Melissa K. and the Heart of Gold (2014)

Pro

• Unusual mythological story elements.
• Environments look great.
• Several creative gameplay elements.
• Decent voice acting.
• Nice music.

Con

• Insanely unintuitive, you have to spam the hints button.
• Several obnoxious puzzles.
• Hidden-object puzzles are vague and you often can't tell what you have to find.
• 3D animation is weak.
• Limited map travel.
• No "action available" indicated on map.
• Obnoxious implementation of "tools" (torch, gecko, etc.).
• Environments require scrolling, which just doesn't work well.

Conclusion

While it is nice the developers tried to do something different in the HOG genre, it lacks the user-friendly interface Artifex Mundi is known for.

This is clearly a phone game ported to steam. Game mechanics include dragging the screen around and when you click, a tapping finger appears. Even on expert mode, if you spend just a few seconds without clicking on something, the finger appears to guide your actions/hint you. Puzzles are largely touch-based - dragging flowers around without knocking any off, drag a rolling screen around until you find the button.

The logic behind what to do next makes very little sense. If you click on something, text appears that it "looks interesting, but I'll check it out later." So, instead of discovering things as you find them, the game will guide you to go back and click on a spot on the ground outside when you are trying to find a way into the rooms inside (becuase something you needed was out there).

At one point, you cannot pick up a map on a window until you find a curtain sash and tie the curtain back. :| There are far better point-and-click/hidden object adventure games out there. This one is just frustrating.