Reviewed: August 26, 2010
Reviewed by: Jason Flick

Publisher
G5 Entertainment AB

Developer
Nevosoft

Released: July 31, 2010
Genre: Adventure/Puzzle
Players: 1

9
9
8
9
9.0

Game Info:

Case in point is the rather unique Mushroom Age, a hidden object adventure for the iPhone which I just had the opportunity to experience. I know what some of you might be thinking. Oh great,another hidden object title. While it might be true that both the PC and iTunes market are loaded with more than their fair share of these titles, Nevosoft and G5 Entertainment step outside the normalality of the genre and have created something that was actually a lot of fun to play.

The story of Mushroom Age follows Vera, who is looking for her fiancé Tom Scout. The only problem is that he works for a scientist named Einst… I mean Einbock and according to him Tom took a trip into the future two days before their wedding. So Vera must hop through time to find her loved one and ends up meeting the most eclectic bunch of characters that I have ever seen. Only in Mushroom Age do you meet a talking dinosaur, an ancient philosopher and a scientist that’s not all there.

The core fundamentals of all hidden object adventures are present in Mushroom Age. Most of the time you will have to find all of someone’s missing objects or find things that do not belong in that time period. Occasionally you will have to do some picture difference puzzles, but they do a pretty good job of mixing things up. One of the key features that I really liked about Mushroom Age is the zoom in/out option. This really comes in handy on a title such as this. I couldn’t imagine trying to find some of the hidden items without it.

The one thing that I really liked about Mushroom Age was the variety of puzzles that they incorporated into the game. I really liked the puzzles that involved redirecting a light beam to light up several red lights. My favorite puzzles however were the circuitry grid puzzles where the goal was to make a solid connection to various points in the grid.

The graphic for Mushroom Age on the iPhone are quite good, optimized for the iPhone 4 retina display. The character models are well done and the animation work on them is pretty solid. Most of the story scenes are statics but the developers still were able to make the animations fit well into the backgrounds. The little time warps between each of the chapters are pretty cool and give the story that time travel feel that Mushroom Age needed. The voice acting at times comes off a little forced and sounds like they are reading it off the page occasionally. I must say that some of the characters do sound genuine, or as genuine as I would imagine like Socrates and Nostradamus.

Mushroom Age retails for $3 dollars on the App Store and for all its content it’s worth every penny. There are 45 levels spanning 23 chapters of non-stop hidden object fun and 41 mini-games. Combined with other engaging puzzles and a zany story Mushroom Age is a truly unique experience and a definite must buy for anyone with an iPhone or iTouch.