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Time Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres 
ExclusiveTake on Time Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres, a challenging Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game! Stop the evil witch Viviana and save Esther's family! With her heritage on the line, it's up to Esther to discover the history of the ancient Ambroses and explore time itself. Go on an incredible adventure and change events in the past to solve an incredible mystery in Time Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres!
- Save Esther's family
- Explore time itself
- For a more in depth experience, check out the Collector's Edition
- Get the Strategy Guide!
- Check out our Blog Walkthrough
Click images to enlarge
Game System Requirements:
- OS: Windows XP/Vista/Win7/8
- CPU: 1.0 GHz
- RAM: 512 MB
- DirectX: 9.0
- Hard Drive: 715 MB
Game Manager System Requirements:
- Browser: Internet Explorer 7 or later
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Time Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres
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Customer Reviews
Time Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres
97
97
not for me
I had trouble figuring it out. The hint button is good and fast, graphics are good and so is the music. But the game leaves a lot to desire for me. The HOS can be difficult finding the items and there is just not enough in this game to but it.
February 10, 2013
Recommend as a Daily Deal
VERSION
Standard Edition
full game
DEVELOPER
Artifex Mundi
GENRE
Hidden Object
Arthurian fantasy
STORYLINE
You play as Esther Ambrose, a direct descendant of Merlin, the good wizard, and Viviana, the evil witch. You've just learned that you've inherited a dilapidated mansion, and you must imprison Viviana and save Merlin. To aid you, you have a time machine with which you can travel to five different periods in the mansion's history. One warning: at least in the SE, the ending is extremely abrupt and you're left with a cryptic "to be continued" at a quite crucial point in the game. I was not at all happy.
GAMEPLAY
The time machine functions as an interactive map, telling you where active areas are and allowing you to travel there instantly. There are a lot of HO scenes, and each one repeats several times. The hint system functions both within the HO scenes and outside them. In the HO scenes, you can see a silhouette of each item by mousing over its name in the list, or click on "hint" if you really can't find it. You can also skip a HO scene entirely by switching over to a "click three or more balls" game, a nice feature when you're playing the same scene for the fourth time! The journal holds your notes and lists your objectives.
TECHNICAL
For me, if I switched to the "three or more balls" game in lieu of the last item on the HO list, the game quit on me. When I restarted, I had to play the entire HO scene again with a different list.
GRAPHICS
Overall, the graphics are decent, albeit a bit dark in some places, even with my monitor at its brightest. Many of the objects in the HO scenes are partially hidden behind other objects, making them difficult to find. The HO scenes are the typical "junk pile" type. I did find several instances where an item on the list could have been several items in the scene. For example, I was asked to find a "bow." In the scene, there were two tied bows and a crossbow. I find that a bit sloppy. Outside of the HO scenes, there were items I only discovered because they were sparkling, or because I happened to mouse over them and my cursor changed.
CUTSCENES
Short and informative, the cutscenes did not interfere with gameplay. Even the cutscene indicating that you were traveling through time was short enough so as not to be irritating.
MUSIC
Initially, I found the music to be quite beautiful, but it did become repetitive and annoying after a while, and I turned the volume down to 25% as I prefer some music over just silence. A bit more variation in the music would have been nice.
SOUND
Appropriate and not at all annoying. Sometimes, developers choose sounds to indicate you've correctly completed an action, and those sounds get to be irritating. That wasn't the case here, thankfully.
VOICEOVER
Esther does comment on certain items that are not interactive, and her comments are repetitive, but other than that, the voiceovers were informative and not intrusive.
SUMMARY
I have mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand, Artifex Mundi is a developer that has improved by leaps and bounds in all areas of game creation, so I'm willing to give them a break until I see what the sequel brings. And I love Arthurian fantasy. On the other hand, this game had a lot of issues, at least for me. I'd recommend it as a Daily Deal, but not at full price.
November 5, 2012
Good, quality adventure but...
The graphics are top notch. The music is suitably tense and very well done, but by the end of the game, a bit monotonous. It has nice puzzles and is truly an adventure game with HOS thrown in, so there's lots to do. It's a fairly long game--took me about 4-5 hours.
The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because of the extremely unsatisfying ending. Clearly, there's a sequel coming, but that's no excuse for depriving the player of any sense of accomplishment. The ending just bites.
March 7, 2012
Long & Challenging
If you are like me, you don't like games that take 1 hour and it's done. This is not that kind of game. This game is really challenging, even when you play the normal play. The only bad thing about these kind of games is there's no rhyme or reason to what you are supposed to do next or where you're supposed to go next, it's really random. There were times when I'd use the hint & go, like how was I supposed to know I needed to go there? But overall I think this is one of the best hidden object games I've ever played.
February 11, 2012
Great Game!
Really loved this game! Puzzles weren't tooo difficult, but definitely I would say on the intermediate level. I did have to use the walkthru a couple times, but it was mostly because I had missed a small item somewhere. I liked using the time travel to get from place to place and it made the moving back and forth more enjoyable as well as the fun of stashing something in one time to retrieve it in another. HO scenes were pretty easy. Graphics good. The story line was great and kept your interest.
December 31, 2011
Maximum Entertainment!
One of the best HOGs available! Started in the "Expert" mode, and skipped the tutorial. The game was very entertaining. The graphics are excellent, the story line is logical, and the mini-puzzles were challenging, but solveable. The items were all properly identified without the language problems that plague some games in the genre. The game goes on for quite a long while, and has excellent value. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel.
December 27, 2011
Really enjoyable!
Really good fun! The puzzles were interesting and H.O in proportion to the rest of the game. I loved the fact theat you could choose to play a match 3 mini game rather than the hidden object game which really moved things along when you got stuck, (or like me you get bit bored with hidden object puzzles.)
The story was inventive and different, and although the puzzles where not always difficult they were always interesting. I also liked the time machine providing help as well as adding a new dimention to the problem solving.
I'd give this 4 1/2* .
December 27, 2011
Very challenging Hidden Object adventure game!
TIme Mysteries: The Ancient Spectres is an excellent Hidden Object game! Sound and graphics are excellent, puzzles and hidden object games are very challenging. Storyline is detailed and intricate but makes sense within context. It's one of the best of this genre I've played. If you enjoy mysteries and hidden objects with a super-natural atmosphere, this one's for you!
December 26, 2011
Recommend this game
Challenging but not impossible. Liked the graphics and the puzzles. Lots of hidden object scenes, again challenging but the objects looked like they were supposed to. I was sad when the game was over.
December 25, 2011
Great Game
I enjoyed every minute of this game. The hint button refilled instantly and I loved that!! It may not do this on the tougher levels. Interesting story and a bit different type of game. Must play to appreciate!
December 23, 2011
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