhere. Riding with the pack is one thing, keeping up is an entirely different matter. Cursed Aboard doesn't stand out from the crowd and has plenty of niggling gameplay issues. This is not what you'd expect for a game in Big Fish's top ten.

The interface looks like it was put toegether in five minutes. So we have the modern option of the sliding inventory bar - love it or hate it - but to start with the hint icon is a just simply a number rendered in the corner over a sphere. The panel has no design, its just simply a plain green bar. There are no hints in general gameplay, just in the hidden object scenes. All of these points leave you feeling that you're playing a rushed job, a game that's not completed.

The game locations feel like they are just thrown together. Alright they physically exist together, but there is no ryhme or reason for why and when you vist one location or the next. All you do is look for some sparkles, find the hidden object scene, get some important inventory item, wander around, use the inventory, rinse repeat. When in doubt retrace your steps and low and behold a hidden object scene has reactivated and you can play it all again. All top ten games tell a story which unfolds as you investigate the locations. The items you find, the locations you visit, they all have some reason to exist - allthough admitidly all games do suffer from very untidy locations with piles of jungk here and there. Cursed relies on stopping gameplay every so often with a movie and some VO to explain what is going on.

As an aside I spotted a Lego block and some crayola crayons... Not sure that the game designers have the rights to use those...

Save your time and your bandwidth, give this 'top ten' game a miss.