Game Classification

3 Cards to Midnight is the first title in the 3 Cards series and marks the return to an independent release by the legendary duo Chris Jones and Aaron Conners, known for the Tex Murphy series in the nineties. Compared to those games, it is less of a traditional adventure and more influenced by the casual line of games. It is largely story-driven, shown through animated cinematics, interspersed with Hidden Object scenes and a number of harder puzzles.

It tells the story of Jess Silloway, who finds herself in a dark room behind a table, facing a mysterious man. Suffering dissociative amnesia, she has no recollection of past events. The man helps her remember her past through tarot cards. The game is divided in seven chapters and a finale, and for each chapter Jess must choose three tarot cards. The cards' themes will remind her of a location. She associates key words with these environments. At that point, a hidden object scene of the location is shown and through word association she has to form a compound word. For instance, given the word "night", an owl in the scenery can be clicked to form "night owl". For each keyword, words can be added both in front and behind, and the number of needed words is shown on the screen. The game requires a good command of English and randomly clicking is discouraged, as only a limited amount of misses is allowed before the scene has to be replayed.

For each chapter, any of the three available cards can be chosen randomly, which changes the order the story is revealed with each playthrough. During the hidden object scenes, each correct guess is rewarded with points and at a certain number an extra hint is provided. When stuck, these can be clicked to reveal the next item. After each scene, an animated sequence is shown where more of the story is revealed and after completing certain scenes a much harder puzzle needs to be solved. These include a letter game with runes, puzzles based on astrological signs, rearranging a shredded newspaper article, spotting the differences between two pictures, restoring a photograph, deciphering a coded letter, and more. Since they are much harder than the rest of the game, players can opt to skip them.

At the end of each chapter, each of the three tarot cards is ranked with up to four stars, which determines its strength. These depend on the amount of hints and misses, and whether the puzzles were solved. Players are encouraged to replay scenes to improve the rating because the strength of the collected tarot cards plays a significant role in the scenes leading up to the game's finale. The game offers three difficulty levels, based on the number of hints and misses. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/3-cards-to-midnight/