Secrets of the Dark: Eclipse Mountain takes you on an exotic hidden object adventure throughout mystical Thailand in search of your friend who has somehow managed to get himself kidnapped by demons AGAIN. With its beautiful splashes of color, attention to detail, and surprisingly inspiring music track, you’re not going to want to be left behind on this Secrets of the Dark adventure.
Secrets of the Dark: Eclipse Mountain takes you on an exotic adventure throughout mystical Thailand in search of your friend who has somehow managed to get himself kidnapped by demons AGAIN. With its beautiful splashes of color, attention to detail, and surprisingly inspiring music track, you’re not going to want to be left behind on this hidden object adventure.
So… my parents are flying into town this week…. And I’m thrilled, as you can well imagine… I mean, it’s not that I don’t love them and aren’t grateful for everything they’ve done for me. It’s just that they kind of stress me out to no end. They’re going to want to DO all kinds of family activities, and I’m going to have to come up with the agenda. It’s not going to be what they want to do, but neither of them will tell me what they want to do… and then they’ll start fighting and it will be our typical family vacation.
As if graduation wasn’t stressful enough. Uggggg... Anyhow, I’m getting in my game playing before that circus starts.
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So Secrets of the Dark: Eclipse Mountain… I played the first game Temple of Night and remembered that I liked it, so I thought I’d give this one a try. It begins in classic style… our dear old friend is again luring us into a similar situation as last time, except this time we’re in Thailand and not South America.
We’re not there 5 minutes before that turkey gets kidnapped by demons… AGAIN. Really? Ok, so to say we have a similar storyline as the first game is an understatement. And now it’s up to you to rescue the idiot before he gets sacrificed or whatever by these evil demons. I think it’s time we found some better, smarter friends…
There’s not too much lead-in with the story, so you get to start playing pretty quickly. Idiot gets kidnapped and BAM, we’re running around trying to save his behind.
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The overall colors and theme of the graphics scores an appreciative nod from me. I like the exotic elephant and dragon motif of the ancient east. Really, the graphics and artwork are beautiful and get no complaints from me. The colors aren’t super saturated, so don’t expect vibrancy in primary colors. Everything is in nice shades of secondary complex colors of green and purple. Think more like a water-colored painting that blends nicely together rather than bright, in-your-face colors.
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Gameplay? It’s pretty typical for a hidden object adventure game, but a nice feature worth mentioning is, just like the first one, the developers have incorporated the different scenes that morph from dark to light. So, if you turn on a light in a dark room, the room will change before your eyes and become transformed. Items that weren’t there in the dark are now available. This works both ways as well. Sometimes you need to go back and forth in a room between light and dark to solve the puzzles or get your next item.
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The music was surprisingly pleasant. Nothing creepy, so all you scaredy-cats who have a heart attack over a little whispering or chains rattling will be happy. It was actually quite inspiring and reminded me of a nice instrumental sound track that you’d find on movies like Last of the Mohicans or Braveheart.
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If you haven’t played the first one, and you’re worried that you’ll miss something, I wouldn’t worry too much. After all, it’s basically the same story. But the first one was good enough that you might want to take a peek at it if nothing else. Here’s a link to Secrets of the Dark: Temple of Night in case you want to check it out.
Overall, Secrets of the Dark: Mountain Eclipse was a beautiful game that was fun to play, even if I felt that the originality could have used a little work. I mean really? Stop hanging out with this guy already…
