Ferrum's Secrets: Where Is Grandpa? is a HOG game from an indie dev, it's main feature is its 3D.
The pros:
You can choose the difficulty as in most of the HOGs: casual, advanced and expert mode.
3D environment, when you click on a place to investigate it the camera pans and zoom on it
Music/ambiance is nice and soothing
Story is really interesting and intriguing
Dev is obviously a cat lover, like me :)
The cons:
No sound options but there's almost no sounds anyway, only music; it's very odd. The story is badly told: no intro whatsoever and all the bits of story are hidden in the journal (which isn't even pointed at by the tutorial!) or in hidden notes scattered in the game. That's definetly not a good way to tell a story -.-
Plus the very rare story texts stay on screen for a too short time, they should wait for an input instead. Throughout the game a lot of centered texts pop up could have been added to explain the player progression, instead of a small 1 line text displayed on top of the screen for 2 seconds exactly. The 3D enviromenment makes everything like a maze so a few holding hands texts would help. Funnily enough, clicking around aimlessly makes a big window of text appear and nags you for looong seconds. And you'll see it often since you cannot see your way or because you're trying to find what you're supposed to do to advance.
The mini games are awful: obscure, with no explanation. The 3D view made the first one annoying and confusing, the second one had buttons and lamps that were too tiny. Luckily they can be skipped. Mini games should be totally scrapped and redone.
The HOG screen are too dark and uninspired and the lack of sound while picking objects make it very odd. The objects to pick are ugly, texture-less and sometimes tiny. The first HOG screen was nice, but the rest quickly went downhill.
Most of the screens are too dark (really!!) and it's hard to see the useful items in there. Tools are all amost black, and the hidden collectibles are almost white. the whole house being almost pitch black is funny since the missing grandpa was an electrician, he obviously wasn't very skilled haha... So maybe an angry customer got his revenge! ^^
Navigating in the rooms is not obvious at all, you'll often miss other room entrances unless you
pointed your mouse on the correct exact pixel. Navigations arrows would help.
I cannot help but think that the number one sale argument of the game - it being in 3D - quickly
becomes its cons as it makes The navigation too confusing. Add to that the screens being too dark, the lack of sound and the lack of dialogues and story. The game would benefit from a bit of patching and updating - it feels unfinished as it is. The base is really good, but it definetly doesn't feel finished.
It was a bit hard to decide whether to upvote or downvote. I don't want to punish the game with a No as it doesn't deserve it, but I wish there was a Meh vote instead. As for me I didn't even finish the game, couldn't stand the never ending dark room after dark room after dark room with not a slight idea of what I'm doing or going. I gave up in "Living Room II". It's just not fun. I love HOGs games but this one is more a tech demo. The game already have a lot of No votes so I'll upvote it instead, in the hope of it being updated one day and because I want to encourage the dev.
