It's getting harder for hidden object games to stand out when compared to successful blockbusters like Mystery Case Files and the Dream Day series, but one game that definitely deserves some recognition is Forgotten Riddles: The Moonlight Sonatas. Through clever riddles, a compelling story and admirable attention to detail, Blue Tea Games and Big Fish Games have created a sweet, if slightly short, seek-and-find adventure.

Like its predecessor, Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess, this game does a wonderful job of fusing hidden object gameplay with the intriguing tale of fictional 19th century composer Francis von Amadeus. The Moonlight Opera House, where Francis lived and worked, has been abandoned for some time, but locals say they can hear beautiful music from it and see a ghostly figure standing on the balcony. As an inspector, you're given access to Francis's journals in the hope that you can solve the mystery.

Two modes of difficulty are available; a normal timed mode called Archaeologist, and an Apprentice mode that gives you more time, extra hints, and a special alternate ending. Players then make their way through the game's 10 chapters, each of which involves investigating various rooms in the Opera House like the stage, front gate, composer's room, nursery and library.

At the bottom of the screen are a series of musical notes; clicking on one reveals a riddle that represents one of the objects you need to find in the scene. For example, "You'll be down on your luck after I cross your path; when I swipe my claws, rats will feel my wrath," means you need to look for a black cat. If you get stuck, you can switch to another room or use a hint that reveals extra info about the item's location. You don't have to find every clue in order to move on.

Being the second game in the Forgotten Riddles series, there are several similarities between The Moonlight Sonatas and The Mayan Princess. However, The Moonlight Sonatas does a few things significantly differently as well. There are no longer mini-games every few levels; instead, you'll get the opportunity to play an optional tile-matching game in order to earn more hints...

Ever since the release of Forgotten Riddles: The Mayan Princess, Forgotten Riddles series has shown an innovative approach with a new twist that is far different from the usual seek-and-find games. Hidden object fans enjoyed solving the mystery of the Mayan Princess which introduced riddles to solve a particular area. The latest addition to the series is Moonlight Sonatas. Developed by Blue Tea games, this addictive game has more puzzles, riddles and additional mini-games that promise end-less entertainment

Forgotten Riddles: The Moonlight Sonatas has a compelling story. The game begins in an old abandoned Moonlight Opera house, where the legendary composer Francis Von-Amadeus lived and worked. Mysterious sightings of ghostly apparitions and a skeletal figure standing on the balcony terrify the locals of Godesberg who believe that Amadeus has returned with a vengeance. As an investigator, gamers have to access the composer’s journal, filled with puzzles and riddles, to solve the mystery of the strange sightings in Moonlight Opera.

The objective of the game is to find all needed items by investigating various rooms such as the library, front gate, stage, and the mysterious composer’s room to unlock the secret of the life and times of Francis von Amadeus. Unlike other games of the Hidden Object Genre, this game has some straightforward as well as compelling riddles that need to be deciphered to solve the mystery. A series of musical notes can be found at the bottom of the screen. Clicking on any one note reveals a riddle representing an object that needs to be searched. Players also have the freedom to switch on to the next room in case there’s a deadlock...

I bet that with all the Hidden Object games we’ve played in the past, you guys have already gotten pretty tired of the same old find-the-list gameplay. And that’s why for today, we introduce a new twist to the Hidden Object genre with the Forgotten Riddles: The Moonlight Sonatas game coming from Blue Tea Games. But before we delve deeper, let’s take a good look first into the game’s story.

In Forgotten Riddles: The Moonlight Sonatas, you play the role of an investigator commissioned to solve the mystery behind the ghostly apparitions frequently happening on the second floor balcony of the old Moonlight Opera House. The city of Godesberg believes that this is the haunting spirit of Francis von Amadeus, a musical genius that once lived there, and therefore entrusted you with his journal to help you solve this mystery. But the problem is that Amadeus’ journal is filled only with puzzles and riddles, and before you get a move on this investigation, you have to solve each of these riddles pertaining to the many rooms of the Moonlight Opera House.

As a Hidden Object game, the objective of Forgotten Riddles: The Moonlight Sonatas is for you to find all the needed items in every room in order to unlock a chapter in the life of Francis von Amadeus. But unlike most games of this type that presents you with an item list, this game will give you riddles pointing to each item, and it’s therefore up to your own analytical thinking on determining what item a particular riddle is pertaining to. Many of these riddles are easy enough, but some are craftily designed too, giving this game a notch on the challenge side compared to usual Hidden Object games...

I'm a staunch supporter of unique games. Oh sure, they might not enjoy the commercial success of, say, another match-three game or time management sim, but a casual game reviewer can only take so many of these "me, too" clones bloating the industry. But every once in a while a game surfaces that, while not original in concept, succeeds very well in execution. Such is the case with Big Fish Games' Hidden Expedition: Amazon, a new hidden object download that proves you don't always have to reinvent the wheel - it just needs to roll along smoother than its predecessors.

You’re tasked with finding a missing professor in the latest Hidden Expedition game, and it will take you to the corners of the globe in order to succeed, including Esmeraldas, Casablanca, New York City, and of course, the Amazon rainforest, to name a few locations. The only clues you’ll have to work with are a tattered map that tells of the legendary Beetle Temple and 12 pieces of a journal belonging to the professor.

As with most hidden-object titles, the core gameplay in Hidden Expedition: Amazon involves hunting for objects in a busy scene; items are listed along the bottom of the screen – such as an apple, ornament, scissors, dog, comb and washboard – which you must find and click on to scratch it off the list. It would’ve been preferred if the items were relevant to the scene or story, as some games have done (not sure how an egg timer and a hotdog can help you catch a plane to Morocco) but at least the developer made the items difficult to find (such as a green feather duster in a tree which blends in very well) plus some items can be placed in your inventory to use at a later time.

As an example of the latter, you might get a key that can open a door, a knife that can be used to cut open a ripped chair to find something inside, a glass eye for a mystic who wants it or gopher food used in a gopher hole to bring the little critter to the surface). Some of these inventory items are to be used on another scene. Curiously, many of the same items are peppered throughout the entire game, such as boomerangs, pickles and sandwiches!

The third Hidden Expedition game of the hidden object game series takes on many new features to take the series to new heights. Hidden Expedition: Amazon promises fans a bigger adventure with more to do and it delivers.

In the latest expedition, the only thing you receive is an old beat up map with a reference to the legendary Beetle Temple to aid your search to find a missing professor. As you delve deep into the Amazonian jungles, you discover pieces of the professor’s journal to learn more.

The heart of the game comes in finding many hidden objects and crossing them off your list. Of course, these Amazon-themed scenes surround the hidden objects in hopes to make them harder to find while staying true to the theme.

Two new twists join this edition while you hunt for objects — some move into your inventory for later use. You also can click any item on your list of hidden objects to see a silhouette of the item. Does this make the game too easy? Or does it help a lot considering some objects blend in too well with the scene? Hints are still available where a circle appears around the object’s location. Seeing silhouettes doesn’t count as a hint.

But I say the game is what we make of it. If you want it to be hard, don’t look at the silhouettes period. Who says you have to use hints? We can control how easy or hard we make a game.

Seek out five beetles per scene to receive one shiny new hint added to your hint pack. If you find only four beetles when you finish the scene, no hint for you even if you find one in the next scene. The beetle count starts over with each new scene.

As you can guess from the name of the game, you are going to travel to different places in search of a professor who is missing. Of course one of the places will be Amazon rainforest.

The graphics are done very well. All of the screens look really gorgeous with some animated parts.

What you are doing most of the time is you are searching for the items that are given on the list. You will play different mini-games once in a while in between the seek-and-find levels...

Straight from Big Fish Games Studios comes the 3rd sequel to the Hidden Expedition series with the Hidden Expedition: Amazon game. This time around, your adventure takes you deep inside the Amazon Rainforest in search of a missing professor and the discovery of the legendary Beetle Temple.

Even when you just started the game, you’re already greeted with an awesome introduction cinematic that shows the game’s overall theme. The story starts after you got a pigeon-carried letter coming from a girl named Rachel asking for your help in finding the lost Professor Mandible. Mandible just went missing during his expedition towards the long lost Beetle Temple, and it is now your task to trace his footsteps and hopefully, get to discover the temple yourself.

Being a Hidden Object game, Hidden Expedition: Amazon entails you to look for clues and other items that will possibly lead you to your investigation, and just like most games of this type, every scenery is moderately cluttered with trash and other unnecessary items. One thing unique about this game though is when you click on an item; a silhouette of that item will then be given to you as some sort of a free hint. Of course, if that is not enough, you can always click the Hint Beetle to show you the exact location of your selected item of choice...

I knew before I donwloaded the demo that I would be buying Hidden Expedition: Amazon ™. The previous incarnations of the Hidden Expedition series are that good. Hidden Expedition: Amazon did not disappoint. I was up playing until two this morning and I’m a responsible working gal who doesn’t do that when I know clients will be waiting in the morning. Bah! Who needs work when there are great games to be played?

As anticipated, the artwork for Hidden Expedition: Amazon is stunning, having the quality of fine paintings. The placement of hidden objects is devious, with some worked into the scenery with such subtlety that you don’t realize you’re seeing them when you’re staring right at them. The player’s mission is find a professor who has gone missing while searching for the legendery Beetle Temple in the Amazonian rainforest. You’ll find bits of a map and other clues as you progress along your way. Some of the items you’ll find will go into your inventory for use in later searches - for instance, a key in inventory will be needed to unlock a drawer containing a hidden object.

The level of challenge is high, but Hidden Expedition: Amazon employs fair play principals. There’s no trickery. Hidden objects are well-defined, but finding some of them may have you pulling your hair out. Each time you find five beetles you’ll be rewarded with a hint. Try to collect them from each screen because you’re likely to need as many of them as you can stockpile...

If you've ever found yourself clicking on random basketballs, elephants or telephones and wondering why, you're not alone. Hidden object fans frequently find themselves in this situation, since certain games are better than others about including items that fitthe plot or time period that the game is meant to represent. The Clumsys is full of items that don't belong, but in this case it's on purpose.

Let me back up a bit. Albert is likely the coolest grandpa ever, for the simple fact that he keeps a time machine in an old barn on his property. When grandson Tim and his buddies come to the farm to celebrate Tim's birthday, the kids inevitably discover the time machine and accidentally get transported to different years in the past – one child to each era for a total of 20.

It falls to Helen (who is probably Tim's mother and Albert's daughter although the relationship isn't fully clear) to use the time machine to travel back and retrieve each child, fixing any inaccuracies that may have occurred along the way. Kids will be kids, after all, and the tykes couldn't seem to resist leaving modern items behind and causing bits of mischief here and there. Oh, and the kids have also broken all of Albert's cool gadgets, so Helen is also on the lookout for gadget pieces that can be reassembled into cool toys that will aid her search.

Instead of a list of items to find per location, players will have to rely on their eyes to identify any items that seem out of place in whatever era Helen has travelled to, like the life preserver in ancient Greece, or the speaker cabinet in Renaissance Italy's Sistine Chapel...

20 kids were at a birthday party, but - oh no! - they have found a time machine in the backyard and played a little bit with it... The inventor of the machine, the grandpa of the kid who's birthday it was, is now guiding your every step as you try to find and bring every one of those naughty kids back.

The place you start from and come back to every once in a while is a room where you have the time machine, time travel map, gadget assembly screen and photo album. The time travel map shows you the possible locations in time you can go to. As you choose one, the time machine gets you there.

The gadget assembly screen is where all the parts of the gadgets get as you collect them on the screens. You can come here when you have some of the parts to assemble the gadget according to the scheme. The gadgets that you get help you then find the kids.

Your main task is to find the kids and bring them back, so the photo album shows you how many kids you are to find and it gets filled as you find another kid...

Time machine, time travel, and 20 kids sneak on the time machine after Grandpa told them to leave the machine alone. The kids don’t listen and find themselves spread across different centuries messing with history. Poor Grandpa has to go to their locations, remove what’s the kids brought from our time, put things back in place, and find the kids. That’s the set up for The Clumsys Wonderful and original idea. Clumsy execution.

I love history and the story integrates a lot of history in a sensible way. However, I can’t say the same for the game experience. As soon as I arrive on the first scene in Troy, the graphics quality disappoints. However, let it slide and keep on playing in hopes things improve.

Because of the low quality graphics, the hidden objects (past and present) barely show up. While experience players complain that hidden object games get too easy, finding them in The Clumsys is too hard. In the mode where you must remove all modern toys and objects, the game says to find and remove objects that don’t belong. No list. We need a list because it’s not obvious which items belong and don’t belong in the scene...

The Clumsys from Iwin represent the bright and 100% family-friendly adventure featuring funny characters, funny graphics, and 20 stages of i-spy fun in all possible variations.

Speaking about the game story, you will be looking for 20 kids who got lost in time because they tried to decompile Grandpa Albert’s time machine. So, you’ll have to scour the the scenes of unspeakable historical value, like a shore of Troy with Trojan Horse on it, or the board of American spacecraft landing the Moon in 1962.

On each stage you’ll be looking for a child(you’ll have to find 20 kids in total). To find him you’ll have to scour four scenes representing different time eras...

There’s really something about the name of this game that actually summarizes the whole series of puzzles that you’ll be solving this time around. The Clumsys game, made by Banzai Interactive and Gogii Games, tells the unfortunate story of Albert and Helen Clumsy as they try to find all the kids in Tim Clumsy’s birthday party scattered all across time. You see, being the Grandpa of all Clumsys, Albert the scientist clumsily left his time machine for all the kids to play with. And being the Mother Clumsy, it is up to Helen to bring back all the kids and save time itself from possible chaos.

The Clumsys is actually a Hidden Object game, but unlike other games of this type that lists random items within a big mess, your role in this game is simply just to find inconsistencies within a certain time period and try to repair the sceneries so as to not disturb the whole passage of time. Afterwards, just find the hiding kid by using many of Albert’s gadgets and do the same for all 20 scenes (revealing 20 of the kids too).

With that said, you actually have 4 tasks to do to each scene in The Clumsys game. First, you have to find all the improper items obviously coming from the present time. These items are not listed, so you have to do actual brainwork to find them all. Second, you have to find and replace… umm… misplaced items, wherein you are given a silhouette of a misplaced item and try to place it back where it originally belongs. Third is to clean all of the vandalism the kids left behind, and the fourth and final task is to find the kid and bring him/her home to the farm...

Never in the history of game shows have you had to work so hard to earn that blender or barbecue than in The Hidden Object Show. With 30 hidden object scenes and more than 100 rounds peppered with 10 different random mini-games, reaching the final prize is a test of endurance that is guaranteed - at the very least - to leave you feeling that you've gotten your money's worth.

The premise of The Hidden Object Show is exactly how it sounds: you're a contestant on a game show where in order to advance you must clear a series of cluttered rooms within the given time limits by finding all of the specific items on your list in each location.

You can use hints to reveal an item's location if you get stuck, and can collect more hints by clicking on special question-mark icons hidden in the scenes, for a maximum of five. Getting stuck should rarely be a problem since the seek-and-find gameplay isn't overly difficult, however items do have an occasional tendency of lurking near the edges of the screen where they're impossible to identify. For example, I had to use a hint to reveal the location of a rabbit that I had been searching high and low for, only to find that it was shoved up into the ceiling with only the bottom part showing - not showing were the tail, ears, or anything else to identify the shape as that of a rabbit.

You'll earn cash based on how quickly you clear the scene, and every few rounds you'll also get a prize. These start small (think typical game show staples like kitchen appliances), but turn into bigger ticket items the further along you advance.

There's ample opportunity to rack up more cash during the frequent bonus rounds that are played between hidden object scenes. You'll start out by playing two bonus rounds per level, and the number of rounds increases in later levels...

The Hidden Object Show, from Gogii Games, is a game show themed hidden object game. If you've played all the other hidden object games released in the past year (I think maybe a billion have come out since last May, but I haven't made an exact count) then you'll probably excel at this game and win lots and lots of virtual cash and prizes. As usual, gameplay involves searching through rooms cluttered with all manner of junk for specific items. Find an object, click on it, and you'll scratch it off your list. Find them all and you move on to the next scene, which is just as cluttered. Or more!

The show is hosted by a black and white vampire, a cross between Gomez Addams and Corny Collins. But don't worry, the actual scenes you hunt through are not black and white or vampires.

The Hidden Object Show gives you, as a contestant, a chance to win 5 million dollars. That's enough money to buy 1.4 millon boxes of instant breakfast oatmeal. Each round, the vampire shows you the silhouette of a prize you'll win if you can complete the round. (It's often cash.) You start out with a normal hidden object scene. Find all the objects and you'll move on to one of two special bonus games. Complete each of these bonus games and the prize is yours! From toasters to cars to big haystack-sized piles of cash, the prizes keep coming and keep getting bigger.

There are ten bonus games in total. Which two you end up playing in each round depends on which get selected when you "spin" the bonus game wheel. (Every game show has to have a wheel to spin so I commend Gogii Games on their research.) If you get sick of playing the same bonus games again and again, you can select certain games to skip by using skip chips. These chips are extremely hard to get. You can either find them in the hidden object game scenes, stop the fluxuating bonus game wheel spin power strength indicator in exactly the right spot, or find an Aladdin's lamp and wish for more. The bonus games allow you to revisit scenes and repeat them with a different dynamic. For example, in "Find 10" you'll have to find ten objects of the same kind, or in "Spot the Differences" you spot ten differences between two versions of the same room...

While the casual game market is flooded with hidden-object games, very few actually tie in an intriguing story, memorable characters and relevant items to find. While not a flawless adventure, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes does a terrific job with delivering a cohesive interactive detective experience worth investigating.

You get to work with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous (and believe it or not, fictitious) Victorian detectives in London, Sherlock Holmes and his trusted colleague, Dr. Watson, to unravel 16 intriguing mysteries; these well-written individual missions have such titles as The Vanishing Actress, The Death Card Devil and The Maestro's Violin, but one of my favorites is The Assassinated Aerialist, where murder strikes the circus at 1,000 feet in the air. It seems a hot air balloonist is murdered and suspects include the strongman, clown, apprentice, contortionist, knife thrower and fortune teller. Can you figure out who the killer is by solving puzzles?

While there are many variations of the core gameplay, you'll spend a lot of time searching for items on the screen in The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes. As with many other hidden-object games, you're presented with a busy scene, and you're asked to find a handful of items listed on the left side of the screen. In The Assassinated Aerialist mission, for example, items you'll be asked to find include voodoo dolls (from the fortune teller), short swords (from the knife thrower), dumbbells (from the strongman), and so on. This is refreshing as most hidden-object games ask you to find unrelated items like a wheelbarrow in a restaurant.

Click on incorrect items too many times and some time will be shaved off the clock. At times, Holmes or Watson might pop up to give additional info on the characters or events that took place, such as the clown having an argument with the victim, and so on.

This game also features many different kinds of mini-games to keep the play fresh and fun, whether it's clicking to find differences between two similar scenes, arranging items in a box so that none of them touch one another (think Tetris shapes), putting together jewelry from scattered pieces, turning dials in a correct order, Concentration-like memory activities, sliding tile puzzles, and other head-scratchers all related to each individual mission...

The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes contains 16 cases and each case is comprised of a series of puzzles. Sadly, the majority of these puzzles are the same from one case to the next. First, you must look at two photos of the crime scene and find things that are different between the two photos. This might seem like a piece of cake, but the scenes are designed such that it's never a trivial task. You are aided by a magnifying glass which allows you to find details in the darker and busier areas of a photo. And if you get stuck, you can collect and use Holmes' pipes to reveal a clue with a puff of smoke.

The next game type is simply to find a laundry list of items in a given scene. It doesn't feel very different from the first type of puzzle as you're using your magnifying glass again to comb a photo for clues. As you make your way through the first two puzzle types, a list of suspects is built from the evidence that you find. And in each of these pieces of evidence is the potential to find a locked or scrambled clue which branches the play off into a new minigame. These minigames offered the most variety overall.

Finally after assembling your case with evidence and motives, you travel back to 221B Baker Street where you play a game of photo sudoku, arranging photos of suspects into specific columns of character detail (i.e. wearing glasses or wearing a tie). Once the sudoku round is complete, a game of memory ensues where each suspect is paired with a piece of evidence. The screen is blanked momentarily and one at a time, the pieces of evidence are altered and characters are eliminated from the suspect list until the culprit is discovered...

The storyline here is actually pretty solid: you are presented with sixteen “lost” cases of Sherlock Holmes (a man who has, at this point, solved so many of the dang things that one has to believe that there was, maybe, one Tuesday sometime in 1891 where he actually got to sit down and not do anything at all… which probably drove him nuts), fifteen of which are presented as their own entity, with the sixteenth case neatly referring back to eight of the prior cases… for a specific reason, of course. Generally speaking, the overall writing of the game is quite faithful to the Sherlock Holmes character and universe; Watson is generally Holmes’ sounding board but occasionally shows that he is also a brilliant medical doctor in his own right, the various other characters from the Holmes universe who pop up are generally written either as their characters dictate (Mycroft, for instance, is shown to be incredibly well informed and basically full of every single piece of knowledge one could think of, and of course one of Holmes’ old “friends” shows up later and is written as expected) or as people of the time period would act and talk, and Holmes himself is of course deductively brilliant and completely sure of himself, especially when advising people that he cannot take on cases because Watson has insisted he go on vacation, even though Watson is wrong (and, of course, STANDING RIGHT THERE) or, in one instance, when he completely unravels a client’s case before her eyes, proves that she is the actual criminal, and follows up by advising her that the authorities are on their way, so “You can start confessing now.”

Sherlock Holmes is the biggest prat on Earth, and it is absolutely awesome.

The individual cases, while they don’t generally lend themselves to being followed (since one is most often occupied with the puzzles moreso than deductive reasoning) do seem to make perfect sense upon completion, though a few (most notably the one about the disappearing actress) seem a bit contrived at their completion, and the last case, well, isn’t really much of a case at all as much as one big game of cat and mouse… though it is pretty engaging. All in all, the writing is fun, accurate to the characters, and enjoyable, which is more than was expected from a budget game, so thumbs up to the folks at Legacy for doing their homework...

For one, instead of looking for random objects, The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes involves the player to look for actual clues that are involved in Holme’s current investigation. For every clue that you find hidden on a cluttered area, a relationship is linked to that particular object with a likely suspect to the crime. In my opinion, this feature really intensifies the relation of the story to the overall game play. In fact, some of the clues even open up cut scenes for story development, and frankly, this made the game very entertaining for me.

The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes game also includes quite a number of additional puzzles acting as mini-games throughout the adventure. I’m very much amazed at how varied and unique these puzzles are, and many of them even involves quite a bit of brainwork to figure out. Finding evidences will sometimes trigger these puzzle sequences and solving them will bring forth another clue to aid Holme’s investigation. Basically, they are just fun and challenging to play, even adding flavor to the overall plot of the game...