sunshine ~ I have finished all the Grim Facade games except the latest one and recall that I really enjoyed them all, giving them "B" grades, the one you finished B+ but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you how it ended and I played the CE version.

Amazingly, of the Nevosoft games you listed, I have played them all except Vampireville and Hypnosis (don't own). 

Wendy, I'm on the 2nd Myths game, Stolen Spring and not enjoying it as much; don't know if it is because I got the SE version and there are no collectibles that I can see or because of RL issues I'm having with my son and my game playing is sporadic right now.  Still beautiful games though and since I play on Casual, the flow of the games is just right for me.

Last edited by teeitup46ok (May 20, 2015 5:44 am)

oscar -I just noticed you asked what BoomZap will be doing now.   At least a year ago, they started self-publishing games for mobile devices aimed at the South Eastern Asian markets.  According to articles I've found on the web, they've been eying that market for at least two years and talking about it at various game developers conferences.

So no more Awakening, Otherworld, Dana Knighstone, etc games unless BF owns the rights to these series and gets another developer to continue them.

BoomZap games used to be an automatic buy for me, but the last Dana Knighstone really wasn't a quality product.  I still have BoomZap games left to pla, but I think there's been a general decline in them. 

BoomZap's heart and mind were probably already out the door a year or two ago and they were just doing time waiting for their contract with BF to expire.  And I think it shows in their work.  The last couple of updates to the F2P games have been bug-infested and players have to work around them because BZ tok no pride in their work and will not be fixing these games (nor will they be fixing any of the games people buy outright is my guess).

sunshinej wrote:

I have all of Boomzap's HOPA games. I feel like Awakening, Botanica & Dana Knightstone are a complete set and don't feel like anything is to be continued there (not counting the F2P games). I was hoping for a Otherworld: Winter game to finish off the series. I have yet to play Emberwing.

I was looking at Boomzap's site reading their forum and under Chit and Chat there was a thread called future games in which someone was asking what PC games were coming out in 2015. Monika said that most of the games coming out will be on the mobile. Oh well, First MagicIndie - then Blue Tea Games and now Boomzap.

That post was from back in February.  Since then, whenever asked about whether there will be any new HOPAs, the canned reply has been:

The project schedule for all of our hidden object games is being driven by our publisher, Big Fish Games. Please direct any issues to the BFG Customer Service team. Thank you!

It would have been more honest to say that contractual obligations meant that they were unable to answer.   These games aren't made in a month or two.  I recall reading somewherer that it took around 9 months for BoomZap to make a game.  At the time BZ was telling people it was up to BF to decide when to release games,  BZ had no games in the queue waiting to be released.  All they were working on for BF was the porting of the PC/MAC games to iPad/iPod/iPhone.

I have the feeling that at least a year ago, BZ decided that they weren't interested in continuing their relationship with BF and was just making time waiting for the contract to expire.  What I don't understand is why BF let them get away with submitting shoddy products (the last two updates for ART need an exterminatior to get rid of all the bugs) and didn't insist that BZ was cntractually obligated to fix them.  Or why the contract didn't require the last update to AK, released in Dec2014, to provide some sort of closure.

 

I finished the first 4 chapters of Nightmares from the Deep: Davy Jones CE, still have 4 more chapters and bonus material to do.  I had hoped to be finished by now, but weekend was hectic, and then Monday BZ double punched me.

Haven't bought anything this month.   Last year there was a BOGO sale for Memorial Day weekend.  If we get one this year, I think I'll skip it and wait and see if we get one for July 4th weekend (we did last year).

I think most people understand why the games will no longer be updated, it's the way BZ went about it they object to. 

ART is still playable with the special events being triggered by the calendar, and a player can call the game finished (for them) whenever they are happy with how they've rebuilt the shop an dcommunity.  If you want all the customizations, great, if you're happy without them, that's great, too.

AK doesn't give that closure as far as I know.  I gather that there's still stuff to be built, Shelsea is still missing, and we're never going to get to see the barracks where Captain Greg and the other soldiers hang out.  At least in ART, there's no hidden communities where major characters live.

And I can't believe that BZ's contract with BF didn't require them to wrap up each game in some fashion and to fix the bugs in the last releases.  I'm not even talking about the spelling errors, mislabeling of objects in the HO scenes, grammar errors, I'm talking about bugs that prevent players from completing quests.