Darkarta: A Broken Heart's Quest [Collector's Edition]

This casual point-and-click adventure is rich and rewarding, but not without flaws.

First note that though it has hidden-object scenes, there aren't very many. Most of the distractions come from puzzle mini-games, which are all quite enjoyable, and the actual "adventuring" of using objects with each other, which here is relatively challenging as well as not always logically deducible. Still, there is enough diverse content to keep fans of the genre satisfied.

All that is fine. The game's core flaw is its storytelling. The story is an ambitious weaving of two narratives (one of which is steeped in South Asian lore) via reincarnation. That sounds like it could be great, but unfortunately the dev team's skills are not up to the task. The end result is an emotionally confusing field of narrative debris. The many cut scenes are well produced, but in the end they fall flat because the context is weak. I almost never want to skip cutscenes, in any game, but Dakarta really tried my patience.

Another flaw is the game engine: annoyingly slow movement between scenes and general clunkiness.

So, thumbs up, I enjoyed this, but see lots of room for improvement.