Mystery Mania in Review – A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery
You know, I am an adventure games junkie. I love to keep my grey matter pumping and I love point-and-click games. Unfortunately, the iPhone has a serious lack of those. Thankfully, EA (that is Electronic Arts for those, living in a tank) decided to step and fill the void at least a little bit. Introducing, Mystery Mania!
Mystery Mania is a story about a robot named F8. He wakes up in a closet in the house of his creator without even remembering how he got there in the first place and with the inventor missing. After solving a few puzzles and crossing a couple of rooms, he gets to the barely functioning F1, a machine who is the only one capable of telling him where his creator is and what happened to him. Unfortunately the F1 is missing a few parts, so he’ll have to spend the majority of the game fixing him by progressively moving from room to room solving puzzles and searching for the missing parts.
As I said above, the basic goal of Mystery Mania is to find a way to open the door to the next room. The puzzles are quite logical and don’t cause any frustration. Maybe it’s due to my large adventure gaming experience — I don’t know — but I found most of the puzzles too easy. And the other problem is that the game is simply TOO short. It took about 1,5 hours to play it from start to finish. I must admit I didn’t get all achievements, but playing through it again JUST to find all of them never even crossed my mind. It’s simply not worth it.
The graphics are very retro, reminding me of the Amiga or C64 games. But this is ok since it adds to the whacky atmosphere of the game. The music is ok as well and its interface is very point-and-clicky, though you don’t actually get to move F8, only use items. On the whole, the game reminds me of the myriads of Flash-based puzzlers you can find on the Web.
There is really not much else to say about Mystery Mania. It features a great and very touching story and memorable characters and adds to the extremely short list of point-and-click adventure/puzzlers on the iPhone and is a reasonable purchase for any fan. The only unreasonable thing about it is the price since $3.99 is a horrendous price for a game with a gameplay length of less than 2 hours. But once the game goes on sale, it’ll be a worthwhile pick.
| App Summary | |||
| Title: | Mystery Mania (V 1.10) | Developer: | Electronic Arts |
| Price: | $3.99 | App Size: | 5.2 MB |
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nub | Oct 14, 2009 | Reply
Great review, and it truly is a blast from the past with the only downside being its over far to quick. Well worth getting.
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ChiffaN Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Thanks for the kind words. I do my best.
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Shawna | Oct 18, 2009 | Reply
Great review!!! I just got and I agree the graphics are very retro, which I love. Though…. I must ask, how do you get out of the Teddy bear room!!!! I admit to being quite stuck…..
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Smiley Reply:
October 31st, 2009 at 12:31 pm
the blue and black beads behind the boy is the pattern to put in the control box hope that helped
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Elisann Reply:
November 5th, 2009 at 12:51 am
Thank you Smiley. I was going nuts trying to get out of the room. Your reply to Shawna was a life saver.
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Clair Reply:
December 26th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Thank u so much for the answer!!
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Jesse | Dec 26, 2009 | Reply
can somebody post a complete walkthrough?
im stuck in this one room with a pile of balls, a hole in the floor, an ethenol. canister, and a magnet and bolt on a string that u swing at the door…….please help me
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risurfdog Reply:
January 6th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
In the den I can’t seem to get through the locked(right) door.
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Patty Reply:
January 10th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Push the box over to the bookcase. Flip the switch to see the three special books. Touch those books in
this order: yellow, blue, red. You’ll need to hop on the box before you try red. Then, the clock will slide and the key will be revealed.
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Patty Reply:
January 10th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Can you go to the Map and find out exactly where you are? Use the green button in the lower right corner. Then select Map from the Main Menu. You will find the room you are currently in has the little robot in the window.
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Miramanga Reply:
February 10th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Full walkthrough of Mystery Mania available here!
http://miramanga.livejournal.com/772783.html
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