Your impressions for Darkarta: A Broken Heart's Quest Collector's Edition (Well, they might be new HOG makers, but they've sure done their homework in making titles for them.)
The story: Hooboy, where to begin? You play Mary (no last name directly given but you have a grandfather with the last name Creek, so there's a 50% chance your last name is Creek,) a mother of indeterminate profession who receives a letter from said grandfather. She's told she's not an orphan and to come to his estate in India immediately. When she gets there, her husband is injured and her daughter is kidnapped by a ripped dude on a winged buffalo. You have one objective: save your daughter. (You leave your husband in the care of some stranger. He'll be fine. He doesn't show up until the endgame, and your daughter only cries out for her mamma, not her papa, so you know, no biggie. Fish and bicycle and all that.) The opening cutscene shows that same ripped dude in 1750 BC being chained up and tortured, and some other chick casting an immortality spell on him, killing herself in the process. So there's Indian mythological stuff going on, past life stuff, love triangle stuff, plot holes, it gets kinda weird.
In the bonus chapter, you play a literal Deus Ex Machina who resolves what happened in the main story.
They tried to make it a little deeper and more epic than the average hidden object game, and to some extent they succeeded, but at the same time the genre is kinda constraining. If they had gone full-on point-and-click adventure, it might have been more effective. There are some collectible "memories" that show off some of your daughter's past, and the developers really captured the mind of a precocious six-year-old. (A Christmas wish list asking for an iPad, an iPhone, a computer, an Xbox and a WiiU? A note asking mom that if she gets her a Pepsi, will she unlock the door - check yes or no? A picture of her wearing a fake moustache and boxing gloves coupled with a note asking to take karate? Yup, this kid's in grade one alright.) So while it wasn't perfectly well-told, you can see lots of effort put into this, and I can respect that.
The audio and dialogue: Rare is the hidden-object game where there's good voice direction, and Darkarta...is no exception. The protagonist voice actress sounds like she's done dozens of these kind of games and just trots out the same voice over and over. As a result, some of the emotion gets stripped away. Would it kill someone to say, "Okay, try that line again, but now keep in mind you just saw a vision of your daughter in a cage like an animal, crying out for you to save her, and you're filled with sadness and cold determination to do just that?" That sort of thing separates the good games from the great ones. Well, that, and making sure all the characters pronounce the names the same way. There were three different pronounciations of "Nagin." Also, the daughter's character voice seemed to change halfway through the game, like maybe it was done on different days and the actor forgot what she sounded like? I dunno. It was okay overall, but a little wooden.
Mary sure does jump into everything with both feet though. Apparently the daughter had foreknowledge that she'd be kidnapped by a "dark king" on a winged buffalo and asks Mary if she'd save her. Then Mary is all "Why didn't I take her seriously?" Um...because you're a rational human being? She takes her past life in stride, as if it was a given, but it could be interpreted as Mary's just going with the flow and being all "okay, fine, whatever, just want to save my daughter."
Worst character? EASILY the grandmother. You use a magic McGuffin to summon her ghost, and she's all "You done goofed in your past life and that's why all this is happening now." You rightly ask, "What did I do?" and she responds, "Time will disclose." Bitch, I summoned you from the other side and all you can tell me is to wait and see? If you're not gonna be helpful, why even bother answering the summons?
The graphics:The environments look great, there are some neat cutscenes with water effects that are really good for a HOG, there are flying scenes reminiscent of King's Quest VI, so far so good. Then...there are the characters. Some are passable (the caretaker at the beginning, the ripped dude, the sorceress,) and some are...yeesh! (The husband, and ESPECIALLY the daughter. She has some serious uncanny-valley creep factor. Almost made me not want to save her.) Never understood why developers of HOGs hardly ever stylize their characters in different ways.
The gameplay: Stays true to the holy trinity of inventory puzzles, minigames and hidden object scenes, although there were a few minigames I hadn't seen before which is always nice. Some of the hidden object scenes contained items that were behind other items so you couldn't see them until you clicked something in front of it. That makes for a more realistic scenario, but a less fun one. In future, developers, if you do that, make sure the ones you can't currently see are in a different colour in the word list.
The game has more achievements than most HOGs, which is fine, but they had some crummy ones. "Play the game without a tutorial." This should never EVER happen. There are two achievements for "collect all the missable items." (Yes, there are TWO types of missable items.) There are so many ways to make this less annoying and they blundered on all of them: allow backtracking to every area so things aren't truly missable. Say: "You're about to leave this area and haven't collected everything. Are you sure you want to continue?" Allow you to replay the game without having to re-find all the missables you already found. Nope, nope, and nope. You miss? You gotta replay the game from scratch. Hopefully they live and learn on this one.
The length: Well in my first go-through I got the achievement for "beat the game in four hours," even though my Steam profile said 5. Not sure which to go with. Either way, slightly longer than average.
The verdict: As far as hidden object games go, it's actually pretty good. It's not perfect, but for a new company's first try it's great. It feels like Artifex Mundi with an Indian twist. Lots of potential here. I'd recommend it.