Itemania: A third dimension in hidden item games
by Eric March on August 10, 2009 at 10:36 am
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(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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App Name: | Itemania |
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| Developer: | AniCombo |
Version: | 1.0 | |
| Publisher: | AniCombo |
Size: | 35.6 MB |
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| Category: | Casual Games |
Price: | $0.99 |
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Hidden item games started becoming popular earlier this year when someone finally got up the energy to draw up a bunch of artwork for it, and there have been quite a few of them over the past number of months, so it’s safe to say that while it’s a genre that can always survive new entries due to having limited replay value, there hasn’t really been anything new under the sun with the fried egg hidden in it.
Anicombo have evidently felt the same way and worked out what the next logical step for the genre should be: Throw some 3D at it. Or some of it, anyway, as the end result of their labours, Itemania, ended up a curious mix of both 2D and 3D hidden item levels.
I say curious because it seems like the sort of thing you’d expect to see either one or the other in, but not both. Not that it’s a bad thing, but it ends up giving one of two impressions: Either they didn’t have enough time to make them all 3D, or they felt like maybe people wouldn’t be ready for an all-3D hidden item game, and so threw in some 2D levels to ease the transition.
Anyway, the 2D levels are pretty standard fare and give you the ability to pinch or double-tap to zoom in and out; we’ve all seen these so there’s not much point in going over any further 2D-specific functionality here. The 3D levels — which are roughly every other level — also give you the same ability, but of course also let you rotate the scene around a fixed X axis point (left and right), and to a limited degree, you can slide up and down to see the whole scene from every relevant perspective. Putting the whole hidden item genre into a 3D perspective really changes it up more than you might expect; items can be hidden behind, under, or on top of things as well as in (relatively) plain view, so there’s a lot more searching involved. For those who enjoy and play a lot of the 2D hidden item games, it actually takes a bit of mental reorganziation to understand that difference on a fundamental level so you’re watching foreground items as they move past to reveal what’s behind them.
In certain cases, some of the flat 3D items have been given a front texture, but no back, which means they completely disappear from view when looked at from behind. I asked the developer about this because I didn’t know if this was an oversight or deliberate artistic decision, but apparently it’s the latter. They didn’t want to make the scenes too crowded-looking if it wasn’t necessary so they made certain items disappear from behind so you could focus on what was in front of you without any other distractions. It doesn’t happen on all levels or with all objects, just certain ones. It’s not terribly noticeable, though, and plays no practical role in the gameplay, it might just look odd to the few who understand a little something about texture mapping and think it a mistake.
Aside from the 3D aspect the gameplay is more or less the same: You are timed on how long it takes you to solve each screen. Each level has a whole slew of things hidden in it, and you’re given a randomized subset of those things to find. In some cases there a multiples of one thing you need to find. Tap on the object when you find it and it will be counted and removed from your inventory. Tap on the wrong spot and you get a time penalty added. Find all of the items to move on to the next level. The game play works as expected, except I keep feeling that the diameter of the hot spots for each item is a little too small, as it’s too easy to tap on where you think the items are only to have the game register a miss. Much of this can be alleviated by zooming in as far as possible, though even then, particularly on the 3D levels, sometimes the objects are too small or far away to have a sufficiently large target zone. Again, not a huge deal, but this one might warrant a bit of tweaking.
Overall the game is quite well done, with decent sound and visuals; the graphics and sounds do tend to be oriented toward the younger crowd, but then the younger crowd likes this genre probably more than the average adult does (though it appeals to both), so it only stands to reason. Itemania’s real selling point though is, of course, the 3D levels, and it’s a pretty big selling point too, one which adds a new dimension (literally and figuratively) to the genre’s gameplay, and which alone makes this game’s dollar price tag more than worthwhile. For its next iteration (or even as an upate to this one) what it really needs to do though is focus on new 3D levels, as that’s really where it’s at now; The 2D levels just seem so … flat now.
In fact, about the only thing I could think of that would make this genre even better would be if you could roam freely about the 3D “world” in the style of an FPS so you have to really go physically looking for things throughout the levels opening doors, lockers, looking under things, on top of things, behind wall paintings, under floor hatches covered by bearskin rugs, etc. Now that Anicombo is exploring this genre in 3D, why not? But for now, hidden item fans should find a lot to love about this game, even with the limited levels; the 3D aspect isn’t just a novelty, it adds practical value to the gameplay and feels like the genre’s next logical progression that renders everything that came before it rather old school.
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Posted in Games: Casual, Paid Apps
