Game Classification

Jesse Beckett, a young woman that grow up as an orphan, starts to investigate about her past. One day, she receives a letter containing an old baby photo of herself, and an invitation by a mysterious person called Veronica Flux, claiming that she has information about her past. Jesse travels to the Flux Manor, where she meets Veronica and her butler, and after a series of incidents, discovers that she has an unique ability to travel through time using an ancient device. History is damaged by ripples in time, and she must travel back to crucial moments in time and meet important figures, while fixing discrepancies and paradoxes to maintain historical integrity.

Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect is a hidden object game with some ideas borrowed from the adventure genre. Most of the time, the goal is to search the scenery to find and click on the required pieces of objects shown at the interface at the bottom. Pressing the space bar (or right-clicking with the mouse) brings up a magnifying glass that can enlarge parts of the screen, and zoom in and out of it with the mouse wheel. Some pieces can only be accessed after solving one of the game's puzzles. The assembled objects are stored in the inventory, and they can be dragged and dropped on the scenery to solve puzzles. The inventory can switch places with the list of pieces pictures by clicking an arrow on the top of the tab.

Each stage has three different historical locations. The player has to go back and forth, assembling objects and using them on their appropriate places. In most screens, when the cursor hovers over an area with a missing object, its silhouette appears for a brief moment as a clue.

Sometimes when using one of the inventory objects on the correct area, a window opens up containing one of the mini-games. These can be implementations of well-known classic titles, like Breakout, Tic-Tac-Toe, Mastermind, sliding tiles and jigsaw puzzles, or a simple and direct interaction with some scenery object, like a drawer or a safe. These sections can be skipped with a penalty of twenty minutes added to the final score.

The inventory has a separate section for toolkit items, special objects that don't need assemblage and must be used on specific places. When clicked, these hotspots open up a circle surrounding a scenery object showing icons of the required tools.

The hint button shows the exact position of one of the missing pieces, but takes about a minute to recharge after use. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Internet - Commercial
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/flux-family-secrets-the-ripple-effe [...]