From the Store description:
Battle your way through exotic locations and fiendish puzzles to discover treasure beyond your wildest imaginings. Uncover the secrets of the ancient world... and find out what really happened to legendary explorer Professor Flintlock!
★ Explore ancient temples, untouched jungles, and exotic cities long lost in the mists of time.
★ Navigate your way through a variety of brain-teasing puzzles, where a single misplaced shot can be the difference between success and failure.
★ Gather and train a diverse crew, each with their own unique talents, skills and personality.
★ Discover loyal allies and treacherous enemies… although it’s not always easy to tell friend from foe!
It all sounds a little more mysterious than it is, but there's nothing wrong with the atmosphere generated, the music, the characters. Even the core physics game is fun in an 'Angry Birds'/Arkanoid fashion, as you'll see. Secrets and Treasure falls down on two main factors:
- It's buggy, I had several crashes back to the Windows Phone application list, I had several panes up that couldn't be dismissed without accepting whatever the game was trying to foist on me, plus saving progress stops working after a while.
- The freemium and in-game parameters are just all too much. Yes, I know that Secrets and Treasure is no worse than a number of other titles at the moment, but that doesn't make it right. Juggling fuel and diamonds and coins and energy and trick shots and medals and special powers and much more, all on top of the actual core gameplay is simply too much. This is supposed to be a game and relaxing fun - instead it's a test of management and of memory as much as it is guaging where the ball should be fired next.
But onto the game itself:
No, your eyes don't deceive you - this is most people's first glimpse of the game. For some strange reason, Secrets and Treasure plays in landscape in only one orientation - and it's the wrong one. So control keys to the left and volume/power on the bottom. Ugh.
Plenty of atmosphere and original cut-scene artwork impress.... it's just a pity such Q&A didn't extend through the rest of the game.
Each level that you finish advances you further through a map, with city gates. The goal is to collect map pieces and ultimately find El Dorado... of course!
The challenges in each Arkanoid-like level don't always stay consistent. So I had to destroy 12 bricks, but also try to destroy no more than 8? Err.... Do note the XP points being earned, mind you, this is an Xbox Live title. Which is something, at least....
The core game in action, aiming steel balls from the top of the screen to interact with blocks, tiles, explosive, boulders and obstacles in the screen below. The aim is to always, as a minimum, to despatch the ornate 'guide tiles'.
As you progress, you'll meet and acquire new characters to play as, each with new 'special abilities' (see the complexity note, above)....
Yep, there are meters to fill up, so that's yet another parameter to keep track of. If I sound like I'm complaining a lot then that's because I am. In order to 'master' Secrets and Treasure, you'd have to immerse yourself in the game for hours - when did a simple physics game become more complicated than Sim City?
At some point, you'll start missing out on easy level successes and then it's matter of buying more balls to fire, trying and trying again, which gradually uses up your fuel/energy, and eventually you'll be availing yourself of the pay-for freemium top-ups.
The developers claim that Secrets and Treasure can be completed without paying, but take this with a pinch of salt. There's a mechanism whereby your fuel gets restored by waiting (i.e. in the real world), but we're talking of days, not minutes, which is frustrating if you're trying to play completely for free.
Another of the typical level designs - the core physics game here is absolutely fine. The elements aren't anything that we haven't seen before, but they're atmospheric and fun to watch/play...
There's a daily 'target practice' mini-game, in which extra rewards can be earned - which parameter do you want to try for?
The freemium paybacks to the developers. Everything seems finely pitched, in fairness, the developers have done their calculations right. But the amount of mental/logistical work needed to get this stage (or to avoid it!) is just too much. For me, at least....
You can try Secrets and Treasure for yourself here - comments welcome if you got much further than me! The saving/restoring bugs mentioned above apparently kick in after the first few fifteen or so levels and the fact that these weren't picked up by Microsoft tend to indicate that the play testers all got fed up before this stage too. Sigh....