Dark Parables: The Swan Princess and The Dire Tree Collector's Edition

Casual adventure games do not need to baffle with intricate stories and difficult to follow character arches, because the whole point is for them to be enjoyed by anyone and not require too many hours of effort. On the other hand, they must at least be intriguing enough to keep the players engaged, which is pretty easy to do with the right combination of elements.

Dark Parables: The Swan Princess and The Dire Tree is a hidden object adventure game in which things take a turn for the worse when a thief steals a magical seed and puts the whole nature at risk. As exciting as that may sound, your job is the same as in every other HOPA out there, which means that you just pick up interesting items and use them later on to solve puzzles and unlock doors.

The game world is pretty interesting, depending on how much you enjoy fantasy stories. As such, it all takes place in the Swan Kingdom, or more exactly Dire Island. Naturally, magic is a normal occurrence here, so you’ll often have to deal with spells and similar phenomena. On the other hand, the plot is pretty basic, and the ending is about as predictable as it can be.

Most of the gameplay mechanics should be familiar if you are a regular fan of HOPAs, which means that the great majority of your time is spent investigating every location and trying to uncover useful objects. Obviously, every item you find is then integrated into a puzzle or a lock, and so on until the game ends. To mix things up, the puzzles sometimes feature interesting mini-games that call for a bit of imagination.

The best thing about Dark Parables: The Swan Princess and The Dire Tree is the visual presentation, on the other hand, because every scene is superbly rendered using hand drawings and special effects added on top. Moreover, there are all sorts of sounds to complete the atmosphere, not to mention the fact that every character is voice acted.

In spite of the fact that the game is more or less the same as every other title in the series, Dark Parables: The Swan Princess and The Dire Tree is a bit more refined when it comes to the story and the way the puzzles tie to each other. Hence, old fans of the franchise should find a bit of renewed energy in this iteration, which is great news.

NOTE: This is a downloader for the game. Once run, the application will automatically download and install the game on your computer.

To buy the product you need to register with Big Fish. The registration is free and the account will let you earn free games, play community games or participate in game forums, write reviews as well as offer you significant discounts.