Alchemy Mysteries

HOGs & HOPAs For What Ails Ye

I decided to try a more traditional HOPA I picked up a while ago, Alchemy Mysteries: Prague Legends by Jetdogs. The production values are iffy, but surprising care was put into some of the details. It has smooth background rotation and there are actually animated models that walk the streets in the background, for example. The CG, graphics, and voice acting are pretty dodgy and it has a goofy supernatural/arcane story I didn't pay much attention to. I was surprised by the variety of puzzles and the number of helpful hint features. The hidden object scenes were cluttered with random objects. The puzzles were not very intuitive and there is a lot of backtracking. Lots of "jump scares" that are too slow/gradual to genuinely startle. Unsurprisingly, only about 35% of players cracked open the game--these games are often heavily discounted or bundled, so it's an easy impulse buy. But 23% of players finish the game and 12% get a perfect game, which is a very good completion rate. I wouldn't recommend that game but I was interested enough to try another.