Game Classification

Kuros is an adventure game with easy puzzles made for the casual market. The player assumes the role of Katya, an apprentice sorceress that must bring balance to the magical land of Kuros by restoring several ruined glyphstones to their former glory. The game follows the standards established by first person adventure games like Myst and similar titles, where the locations are presented as a series of static screens, and player has to collect and use objects to solve puzzles. Several inventory slots are always visible at the bottom, framed by an orb with a spiral of rune carvings and four round slots for two wands and two hint lenses. The rune spiral gradually lights up to show game progress. The cursor changes to an arrow when over one of the exits, usually placed on the edges of the screen. Most locations are comprised of only one screen, with a few having two directly connected rooms. When exiting a location, an overhead map appears showing all the uncovered territory, where the player can click to be transported to any of the available destinations.

The main objective is to collect all the map pieces laying scattered around the scenery. The player must move back and forth, picking up objects and solving puzzles to gain access to new places. After retrieving all pieces, they have to be assembled on the map screen as jigsaw puzzles. The scenes have inventory puzzles, where a stored object has to be dragged and dropped from its slot to logical places on the scenery, and a wide variety of mini-games. Theses mini-games appear over the location screen, and have to be manipulated directly to be solved. They are logic games and implementation of classic designs, like a spot-the-differences game with two similar images, a Pipe Dream clone, a laser with deflecting mirrors puzzle and similar challenges. In some instances, the wand replaces the normal cursor and the player has to draw runes in the air. Clicking on certain scenery parts brings up a semi-circle of round silhouetted images, to where inventory and surrounding objects must dragged and placed over their corresponding contours.

The hint lenses can be found and collected on some screens. They highlight the exact position of one random item, or allow one of the mini-games to be skipped. After gathering all the map pieces and completing all the objectives, the final challenge is to activate one of the glyphstones. All of them have variations of the same puzzle, where the missing symbols of a sequence have to be carved on the stone using a limited array of shapes. After solving it, Katya is transported to another land and a new section of the map opens to exploration. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : iPhone / iPod Touch - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/kuros/