Game Classification

A long time ago, a kingdom fell under a terrible curse with a unending series of tragedies happening in sequence. The Queen died suddenly, followed shortly by the King, leaving only the young and inexperienced prince to rule the land. Since the day of the new ruler's coronation, no one dared to enter the castle and none of its inhabitants were ever seen again. Many years later in modern times, that castle is converted into a museum, and a visitor is unwillingly and mysteriously transported to the ancient era after learning the troubled history of the place. Now, there's no alternative but to explore the building and search for a way to lift the curse.

Echoes of the Past: Royal House of Stone is a hidden object game with some elements of the adventure genre, where the main objective is to collect items and interact with the many puzzles found on the rooms of the castle. The player navigates through the locations by clicking over exit hotspots, usually positioned over obvious openings like doors and other places, to change the cursor into an arrow that allows access to the next room or screen.

Some portions of the scenery glow to indicate that they contain one of the hidden object screens. In these areas, the goal is to find and click on all the objects listed at the top of the screen. Some entries remain written in red and can't be collected until the player performs a scene interaction to make them available, using one of the inventory objects on some place of the scenery. The hint button is a large mirror that highlights the position of one of the required items when activated. Extra hints can be collected as other mirrors laying scattered around the scene.

The puzzles take place on separate screens, where a mechanism of some sort has to be manipulated directly to solve them or perform a necessary action. They range from the mundane, like jigsaw puzzles and memory games with pairs of figures, to more original and complex ones. Clues can be found around the castle, usually on rooms separated from the puzzles. A magic book at the bottom automatically keeps track of the progress, and can be used to review clues and learn some details about the plot. [source:mobygames]

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

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/echoes-of-the-past-royal-house-of-s [...]