Dale Hardshovel and the Bloomstone Mystery

Have you ever heard Egyptian Techno Music? Or have you ever deal with the so-called Australian witticisms? If you want to answer these questions in the affirmative, Dale Hardshovel and the Bloomstone Mystery by Phime Studio will give this chance. 

To start with, this title is a puzzle game, which involves a variety of different mini-games and other logic tasks. According to the plot, you are to help Dale and his daughter track down the bloomstone that is located in the pyramid, and to get there you have to solve a bunch of puzzles, sometimes beating your way through a maze to avoid boredom. In spite of this fact that this game has an archaeological theme, which is quite intriguing, but it ends there. Moreover, these very fabulous Egyptian Techno Music and Australian witticisms will pretty soon become too boring, if not say annoying.

The gameplay is unpolished, though the puzzles in this premise are all-absorbing. No wonder you find yourself desirous to crack just one more puzzle. Dale Hardshovel and the Bloomstone Mystery’s story is absolutely trite, but there are few cute moments, which can really make you smile more than once. Unfortunately, the artwork is also rough, 3D graphics and the backgrounds to the tasks are not dazzling at all. The background music, while initially captivating and fresh soon becomes too sharp to the ears. This title demonstrate us again the great force of the developers to mark out their game product. To our mind, Phime Studio tried too hard and lost the sense of proportion. That is why the game is not bad but not good one. Eh!

5, May 2010