Samantha Swift and the Hidden Roses of Athena is quite the long title. It is psychological horror as well as a hidden object adventure game. I love my fair share of hidden object puzzle games; The Secret Order series as well as the Nightmare From the Deep series were both astoundingly good games. But this, this is something else. I played as little as I could bare before uninstalling every last trace of this from my computer. Why? It’s pretty damn nigh malware.


Visuals - The visuals style is cartoony and bright. Vibrant graphics are usually nice, but in this case the visual quality is horrendous. The background scenery is simply subpar, but the findable objects are of such poor quality that they contrast against everything else. They stick out like a sore thumb. In hidden object games, the graphic quality needs to be consistent, especially between objects and the background. When they don’t seamlessly blend, it ends up being an eyesore à la this game. Maybe this game is just old, but it shouldn’t be looking 30 years old. Ever heard of Crysis? Believe it or not, Crysis came out before this game did. The resolution is eye-bleedingly bad and age is simply no excuse. Heck, Toonstruck (my first ever casual adventure game) has better graphics, and it’s over a decade older than this!

Audio - I skipped all the cutscenes because I wanted to get right into the gameplay. So I can’t say much for the voice acting. The sound effects and music weren’t really noticeable, which means they weren’t great, but it also means they weren’t bad.

Gameplay - It pretty much plays like a standard hidden object game, with nothing unique or special about it. It lacks any originality or challenge in the gameplay aspect, though fans of casual adventure games probably won’t mind.

Story - The story seems to be overly clichéd and silly, but at least it progresses a bit.

Functionality - My goodness. I’ve played dozens of games with a resolution of 800x600 or less, my most memorable being the best sh’mup of all time: Jets N Guns (with a resolution of a mere 640x480!). Yet somehow, this game is 800x600 and manages to look like 200x150. That’s not even the bad bit: upon launching this game it changed my DESKTOP RESOLUTION to 800x600. WHAT!? As if the stupid game wasn’t bad enough, it decides to MESS WITH YOUR COMPUTER WITHOUT PERMISSION. Now my entire screen is all zoomed in, and the game itself is minimised and won’t even launch properly. I struggle to navigate my computer to fix this horrendous resolution, but upon changing it back to 1920x1080, NOTHING HAPPENS. Not only does this game DESTROY YOUR ENTIRE COMPUTER’S RESOLUTION, it feels the need to PERMANENTLY LOCK IT AGAINST MY WILL, while the game is running. If this isn’t malware then I don’t know what is.

UX - Menus aren’t the best but they can be navigated fine, and the game is really easy and simple to play.

Miscellaneous - I simply do not appreciate games messing with my desktop resolution for no reason. This game runs at 800x600, BUT DON’T FORCE MY ENTIRE COMPUTER TO THIS ABOMINATION OF A RESOLUTION. Thank you.


Longevity/replayability - It seems to contain at least a few hours of gameplay. Whether or not you can persevere... well I can’t predict.

Support - Non-existent. No patches. No fixes. Many people in reviews and forums complaining about the game not launching, or the game completely breaking after launching a second time, and not a single fix has ever occurred.

Is it worth the money? $10 is a bit much for a piece of broken malware.

• The audio and story are the least bad attributes but they are by no means positive

• Desecration of my PC
  
• Awful graphics
  
• Abundance of technical issues
  
• Worse in every way compared to games released decades prior

It’s just plain bad. There is a slither of adventure but that is obfuscated by all the psychological horror. 0.5/10