Set Sail!
Mystery Cruise starts off the same way all thrillers do - on an encouraging, happy note. Miss Danford, our leading lady, gets an unexpected letter from a travel agency. It turns out she's won a cruise on the Seawind Ocean Liner, a cruise that they haven't even begun selling tickets for yet! How exclusive and exciting! Your first task in the game is to help her pack her bags for the trip. Like all characters in hidden objects game, she's not exactly Mrs. Doubtfire. Things are strewn around her room and you'll have to do some serious searching to find everything on her list.
Not Always Hidden in Plain Sight
This is one of those cool hidden objects games where you can search little nooks and crannies within the levels. In the first level, you can click on an open trunk to look inside of it. This opens the door for some clever hiding spaces and just extends the longevity of the stage in general. It makes the level seem more alive and interactive, as opposed to static and boring.
Once you find everything, you then have to pack it all in Miss Danford's suitcase which is the perfect excuse for a puzzle. In this case, an actual jigsaw puzzle! You'll literally piece together the insides of her luggage for her. The difficulty is just right. It's nothing too complicated, but you won't exactly breeze through it. You'll have to shuffle pieces around and do some thinking. Puzzles like this are a staple of hidden objects games. They're usually thrown in between levels to sort of break up the action and it works well. It's good to see Mystery Cruise recognize a winning formula and use it to its advantage.
All Aboard!
Once you've got all that squared away and you're aboard the ship, the plot begins to unfold. The game is called Mystery Cruise, after all, so you'll no doubt be waiting for the mystery. You won't have to wait long, as things get strange in the second level when Miss Danford gets a mysterious note. The note is torn to pieces and scattered around the room, naturally, so you'll have to find all of the scraps of paper and put it together, Once you do, it reads "Key and letter in the grand hall - find them to escape peril."
And the plot thickens! It's pretty neat how we act as observers. Miss Danford just thinks her note is part of the cruise's "entertainment," but we know better, so we're forced to watch her run face first into danger. The story is fun and is more than enough to keep the action chugging right along.
Mystery Solved
Mystery Cruise isn't so mysterious after all - it's just a good, old-fashioned hidden objects game. No secret there. It doesn't take any big risks and pretty much sticks to the basics, but it represents the genre proudly and offers a good amount of fun. The levels are well done, as are the puzzles, and the story is entertaining, making it a worthy purchase.
