PassionFruit
Games has created two of my favorite recent casual adventures: Nancy
Drew: Lights, Camera, Curses! And Nancy
Drew: Resorting to Danger. So I eagerly picked up
their new project, Tiger Eye Part I: Curse of the Riddle
Box.

Having concluded their
association with HerInteractive (who published the Nancy Drew titles),
PassionFruit’s new goal is to make casual games based on romance
fiction. Considering the audience for casual games, this would seem
like a good idea.

Based on the debut novel
of the popular and prolific romance author Marjorie
M. Liu, Tiger Eye is the first of two
projected games based on the novel of the same name.

The
game sticks pretty close to the basic Hidden Object Adventure formula,
moving the player through a series of mostly static screens which
contain objects to find and puzzles to solve.

The game is nothing if
not ambitious. Being based on a novel means there’s lots of
story to be told, and between the puzzle screens, the game includes
many long cutscenes that push the story forward.

Unfortunately, it’s
in these cutscenes that the game falls flat. The story’s heroine
is one Dela Reese, an attractive young woman with strange paranormal
powers. While in Beijing’s Dirt Market, she stumbles across
an ancient relic which contains a genie. Since this is a romance story,
this particular genie turns out to be a handsome, seven-foot tall
muscleman named Hari, who, conveniently, starts off the conversation
by insisting that he’s going to be Dela’s slave.

Hari is a shapeshifter
who’s been trapped in the device for many centuries. Dela is
the nicest “master” who’s ever extracted him, and
let’s just say that the two of them get along rather well.

Perhaps
I’m not the proper audience for a game like this, but I found
the story and dialog pretty cheesy. The narrative just sort of assumes
that Dela’s bizarre powers will make sense to the player (they
don’t). Maybe if I had read the book it would have made more
sense.

Also, while the art on
the puzzle screens is solid, the art and art direction for the cutscenes
feels low-rent and clumsy I realize it’s not easy creating animated
cinematics on a budget, but the scenes in Tiger Eye
feel flat and uninspired. They’re also long. And there are a
lot of them.

On
the other hand, the actual game portion of the game is good.
The Hidden Object mechanic remains an irresistible draw, and the game’s
puzzles are above-average. There’s also an effective (and sometimes
welcome) built-in hint system, so that even if you get dreadfully
stuck, you probably won’t have to Alt-Tab out to find a walkthrough.
Not that I would EVER do that.

The game is only a few
hours long and, since it’s based on only half a book, doesn’t
feel finished at the end. I wouldn’t call the ending a cliffhanger,
exactly, but you’ll definitely have to play the second game
to finish the story. Perhaps you’ll be more interested in seeing
the end of that story than I am.

System Requirements:

PC Download:

• Windows XP/Vista/7
• Intel Pentium III 1.4
  GHz or higher
• 512 MB RAM
• 300 MB hard drive space

Mac Download (COMING
IN MAY):

• Mac OS X – 10.4 or higher
• 1.0 GHz Intel processor
• 512 MB RAM
• 300 MB hard drive space

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.