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The Flying Dutchman Returns
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Dark City - Amsterdam is a Hidden Object Adventure game that is available in Collector's Edition format which bundles numerous bonus items with the main game. These bonus items combine a mixture of choices with some that are available immediately while other will only become accessible once sufficient progress has been made in the main game.
Developed by Friendly Fox, this game casts you in the role of Agatha, an expert in the area of paranormal investigation. Your character is currently responding to a cry for help from Arsen Van der Decken. The reason for the cry for help was down to the appearance of the Flying Dutchman sailing ship which had disappeared many years earlier and was now regarded as a Ghost ship whose appearance would only bring bad luck to where ever it was seen.
As Van der Decken was a direct descendant of the original captain of the ship when it was lost at sea, he had a strong feeling of responsibility. This latest appearance of the ship was accompanied by the presence of numerous ghostly figures who seem intent on causing as much disruption and damage as they could. It will be up to you to discover the connection between the Ghostly Ship, the accompanying ghostly figures and why they were appearing and frightening the local people.
An optional tutorial is available and this will lead you through a series of tasks that will introduce the tools that you can use throughout the game to aid your work. These tools, consisting of a Map, Journal, Inventory, Deduction symbol, Strategy Guide and Hint feature, are arranged across the case of scenes. You will also be introduced to the different mouse facilities as the pointer changes shape to indicate when different actions are possible and the Deduction facility that requires you to make decisions based on known evidence. As an example of this task, your initial Decision could involve recognise der Decken by his appearance within a large crowd of people.
As you move between various locations, you will need to complete different tasks. Along wit the usual mixture of gathering information from other characters, searching for items and exploring areas, you will need to find evidence of crimes and event plus make deductions and draw conclusions from the evidence you may have discovered. You will also be faced by a number of Hidden Object challenges and mini game puzzles.
Identified by an outbreak of sparkles, Hidden Object game play makes use of different methods of displaying the required list of items. Sometimes text will be used with different colours to indicate if more work is necessary before the item can be selected. Other methods used include searching for pairs, finding items using a magnifier or can be covered by a cut-out stencil, belong to a specific category, form part of the image and match an image in a story book.
Generally a mini game puzzle will offer a choice of Casual or Hard version of the task. You might be required to catch drips in containers or create a path linking features. On other occasions you will need to find and arrange serpents in a confined space or swap circular areas to create a completed image. You will also need to sort coloured samples in the correct test tubes and win a game against a computer opponents.
Dark City - Amsterdam Collector's Edition can be downloaded from Gamehouse.com where it is priced at $19.99 or from Big Fish Games priced at £14.90. System requirements call for a 1.0 GHz processor with 1024MB of RAM and 2.35GB of hard disk space running Windows 7 and later.
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