Game Classification

An evil spirit takes the form of a fortune teller, locking souls inside crystal balls throughout the ages. At the present day, a wanderer without memory falls victim to the sorcery, and is forced to play riddles and games to solve the mystery and release the trapped ghosts.

Lost Fortunes is a collection of mini-games and riddles, most of them with cards and association tasks. The game takes place inside several crystal balls, each with a trapped spirit and seven mini-games. The main objective is to complete a series of rounds of each game to receive spirit orbs and pieces of tarot cards. Spirit orbs are necessary to release the ghosts, while the reassembled tarot card gives access to the next crystal ball.

The mini-games can be selected and played in any order from the main game screen. After successfully completing a round, the player receives a number of coins to be used later. The spirit orb is received after finishing all the rounds with 100% percent accuracy. The coins can be inserted in the mystery slot, where a prize or mini-game is randomly selected, giving an opportunity to earn extra hints and time extensions.

In the mini-game screen, most of the area is occupied by a series of picture cards, with instructions or riddles displayed at the bottom. A burning candle shows the remaining time to complete the round, framed by the hint button and the time extension hourglass. The objective changes from game to game. In some, the goal is to match cards following the instructions, like clicking two cards showing an animal and its food. In others, the objective is to put coins over all the cards that belong to the same group, like all the gifts from a birthday party. A few are implementations of the classic concentration memory game, where pairs of the same card have to be found and removed within a time limit.

There are two mystery slot mini-games, the hidden object game showing a circus tent, where all the items from a list at the right side of the screen have to be found and clicked before time runs out, and the mystery object game, where a crystal ball shows an extremely zoomed picture with the focus slowly moving backwards revealing more of it, and the player must guess what the subject is before the candle is extinguished, to win time extensions hourglasses. Sometimes the mystery slot stops on the fortune cookie, that when opened often allows cosmetic changes to the cursor, the selection of soundtracks for background music, or a philosophical thought. [source:mobygames]

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

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/lost-fortunes/