PopCap - Amazing Adventures and Mystery P.I.

PopCap already has a whole slew of addictive games for you to play online, including Bejeweled, Peggle, Bookworm and Zuma. This casual game-focused company based in Seattle is expanding their audience rapidly, by bringing their games to the Xbox 360 as well as the Nintendo DS. Last week, PopCap came by to show us Peggle for the DS as well as Xbox Live Arcade and they both look great. They also showed a couple of hidden object games, Amazing Adventures: The Forgotten Ruins and Mystery P.I. Portrait of a Thief. Once you've played one hidden object game, you've played them all, but there's something that keeps you coming back for more.

Amazing Adventures: The Forgotten Ruins has you locating objects in 18 different locations, 11 of which are unique to the DS. You begin by inputting your name and choosing an avatar from a panel of silhouettes. As an archaeologist destined to make a great discovery, you will get to travel to exotic temples and jungles in hopes of finding a long-lost Mayan temple. Your goal is to preserve the ancient relics while continuously update your journal by locating hidden objects and clues.

The gameplay is incredibly simple, because all you're doing is finding hidden objects. Just because it's simple, doesn't mean it's easy. The screen is littered with hundreds of objects and you will be given a random list of about 10 items. The touch screen will have a zoomed in view of area, where you can use the stylus or D pad to scan around. The top screen will display your score, the item list, and other pertinent information that you might need, allowing the bottom screen to remain uncluttered. You get bonus points for finding objects quickly, but there is a score penalty if you keep tapping the stylus. You are also given plenty of time to search for your objects and you have unlimited hints to tap into. You'll get a score deduction each time you use a hint however, and there is a meter that will recharge whenever you use a hint so that you can't use them consecutively. As you progress through each map, there is a glyph and a jade mask in each level to find, which will unlock minigames and an Unlimited Seek & Solve mode from the main menu.

It's really easy to get sucked into the game as you slowly check off your list of random objects. The game can be put on hold at anytime, so it's perfect while you're traveling. You can always boot it up, find a few objects and turn it off again. The minigames are also short, addictive and self-explanatory. They include: Memory Match, Tile Rotate, Jigsaw Puzzle, Find the Differences and Mah-Jongg Match.

Mystery P.I. Portrait of a Thief works the same way except the story and setting are obviously different and it's told by case log entries. In this game you play as an investigator, trying to find out who is responsible for stealing priceless paintings from a private art collector. While you're searching for clues, you also need to be on the lookout for paintbrushes and keys, because they will unlock the minigames and the Unlimited Seek & Solve mode. The minigames are the same as the ones in Amazing Adventure, except instead of Find the Differences, there is a word puzzle game where you search for words in a grid, with the help of a list of scrambled letters.

If you've never tried any of these types of games before, you can always swing by PopCap's website where they have free trials for the PC. Both of these games will retail for 19.99 on the DS. Amazing Adventures: The Forgotten Ruins will be released on November 18 and Mystery P.I. Portrait of a Thief is set on December 15.