It's important to note that this game doesn't work well with Windows 8 and above. You'll need to separately download its .exe file and use it replace the Steam version in order for you to be able to launch the game properly and play. Step-by-step guide here[midcoregamer.blogspot.com].

"Playing as the cool, female version of Indiana Jones, this HOG will set you off on a pretty epic adventure as you travel the world in search for seven vials to complete Midas' heart and break the golden curse before it is too late! The game is filled to the brim with fun and somewhat challenging HO scenes, and is punctuated with the occasional, super-easy puzzles. Despite its age, I'd say this is a really decent HOG especially if you love the HO part a lot more."

Samantha was initially hired to recover Alexander the Great's scroll, and at the same time, she's been trying to track down her father's whereabouts. However, things went from okay to worst at the drop of a hat once she realized that Chandrin Geber, the person who hired her was masquerading as a museum curator and was actually intending to use the ancient knowledge (King Midas' golden touch) to enrich herself and, also her partner whom you'll meet later down the road.

Chandrin is a pretty competent alchemist and she was able to reverse engineer the Midas' touch, allowing her to use specific solutions to turn anything she wants into gold and vice versa, but Samantha isn't about to let her get away with all of that! She has uncovered a way to completely break Midas' curse - that is by collecting all the seven vials needed to fill up Midas' heart. Each vial represents something Midas desire the most and hence, turned into gold. The subsequent storyline mainly involve you travelling around the world, from Turkey to the US, to even India, in search of each vial. Once done, you'll finally have a showdown with Chandrin herself, though her partner has managed to flee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmd77SpPKnQ


Pros
+ A pretty great storyline that is gripping enough to keep me interested and engaged
+ Female protagonist :)
+ Hidden object scenes (the part where you find hidden objects) are actually somewhat challenging but not too frustratingly so. I find the scenes to be really well-balanced.
+ As far as I know, there's no penalty for wrong clicks
+ Plenty of collectible artifacts for you to bring back to the museum. You can even visit the museum and admire your "loot"
+ Puzzles that aren't too difficult. Whenever I play a HOG, I play it to relax. That's why I don't particularly enjoy puzzles that are too difficult and would likely skip them if I could solve them (I like to think myself as a pretty competent puzzle solver :) ) within the first few minutes or so.
+ Nice music. I'd highly suggest you keep an ear out for the music in the various different locations you'll be travelling to. Some of them are rather nice!
+ Helpful radar system (Doesn't only show the silhouette of an item you clicked; you can use it in a hot-or-cold manner to detect where an object is), which makes its hints completely redundant.

Cons
- The biggest con here is that the game, which they are selling by the way, doesn't work for Windows 8 and above without you going that extra mile to fix the issues the devs should have fixed in the first place. Here's a step-by-step guide[midcoregamer.blogspot.com] that I've written up to help players who want to play the game but have no idea how to fix the issue that's stopping the game from properly launching.

That being said, the game is definitely worth the extra effort, especially if you can no longer get a refund.

- No difficulty levels - there's just the one
- No sparkles to identify areas you can interact with so you'll likely spend a lot of time just waving your mouse cursor around the screen in hopes of finding an interactable area.
- No voice overs

Personally, I strongly believe that it shouldn't fall on us, the players, to fix a game that we've bought just so we can play it. For this alone, I would give the dev/publisher, MumboJumbo, a super low score. It just doesn't seem like they care about their players.

However, this low score shouldn't reflect on the quality of the game, which admittedly is pretty good, especially for an older title. The adventure-themed storyline is well-paced and written; the HO scenes are fun and challenging, despite not having a whole lot of variety; and the puzzles are really easy to solve. This is the sort of HOG you'd want to play if you're looking for a HO challenge (that's tough but not too tough) and you don't care too much about puzzles.


If you like this review and would like to follow me for more, please feel free to drop by my curator page:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33780629-The-Midcore-Gamer/