Code Candy Blue

Interesting game with a brilliant thread of greek mythology winding through it, but I found the interface just a bit too frustrating and the puzzles, whilst there was a nice mix and some unusual ones, either hard to understand or not clear.

Loved the interface - something a bit different! And some nice puzzles, a nice mix and good variance and difficulty level

We played the Mars Shuttle Mission last weekend and really enjoyed it.  It is quite different from a lot of the online games, because it doesn't have the 360º point and click.  It's very 2D, but what's nice about it is that not every puzzle is a logic puzzle.  There are a variety of documents that have clues that become relevant later in the game, so it feels like you are being a detective and solving a mystery, rather than locked in a room and you have 1 hour to escape.  

Having all the different types of clues prompted us to work together more as a team than we have in other virtual escape games.  It's not timed, so we were able to really dig into each puzzle, and take our time examining the evidence.  A lot of fun!  Highly recommended if your focus is on team interaction and solving difficult puzzles together.

I had played another game, Mars Shuttle Mission, from this same developer. I really liked it so I went to buy another one and discovered that they are offering Cadets for free. Who doesn't love a free game?!?! I figured it would be somewhat of a "mini game" given that they weren't charging for it. While it was shorter than the prior one, it was still a complete game with a story arc and everything. They had the same "Home Office" into as in the other games so you can see how the stories link to each other but this still worked great as a stand alone. Since this one was an easier difficulty, I invited some of my friends that had never played this type of game before so see if they would like it. They LOVED it! We had such a good time. It started of with a word search, something we are all familiar with but the added difficulty is that they don't give you the exact words. You have to decipher what they are from a redacted memo. I was literally crying with laughter at some of the words my friends were trying to suggest. There was a good variety of puzzles and we liked that we had to reference items we collected earlier in the game to solve puzzles later on. That helped make it feel like a a complete story. My group has already set another date to play their next game since we had so much fun with this one. 

I loved this game! We had a group of 3 and each of us has different strengths when it comes to games like this. What I liked most was that the variety of puzzles made it so that each of us had our moment to shine. I really liked that, while it encouraged collaboration, we all still got a chance to solve each puzzle before moving on. Some of the games we've played progress the whole group forward once one person solves a puzzle which limits the experience for everyone else. I also really liked the Home Office videos. After playing this game, we went to search for other games by this developer.  They currently have 3 more full games that are available for purchase. I'll submit reviews for them too. One really cool thing is that they have a free (yep, FREE!) game called Cadets - Training Day. This one says its an easier difficulty level so I might try it with some of my newbie friends to see if they might like it.  

Oh dear!  Firstly, this is a very one-dimensional game where you are given pdf files of info/images and you have to deduce a password from the info in order to move forward in the game.  This is not an exciting format, but if the puzzles are good it can still be a good game.  Not in this case. 

Some of the puzzles were completely illogical, and others were perhaps logical but a stretch. We were three experienced players, but we had to use the hint system to the fullest. 

One puzzle required you to choose the distances that you could move forward with a drop down menu.  When we couldn't solve it we used the hint system, which tells you to move 15m.... while the drop down menu only gives you a choice of 5m, 10m or 20m. 

Very frustrating, and sadly we did not experience that "Aha" satisfaction from any of the puzzles in this game.