Game Review - Sphera

Game Review - Sphera

Score +3/-3

Overview
Sphera is a hidden object game light on puzzles. The story ends with a cliffhanger, and as Sphera was developed by SandLot Games, don't expect a sequel because SandLot Games has been bought by Digital Chocolate. Overall, there's nothing too special here, except a story that may intrigue you (but which may never be finished) and some interesting artwork.
+ The artwork is quite interesting in its surreal and dream-like quality. You can see our collection of Sphera screenshots here -- beware of SPOILERS.
+- The puzzles are trivially easy. That said, scaling puzzle difficulty is a tricky part of developing a hidden object game or any casual game, so you may or may not feel it is fair to take a point away here. If you're not a fan of them and don't like to get bogged down while retaining the game difficulty elsewhere, then this may be a plus for you.
+ You can skip puzzles. Always a nice feature to have, not that you really need it here.
- Needs more rigorous quality control and playtesting. While the game worked fine on version 1.000, some of the hidden object games had glaring errors. For example, some items mis-named: E.g., A cauldron was a "bowl", and a cufflink was a "button". Also, there was more than one eraser and key in the desk in the "Brother" room, so you could end up clicking on the wrong one futilely, especially if you thought you just weren't clicking close enough to the object.
- So far the story is vague and not very engaging.