DG: I recently sat down with another adventure game, this time Aidem Media’s City of Secrets, fully expecting to find a similar experience to other point-and-click titles from earlier reviews. There are many similar designs and ideas between all adventure games but the unique setting and charming characters in City of Secrets help to set it apart from the pack. We are all familiar with clicking and moving our characters, reading or listening to sometimes massive piles of text, fumbling our way through sometimes great and often horrible puzzles and scratching our heads when an obvious (in hindsight) solution isn’t so obvious. The adventure genre is as filled with repeats and bland designs as any other, but City of Secrets puts out enough original content to make it noteworthy.
DHGF: I wanted to like City of Secrets, but it made it very hard. The terrible voice acting, weak story, and boring fetch quests conspired to kill this game before it could get off the ground. Throw in the lack of replay value, challenge, and extra features, and things only get worse. The game crashing bugs make it something worth avoiding altogether. There are some nifty moments, but there aren’t enough of them to make up for the tedium and annoyance that you’ll get for the vast majority of the game. Here’s hoping that sequel righted the ship.
Pocket Gamer - Point-and-click adventure has always been a niche genre in the gaming fraternity.
These games are essentially stories with artificial barriers. Rather than flipping through each scene like a picture book, you have bothersome puzzles that force you to use that grey thing in your skull.
AppSafari - When I first caught wind of brand new iPhone adventure game City of Secrets, all of my hopeful sensors started buzzing with excitement. It’s been my experience that classic point-and-click adventures go together with the iPhone app like chocolate and peanut butter; not everyone will care for the combination, but for a sizable few, it’s like manna from heaven. Naturally, I had to check it out.
