Five magical amulets review (iOS/Universal)

♫ “Suddenly I stop, but i know it’s too late
I’m lost in a forest all alone”

10 word description: Point-and-click fairytale adventure; 70 different locations; 50 characters.

Flat, functional graphics narrowly avoid bestowing a sense of magical mystery to the game

10 word review: Fairly standard genre example; Some interface issues; functionally pretty locations.

Who needs Dr Dolittle with the Amazing Linda around?

You will like this if you enjoy: Point-and-click adventures. Hector: Badge of Carnage and The Secret of Monkey Island are other examples of the genre on iOS.

With a degree of inevitability, Linda's progress is later thwarted by yet another bear

The good news: Plenty of fairytale elements – magical amulet, talking animals, etc. Ability to save anywhere. Relaxing gameplay (until you get stuck anyway). There are hints.

As with the majority of point-and-click games, any attempt to do something incorrect results in one of several tedious variations of "You can't do that".

The bad news: Interface issues start to annoy quite quickly. Tapping the inventory bar often causes your character to walk in that direction. Finding all interactive objects in a location involves sliding your finger over everything – I’d prefer an option to maybe toggle the item names on and off or have items highlighted in some other way to avoid this screen-wiping approach to locating items. The game starts in a very unassuming manner and doesn’t really fill you with a burning desire to rush out and save the world. Animation is rudimentary at best and often unintentionally comical.

The inventory bar is rather ugly, the icons often graphically ambiguous

Arcadelife verdict: While this isn’t the best point-and-click adventure on iOS devices I think fans of the genre will have some fun with it, providing they’re willing to tolerate or ignore the interface issues. I would definitely have enjoyed it much more if there was an option to highlight all the interactive items in each location.

Disenchanted, Linda wanders off to play Emberwind

Arcadelife rating: 62/100

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0

Off Studio website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
4th gen iPod Touch (OS 4.3.5)
iPad (OS 4.3.5)