Letters From Nowhere

Nowadays HOG’s are almost all the same, so finding the right one, and creating one with different theme and generally at least a few different twists in the gameplay is hard. I can’t say we got something totally new with this game, but what I can say is that this game surprised me in some points in the game I didn’t expect at all. So let’s first start with the story of the game. It has some originality within it as much as it can get, as every hidden object games story comes down to the same thing. The story of the game begins when Audrey was waiting for her husband to come home, but he didn’t arrive. After spending the night all alone, she determines to go to the police and report her husband as missing, but police has certain number of hours that need to pass before they can declare that person missing and some other things, so that ‘fieldtrip’ to the police wasn’t helpful at all. Suddenly Audrey starts getting letters with some private details which only her husband or someone close to them could know about, making her very suspicious about these letters and getting her start her own search for her lost husband. As said before, this type of story through the game will be very familiar to most of the fans of the HOG series. The game starts with you searching through different premises for items that you need to solve different puzzles and to collect items that are broken in multiple pieces. The big question that everybody will be asking themselves is who is writing those letters??? Cushioned with the occasional puzzle, enveloped with a story eager not to give any unnecessary detail away, and wrapped with pleasant environments and calming music, Letters from Nowhere is really the complete package. Power-ups and bonuses aren’t something new in this genre, but the way the game applies them and how you get to them isn’t that often, in fact it is rare. You will collect points like in every other game, but after you have collected enough amount of points, the game will unlock one of the many bonuses that you can get through the game. This means, that you have unlocked the bonus, but you don’t have it, yet. You can now collect it in every level, but first you must find it to use it. The bonuses themselves are pretty familiar to anyone who has played a couple of HOGs like the thermometer. Activating it means that your cursor has additional upgrade, so to call it, but which last only for a certain time period and of course it tells you when you are near (hot) or far (cold) from an item. Of course the game offers the standard hint system that you can use and it is reachable, so using it depends on your skills with power-ups. As for the item search itself, like said besides the standard item search you will have items that need other items to work, like a gun, which can’t be used until a few rounds of bullets have been found. You'll also encounter items that initiate instant mini-games, though these are rare. When you search through the area for items, try not to click around too much, as this game like many other games, has penalized too much miss-clicks. Furthermore, the game features an additional Unlimited Mode. Such a mode works particularly well for this title, given the fact that hidden objects seem to possess that golden difficulty rating: they're not too easy to find, and they're not too difficult. But to unlock The Unlimited mode, you have to find hidden stamps throughout every level and collect them all. Because most of the games items are randomized through the gameplay and the levels you will encounter some repetition with the items, but mixing as they are mixed and with an item with which you interact, changes on every level, you probably won’t even notice it. After all of that you ought to visit the Trophy room, as besides the fact that the name itself says, it presents a couple of challenges for you to defeat. When all of the things start to take its place in the game but also in your head, a great disappointment follows as the game ends very fast after that fact. But the game developers have counted on that fact probably, as this is the first release of the series of Letters from Nowhere. So relax in your chair, prepare everything you need to have by your side and start playing as disappointment might come on the end, but until the end, very unlikely.