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jp's Tropical Lost Island (DS)
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| [August 11, 2025 03:50:48 PM]
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I finished playing Real Crimes: The Unicorn Killer and then, five minutes later, booted this one up. MSL is behind both games (as publisher I think?) so I was curious to see if I could tell...
...both games seem like night and day from each other! They're both hidden object games, but their basic game design is different. This surprised me and I also felt that this game was "worse" than Real Crimes...but as I played I realized I wasn't sure why?
From a "strict" game design perspective - Tropical Lost Island, at least as far as I got, has more variety in its gameplay...
a. Each level has a list of items to find (the list is shorter in Real Crimes).
b. In some levels you get a picture of what you need to find! (so you have to do them in the order the game gives you)
c. One level only had one object!
d. Some of the levels are "action" stills - so instead of a really static shot of an area (like most games), they're almost like a cinematic image.
Combine c and d above and you can have a really interesting effect on the game's pacing - for the level I had played, the character was in a plane crash, and you had to find their PDA (presumably this would help other characters locate the crash site?). It sort of added some urgency to the game's narrative...obviously this was a cost production wise (someone made art that was only used once, though perhaps it appears later in the game again)
So, I think overall my distaste for this game (compared to Real Crimes) has more to do with how the objects are hidden in the scenes...Real Crimes felt more "fair" with this one having objects that both made less sense and seemed more arbitrary? Perhaps if I had played them in the opposite order I'd feel differently?
Playing both together - it's interesting to see how the games are dated in what you have to find in the scenes... a PDA, CD, mobile phone (represented with an old-pre smartphone picture), etc. I wonder how inaccessible the games will become just by virtue of what people will look for/recognize from the clues? (yes, I'm old so I knew what a PDA looked like...)
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jp's Tropical Lost Island (DS)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 10 August, 2025
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This is the only GameLog for Tropical Lost Island. |
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