Drawn: Dark Flight Collector's Edition

When it goes about sequels it is always a question of improving and overshadowing: will the second part be better than the previous or not? Drawn: Dark Flight is a continuation of a well known Drawn: The Painted Tower by Big Fish Game Studios. And though for me it is hard to judge whether the second game outbids its forerunner as I didn't play Drawn: The Painted Tower I can clearly see the worthiness of Drawn: Dark Flight.

The game that combines hidden objects and quest genres is built on contrasts.

First of all the storyline of the first part is told at the beginning of the second part. So the player who hasn't experienced the previous game will not feel confused. And what is more after having heard all the story from the beginning I somehow felt that I should try Drawn: The Painted Tower as well. As for the fans of the first game they've got an opportunity to play a new variant of adored game but with a new mission and puzzles.

Talking about the mission, this time you have to light the beacons in the city in order to dispel the darkness. This task that sounds rather metaphoric has its background. An evil tyrant occupied the Fairyland and covered it with darkness. The heroine of both the parts of Big Fish Game Studios' saga, Iris whose paintings magically come into life, managed to escape. Now Iris is hiding in the... books. So if you succeed in solving all the tasks, you're to find Iris and to lighten the city you're rambling.

The game that combines hidden objects and quest genres is built on contrasts. The gloomy scenes with the murky music give place to the motley pictures with the cheerful tunes. And it happens with a single click of a mouse. To tell the truth I've entered and exited several scenes for many times just to enjoy such rapid shifts. I wish my mood could have been improved as quickly as it's possible in Drawn!

Graphics is one more striking contrast: some scenes are really skilfully drawn but the others are... drawings of a child aged 5 years or even less. After I got into the first Iris' picture my personal mission of the game became to see the girl herself. I became really curious about the way Iris could look like as the psychologists say that the pictures we draw resemble the artist. Honestly, if the pictures of Salvador Dali could came into life it would be much more interesting, but the general idea of such a twist in a gameplot is unique and unpredictable! Though sometimes there were a picture in a picture and I got lost.

As for the graphics for the first time in my life I discovered how rich the palette of gray is. Despite the solemn colors you don't get upset as they are well interlaced by bright shots. The music suits all the shots perfectly. But the suspense motif at the beginning was somehow too much. When started to play such music made me ready for the Hitchcock's movie, but not the game partly drawn by Iris. The only thing that made me sad was lack of animation. But tricky puzzles made me quickly forget about that.

To look for the hidden objects made me backtrack quite often. Sometimes the items are placed on the letters or messages. Hardly there is anyone expecting for that so you should be pretty attentive to a form of your cursor. If it transfers into a hand be ready to grab something even there you could never imagine you could. Besides inventory becomes really huge as some of the picked objects travel with you rather long.

The puzzles turned to be capturing. I don't dare to call them alogical, but it seems that the creators of the game somehow admitted such a thought by means of creating considered hint system. You have an opportunity to click on “hint” button without any time restrictions in your right corner of the screen below and you have an extra helper on you left below corner. There's a Franklin's Portrait clicking which you're provided with an advise. The thing I liked most about the hints – its colors: the clue words are distinguished by a color different from the plain text. And when the adventure became more interesting for me than all the puzzles I started to skip minigames. I suppose you'll appreciate such an opportunity as well. But not when it concerns the pop-up books! Do you remember that great three-dimensional or movable books from your childhood where you could move some parts of it in order to create the motion? You have a chance to recall that! I think that using such books is one more felicitous hook of the game.

Everybody knows how dismal weather makes you feel upset. And here you have a city suffering from darkness. Bring some light – start to play!

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