Surface: Return to Another World

Hidden object games are obviously not complicated, but they can be challenging in their own way. Trying to spot items that blend with the background can be a daunting task, especially after you’ve been playing for a while and your eyes are starting to tire. Most HOGs are combined with various other puzzles, on the other hand, which makes the experience that much more dynamic.

Surface: Return to Another World is a puzzle game with hidden object sequences in which you have to get to the bottom of a mystery and find out why have people gone missing in your hometown. In essence, you just have to search for useful items and use them to solve puzzles, although a few other mini-games are included as well. None of them are very difficult to solve, but you may need to be patient with some.

The story revolves around a small town by the name of Lightfalls, which is the main character’s hometown. As it happens, a weird device has appeared over the nearby lake, just around the time people started to disappear. Naturally, you seem to be the only one who cares, which means that you’ll have to go on a journey beneath the lake and unravel the mystery once and for all.

In case you are not familiar with games of this kind, you need to know that everything takes place in steps. There are locked objects like bags, doors and containers that need to be opened, but you can only find the items to unlock them one at a time. These containers hold objects that unlock others, and on it goes like this over and over again. It’s definitely not exciting most of the time, but it keeps your mind occupied.

Various mini-games break the monotony every once in awhile, but they start repeating as well. It may actually be rather difficult to keep playing for a few hours because of this. Thankfully, the colorful, hand-drawn graphics are quite neat, and the scenes change on a regular basis. While the cutscenes are way too stiff and plain to make an impression, the backgrounds and the artwork is more than decent most of the time.

In the end, Surface: Return to Another World should appeal to HOG fans, but it probably won’t create any new ones. The gameplay is just too repetitive and predictable, while the actual puzzles are just a matter of spotting the right item.