Buy Chronicle Keepers: The Dreaming Garden

Was enjoying it until I reached the point where you use the pickaxe. Game always crashes there.

Chronicle Keepers: The Dreaming Garden is another hidden object game set in a fantasy land. You play a woman on a search for her mother which turns into a more complicated journey finding magical artifacts and fighting evil forces. While not the best HOG out on the market, it is pretty and fun to play. The price tag isn’t too bad and even better when on sale and will give you a few hours of entertainment for certain.

In the real world lives a woman who was separated from her mother years ago. Following clues you’ve finally found a way to figure out what happened and end up traveling to a magical world. There you find out that your mother has been turned to stone and it’s up to you to help her and also save the land from an evil witch. If this all sounds generic it’s because it is. The story really doesn’t offer too much, if you’ve played HOGs before then you know what will happen. It’s not a bad story, on the contrary, it’s one that has worked in many games before but it’s also predictable so be warned.

What I liked most about the title was the gameplay. I really enjoy HOGs so it’s really hard to mess one up. Using your mouse you click to interact with people and objects, during a hidden object scene you are presented with a written list of items to find in what seems to be clutter. The unique feature is that some of the objects are hidden and can only be found by using your magical medallion. This medallion is also used throughout the game to find useful items and pieces to your magic book which isn’t really a magic book, but tells the background of the story. My only complaint would be that I wish there were more hidden object scenes. The game also has puzzles which are all not too difficult.

The graphics are rather dated even though it was only released two years ago. That being said they aren’t bad, the backgrounds are lively and colorful, the hidden object scenes are well done and the items aren’t too hard to find if you have bad eyes, I played this game often without my glasses. The character models, however, aren’t the best and the animation is so-so. The audio in the game is fine, nice background music and everything is fitting. The game also has voice acting, however the actors aren’t very good but there is an option to mute it.

I would say Chronicle Keepers: The Dreaming Garden is a decent game. It’s not winning any awards but it functions well as a HOG. There are some flaws, like some typos and your map not showing you activity spots to name a couple, but I got through in about three hours and it was fun. It does not have Steam achievements or trading cards which allowed me to play casually not worrying about meeting criteria for achievements. The game isn’t too expensive so I recommend giving it a try, especially if it’s on sale.

• Must buy.
  
• A good game to buy.
  
• Only buy if on sale.
  
• Mediocre.
  
• Avoid at all costs.

I just recently discovered hidden object games and bought Chronicle Keepers: The Dreaming Garden on a steep sale. I've been playing these types of games on a HTPC connected to my LCD TV, which barely meets the recommended requirements for this game. Other HOGs have performed fine. Performance for Chronicle Keepers however was sluggish; transitions from one location to the next took a noticeable pause, as did zoomed in windows for hotspots. Kaspersky also quarantined the game executable complaining of trojan or something. I reinstalled the game on my main gaming computer which has far better specs. Performance was somewhat improved but it wasn't as smooth as other HOGs on the HTPC. Bitdefender didn't complain about the game executable so I think Kaspersky's identification is a false positive.

The game itself is fairly short (took me ~4 hrs total). The puzzles are fairly easy and the hidden object scenes for the most part were easy too. However there was at least one misnamed object (ladybird instead of ladybug) and a few spelling errors in the V.O. captions. Objects you had to locate outside of hidden objects scenes were sometimes very difficult to distinguish from the background. Hidden object scenes also suffered from occasionally having several objects of the same type with only one of them counting.

The story could not have been more generic. Descriptions of objective items were liberally sprinkled with words like "eternal" just to make the story sound more mystical. None of the characters, or even the setting, was given any depth. There's not much story depth to these games in general but Chronicle Keepers: The Dreaming Garden has the most cardboard characters and setting I've come across yet.

The art work was fine and the locations were usually interesting to look at. But the reasoning for you to do anything (acquire the eternal tree elixir, get the boatsman's lamp, etc.) came across as more contrived than is usual for this genre.

Not recommended. I paid $1.24. I got my money's worth but there are better games on Steam, and far better HOGs you could spend your dollar on.

Beautiful game with fun puzzles. Only problems: at the end the hints did not actually lead me to the right answer, and the ending is extremely lame.

Not very challenging but fun to play while you relax.

Littered with spelling errors, flawed logic and annoying art. Do not recommend.

A bit short but I'm rather fast with HOGs and this one is pretty straightforward and linear, so the game was fast. The graphics are very good, some of the scenes are gorgeous. The sounds and music are okay, voices are nice.The minigames are very well done. The HOG scenes are really gorgeous. The items can sometimes be hard to find, and a couple of items were mislabeled, but on the whole the HOGs scenes are of above average quality: very beautiful and challenging. Searching all the scenes with the medallion is fun and the idea is original, so kudos for that, devs.
The story is a fantasy tale, very cliché but it holds up fine. The game was unvoluntarily funny a couple of times, being a bit overreact and cheesy but that made it fun; the cutscenes are well done.

I really liked it, played it in one go because I contstantly wanted to see next scene. It's like a good Artifex Mundi, without the deadly serious tone. I'm fine with the game being a bit short since I got it for sale with a nice dicount, 3 hours is a good minimum for a good HOG.

(There's a problem with the game EXE erroneously being flagged as a virus and I had to deactivate my AV to be able to play the game.)

You play a young adult who lost here mother 10 years ago, but not in this wold, in a Dream world. She was attacked buy a foul creature who tried to destroy both of you, your mother protected you as best as she could and you managed to get away with the help of an unknown person, but not her.
All that is left of your mother is a fragment of her medallion. When you look through it, you can see things that are not from this world and linked to your mothers medallion.
You now look for a way back to find her. As you approach a antic store you look through your medallion and see a glowing book. You want/need that book, but once inside, the old women tells you it is not for sell.
She leaves for some random reason and you decide to try and steal it. «Why not.»

As you approach your goal, the book flies away in an other room, you follow it and after solving a couple of puzzles, you are sucked inside the book to a weird world.
Your journey to save the dream world and your mother starts there.

Good story line, very nice graphics and the puzzles are fun and divers.
Had lots of fun, loved it.
I recommend this game.

Game itself is nice, but I do not recommend it since:
1. It crashes.
2. Antivirus reports trojan and keeps deleting executable.

"I was thoroughly enjoying this game until I lost a whole profile. In addition, I couldn't access a second profile after it kept crashing at the same point. Whenever I broke the same wall (not my house btw) in the game, it would crash.

It is a real shame that it cannot be rectified according to some sources. It appears a refund is the only answer at this stage. Unless, anyone else might know how to fix it? I would really like to complete all of the puzzles.

It would've been a 'thumbs up' for the game. However, I'll need to give it a thumbs down as I can't access two profiles properly now :("

That was then, I've since completed the game with a new profile without turning my computer off. An admin assisted me with my tech query. He suggested I change the difficulty setting and have it windowed completely. It still didn't work but when I followed those instructions with a 'new' profile and without jumping too far ahead of the game there were no problems. I'm glad I changed the recommendation to a 'thumbs up* and a 'high five" for the admin responding so quickly. Cheers PlayWay S.A.