Mystery of Shark Island

For the most part, Mystery of Shark Island is a hidden objects game, but it takes a different approach. Most hidden objects games use still photos. This one takes you to the beach where waves sweep in the objects you need to find.

The start of the game wasn’t impressive. Hunt, find, click. Hunt, find, click. How hard can this get? The objects were in plain view. It didn’t take long before I was frustrated with the game. So the game went from blow off to “I’m going to throw the monitor over a cliff if you don’t let me finish this level” hard after two islands.

I couldn’t get past a difficult beach on Island 2. Eventually, I succeeded and the levels after that provided just the right amount of difficulty as I made it through a few islands before I hit another roadblock. It wasn’t until Island 9 that I had to battle the game until my fingers were blue. The timer ticked so fast, I felt like I was in fast forward mode.

Sometimes I knew the exact objects to find and other times, the only hint was a shadow. An object’s shadow isn’t as tough as facing question marks in later levels. Not to fret — you get plenty of practice to grow more familiar with the assorted seashells, rocks and sea glass to help you prepare for the time when the question marks arrive.

The game didn’t stop with finding and grabbing objects. Eventually rocks showed up to play with your time like a toy. Time ticks down while you lift the rocks, but you can speed it up by finding a strength coin. There’s a timer coin to add time, a wind coin to shoo the dirt away, and a sweeper coin to speed up your brush as it sweeps the sand to reveal what’s hidden.

The game’s Story Mode involves finding hidden objects within a set time on an island’s five beaches. After you earn five keys from the beaches, use the keys to unlock a portal to transport you to another island until you’ve visited 10 islands. The portal puzzle doesn’t have a timer (thank goodness), but it isn’t exciting to play. Every transport comes with a note of the character’s observations. You also learn more from listening to seashells. The ending was bland and disappointing.

Arcade Mode lets you play the unlocked islands repeatedly until you’re sick of trying to find all the objects before the waves take them away. Story Mode contains a goal score. If you reach the goal score, then the expert score appears to laugh at you to see if you can make it that far.

The music nicely accompanies the island atmosphere. Though hanging around the beach is relaxing, nothing could help me unwind. The game kept my body tense and on edge as I hurriedly hunted with the shrinking timer teasing the corner of my eyes. As anxious as I was to find out what happened next, I didn’t play the game constantly since the challenges wore me out. Hidden object fans will be happy with this one and its original take on the genre.

Windows System Requirements

• Windows ME/2000/XP/Vista
• Pentium III 700 MHz or faster processor
• 128MB RAM
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• Sound Card recommended
• DirectX 7.0 or later
• 23 MB available disk space

Mac System Requirements

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or newer
• G4 800 Mhz or faster, or G5 or Intel processor
• 800 x 600 minimum screen resolution
• 21 MB available disk space

[tags]game,Meryl K. Evans[/tags]