I have only one complaint and that is that there is no way to complete higher levels at normal difficulty without skipping all pet care. At junior level I hit the highest ranking ("best in game") at around game level 20. At normal level I can pass the game level, but only by selling completely neglected animals, which means no money, which means no upgrades to buy things to allow faster care...I guess my conclusion is that "normal" is too much harder than "junior". I haven't even tried "expert"!

Upgrades and toys become available based on the game level you are at, not your ranking. I hit "best in game" rank at about game level 20 when playing at Junior difficulty, but lots of upgrades and toys didn't become available until I got to higher game levels.

All you can do if to match the pets to the people as fast as you can - don't try to fix them up in any way until you see the "goal reached" message. Your money will go down because peeps don't pay as much for a pet that needs care, but it's the only way I found to reach the level goal - every so often I try to fix up an animal who needs something I have bought a speedy remedy for - like the fast water - but even so it's a risk unless you're very fast on the clicker.

If you completed all game levels you will adopt the pet. If you refer to some other kind of level, then keep playing until you've completed all game levels. Nothing will happen to your special pet until them even though it might be ready for adoption earlier.

I believe the crying heart works the same way as the purple bubbles and fleas/smelly-waves: they indicate the pet will want more petting or medicine or washing, respectively.

I adore this game. Being a slowpoke, I'd given up on almost all time management games because they don't let you complete scenarios/games if you can't beat the clock. VC rewards fast but allows slow to proceed in the game. I'm happy!

Update: Well, playing time has gone 'way down, but I'm now on generation 17 and still no dragonfly. I'm beginning to think dragonflies have gone extinct. After all, this is now 340 or so years into the future...

suzangh wrote:Hello.
If someone could just explain to me how in the heck anyone knows what to do and where to go in these kinds of games, I'd be happy.
Example: How would one know to buy the sunflower seeds?
Or to put out the fire and gather the ashes in the urn?
...

LOL...I remember trying to get my ex-husband to play Zork (a text adventure game). He's ranked candidate master in chess and is by no means stupid, and after sitting at the PC for about an hour he gave up. "How do you know what to do? What am I trying to do here and why?" It was educational to find out he just didn't like operating in an environment where he had no clear idea what was going on.

Like, if I were to say to you, "Well, you have these coins and there's a machine that takes coins, and the only thing you can afford to buy is the sunflower seeds so that's what you buy. And you start a fire and eventually you have an extinguisher and an urn, so you experiment and find out you can put out the fire and collect the ashes, so you do that."

Would your response be, "But WHY? How do I know I want to do that?"...well, you don't know, but you do whatever you can and hope the results come in handy later. I believe this open-ended kind of situation makes some people very uncomfortable - like my ex- and maybe like you, too? Just not into blind risk-taking ("but what if I need those coins for something else and the sunflower seed thing is a trick?").

I never could convince my ex- that it was fun - all it did for him was make him nervous If we all had the same tastes, BFG might be happy but it would be a boring world.

Sympathy to all who wish there were a relaxed mode, I can dig that.

My attitude is I take the time I need and if I run out then I'll try again, no big deal.

I have found all three of the AC games to be charming. Nothing extraordinary, but nice HOGs to play through. I enjoy the music, the admittedly simple mini-games...kind of like a warm bath of a HOG...

I'm not a Poirot fan - I'm happy the game downplays his narcissism, and I like the era portrayed. As for keeping the characters straight - I confess, I take notes. Learned to do that way back in Death on the Nile. Christie was famous for intricate plots so I find that aspect of the games totally in character.

Maybe. I'm feeling pretty useless - just saw the other question about the teacups on the tray and have to give the same answer here: I just dropped the cubes in the vicinity of the little bowl and they all fell into place without my aiming. Maybe it is a glitch; I'm starting to think I'm just really lucky with this game! Hope you get a better tip than this one or find the magic spot(s)...

Weird. All I did was drop each cup sort of over the center of the tray and each one, including the last (which was not the same as the last one you found) just fell into a place. Maybe there is some pixel-specific location but I lucked out? Your problem reminds me of the one I had in an earlier Agatha Christie with getting "ducks in a row" - very frustrating! Maybe someone else has a tip - all I can say is good luck!

cat52 wrote:

KDinMD43 wrote:I'm with you on everything. I played 7th guest too. I agree about the parts that involve hand eye coordination. I come from a game time where, believe it or not all of it was typed not point and click. Does anyone remember the original Adventure game by IBM? It had no pictures only words and you had to put together sentences to do anything. ie: Pick up bowl, walk south etc.

Talk about time changing! Woops, I think I just dated myself.

LOL...twisty little passages, all alike...Infocom...hey KD, there's a filmmaker, Jason Scott, in England doing a documentary about The Original PC Games - probably for BBC but we can hope it's released over here as well - the film is called GET LAMP. getlamp.com...of course, he's running behind deadline but I suggest you check it out for a huge blast from the past.

Well, way behind deadline: update - Get Lamp is now available for pre-order...any older gamer - or younger and into retro text games - NEEDS this.

JanewayUSS wrote:Well, just played MCF-DG and must say I was kind of disappointed. The story line was intriguing and the production values outstanding but the level of difficulty was easier, I'd say, then even Madame Fate, let alone RTR. The puzzles were few and not very challenging. I took the time to savor every nuance and aspect of the intersting story line and I enjoyed the game for the five hours I played it. But I was left unsatisfied when the game came to an end and I was still waiting for the one or two tricky spots that might tempt me to even consider using a hint. I'm sorry BFG choose to dumb the game down and wish they would do something to keep those of us who like real challenges engaged.

Ah, I knew if I read through these reviews I'd find someone whose opinion was identical to mine. Even the five hours play time! Paying an additional $13 for the sake of some more content doesn't seem worth it.

On the other hand, I kind of feel sorry for BFG (except I'm sure they are philosophical about it) - with MCF-MF, and with MCF-RTR, they read massive complaints from players concerning how difficult the game was, how there weren't enough hidden object scenes (in RTR), and on and on. I guess they try new blends of adventure/hidden-object, new overall difficulty levels, and so forth with the certain knowledge that the fans will complain, no matter what they do.

The game was spookily atmospheric, the plot (Celts meet Fimbulvetur) engaging, and although the the ending was tragic (that poor woman - did she ask to be inserted into the Netherworld like a cork in a bottle? I think not!), all in all, worth the non-Collector's price.

Okay, this is frustrating...but a general question, not really a tech problem.

I have a problem with my PC overheating on rare occasions. When it does, it decides to reboot. Sadly, I got into playing DHoC and had the reboot problem right inthe middle of the tangram puzzle.

Normally I just wait for the cooldown and get back into wherever I was with no problems. However, when I went back to DHoC, it started me at the beginning of the game. All right, that's okay, BUT it also had set the difficulty to EASY/RELAXED (I'd had it on timed/expert or whatever those settings are for "harder") and I could not get it to let me change the profile setting for game difficulty even though it had taken me back to the beginning...

So okay, I invent another profile and it let me set the modes again. My questions are: is there any way to

(1) make a separate and named save file, maybe by renaming something the game produces?

(2) change the difficulty levels at the start of a new game with an existing profile?

Thanks!

I guess this means the answers are: (1) Nope and (2) Nope. By dint of playing only a little at a time, I finished, so (1) is moot. Still would be nice to use the same profile with the other difficulty setting but that's a small nit to pick. Nice game.

I didn't have to uninstall/reinstall. I rebooted and went back in and it was fine.

Dunno why it happened. I have plenty of clean crispy memory and I run nothing else while playing this game.

In trial with 33 minutes left, in the first part of the house, second room off central. Doing the line-the-lines-up-like-a-clock then put-the-hands-in-right-positions using color-coding. Doing last hand, got the famous "access violation error, program terminating." Clearly other players have gotten past this point. Advice? Keeping in mind I'm still in demo mode? I like the game and would like to buy it but not if the error I'm getting means my system won't support it (although from the specs, it should)...

Glad I didn't notice this game was out until after the update. Bought yesterday, done now. I failed to notice where the game said "Part One" (ahem) so the "To be continued" caught me by surprise, but I certainly encountered no problems in the game and it was quite enjoyable, so the update is okay by me

I'm one lousy dragonfly away...for some reason the store hasn't been stocking the tropical rain maker recently, either, it's like it knows...

Gezza, usually when they ask about the weather machine, it starts raining.

That is extremely weird.

Maybe other people have mentioned this one, but in my family, when anyone starts preparing the meal, if the first thing they do is pull that baguette of French or Italian bread out of the fridge and put it in the oven, then they STOP preparing the meal and try to go do something else, in another room, instead. 100% guaranteed. Maybe they find the bread sickening??