Review – Tearstone

Interface

At first I want to note, that Tearstone is quite different from another hidden object games, so interface is different too. Differences are not global, just little things, but they cut your eye, if you play such games quite long.

For example in Tearstone all buttons placed in another ways, according to games I’ve seen before. It’s just a small part, all the new things you will see in the game. When I say new I don’t mean “good”, as for me I didn’t like the new interface so much.

Nothing was added, quite simple and comfortable menu, everything is just standard. But I don’t like how the button’s, mouse cursor and other interface things are drawn, and I don’t find them good sized both. Score fore interface is 5/10.

Gameplay

As I said before, in Tearstone everything is different, and gameplay is not an exception. Game starts from a very short animation movie, about fifteen seconds, and it tells just nothing about game story. There’s just a lightening, something looking like magic fire in the nest and the sculpture. As for me that was ridiculous. May be game authors see some implication in all that, but I don’t.

Then you appear at the porch with steps. Behind the door is the man’s shadow. It was lots of laugh when I knew, what I have to do! I had to cut down a branch, mix it with the rubber string in Magic Mixer, to get a slingshot and shoot in the man standing behind the door!:) I can’t connect the games serious and scary impression, magic and all that things with this first quest! Strange.

More about Magic Mixer. It’s one of new abilities in the game, with it you can “mix” two things to get some new one. And some stupidity ridiculous here too. When you mix rubber string with pliers you get… a JIMMY to pick a lock. How van it be? It’s not logical!:)

Unlike other new hidden objects I have seen before in Tearstone you need to search for objects just everywhere. Things that you need to find are always shown on your panel at the bottom of the screen. And sometimes you have to mix some of things from inventory to get access to another one. It’s quite to find hidden objects in the game, so hint renews fast and you can use it quite often.

The game story is nit brilliant, sometimes even boring. It’s not exciting, some times you wish just drop it and delete, so tedious it could be. I was not exciting playing this game, so my score for the gameplay is 5/10.

Graphics

Tearstone is quite different in graphics too, and not in the better way. Objects are bad drawn, it looks like the game was made in the 2000 year, not in 2011, how it is said in credits. All the animation in this 2d hidden object game is animation of applying some objects and mixing them in Magic Mixer, that’s all. There are some games that come through the times, the graphics there is simple, but people played them since these games appeared, despite their visual quality. This is not that game, both gameplay and graphics are not very good. Graphics score 6/10.

Sound

The soundtrack is tedious and monotonous. Sounds of nature, birds and others are not high quality, repeat too often and sounds not real. Score 5/10.

Conclusion

Tearstone is not the best example of hidden object games. It’s a game not for a twice, for me it was not so interesting to play just at the first time. try it, may be you will like it more. Total score – 5/10.