by Marcel Dufresne
May 20, 2022
Faircroft’s Antiques: The Forbidden Crypt is one of many excellent Hidden Object Games (HOG) developed by Boomzap Entertainment. I have been playing their games for many years and I have yet to be disappointed with the gameplay of their products.

The basic objective of the HOG is to locate camouflaged items from a list of objects. These are carefully hidden in the picture. It is exceedingly difficult to quickly find all the items as they are well concealed. Also, the name might not be as helpful as you might think. Searching for a bee might be for an insect or the letter B. A bat could be the animal or a baseball bat. It is only with careful observation that all the items can be found. I would venture to say that more than a hundred items could be found per picture of which only a dozen or so are to be part of the list. Once found, you need only click on the object and it is removed from the list.

The storyline sets the stage for each of the HOG scenes. In this case, Mia Faircroft and her associate Sofia travel to Italy when an old friend calls for her help with restoring a cathedral. Mia packs her bags for the seaside town of Porto Nacosti, Italy. You are invited to tag along on her travels and discover the secret that lies in the crypt of the town’s cathedral.
I consider The Forbidden Crypt to be a pure HOG. There is no wandering around looking for inventory items to help to solve a mini-puzzle. Each scene starts with the story dialogue which sets the stage for the hidden object scene. As with most games of this type, the dialogue really has little to do with finding the items. The game comes with the option to skip the dialogue and proceed directly to searching for the list of camouflaged items. I have to admit that I skipped most of the interactions. I play this type of game solely for the pleasure of finding all the objects and I prefer not to be distracted by inessential dialogue.

The graphics used in this game are superb. The detail and the colours make the scenery come to life. With the music supplied, the atmosphere is definitely Italian. The game allows you to explore twenty different locations in the town. Each chapter presents you with several sites to visit as well as the number of items to find in each one. In the early chapters, you need to look at only a couple of sites. But, as the game progresses, you need to search more and more eventually needing to look at five sites per chapter.
As you play the initial game going from chapter to chapter, you will find that the game has five varieties of hidden object themes. The normal type has a simple name associated with the object. In Riddle, you must solve riddles to learn the names of the objects you are looking for. This is a much harder type of HOG. You must locate the items one at a time rather than being able to search for any one on the list. Silhouette provides a shadow image while Picture is a picture of each item. The last and probably the easiest is the Collection. The list in this case is comprised of one item only, like a towel or a horseshoe. You must find a specific number of the target item.

After you have completed a chapter, you then play a mini-game. In The Forbidden Crypt, it is usually a jigsaw puzzle. Again the game provides a multitude of variations to the jigsaw puzzle type. You will need to either spin a piece or switch places or do both. The complexity of the puzzles increases as you move along. To complete the chapter, a final mini-puzzle game has to be solved which might involve finding the differences, cleaning up an antique (the hardest), and more.
Once you have completed all the scenes, you open up the free play. The Forbidden Crypt has great replay ability. For each of the twenty scenes, you can try to solve the list using each of the five types. Twenty scenes times five variations of HOG provide one hundred different scenarios. And not only that, but each time you play a scene you are not necessarily presented with the same list of items. There are hours and hours of fun awaiting you. The Steam version of the game comes with 28 achievements to strive for which again makes you want to replay the game until all are solved. By skipping a lot of the dialogue, we were able to finish the game in about 7 hours.

This HOG can be played by yourself or with a group where everyone is helping find the camouflaged items. It is also a game to be enjoyed by any age group. If you prefer playing this type of game without having to move from screen to screen and back again, then I strongly recommend The Forbidden Crypt. Click here to view a video of the gameplay or click here to read more about the game. With all the replay ability and the various types of HOG and jigsaw puzzles, The Forbidden Crypt is well worth the price.