Publisher: Big Finish
Developer: Big Finish
Year: 2010
Platform: Windows

Score: 4

The follow-up to 3 Cards to Midnight, Dead Time improves things a bit by making the game simpler for non-native English speakers. Rather than creating compound words to find hidden objects on each screen, the goal is to now just find everything related to a category. For example, on one screen you need to locate all objects that can cause a phobia. While this can certainly be subjective (I mean, that bicycle looks pretty scary), at least the game is more accessible.

Publisher: Big Finish
Devloper: Big Finish
Year: 2009
Platform: Windows

Score: 5

Chris Jones, the creator of the Tex Murphy series, dipped his toe into the casual hidden-object genre. And while for the most part I’m underwhelmed by this type of game, he did a nice job of injecting it with some style and challenge. Rather than simply find a list of objects on the screen, the conceit entails finding a list of words that relate to another word. To wit, if the keyword is “Card” you will want to look for objects such as a shark (for “card shark”) or a key (for “key card”). Think of it as an extra step in your hidden object dalliances.