The Mystery of the Crystal Portal, provided to me by G5 Entertainment, is a game that, at its simplest, is about finding hidden objects in pictures. Most people have probably seen similar activities, probably in magazines as children, depicting a scene and challenging the viewer to find particular objects in the picture. The Mystery of the Crystal Portal is similar to these activities, only much more interactive of course! Besides locating hard to find objects, you get to solve puzzles, decide where to go, and watch the story unfold!

The music of the game fits the time period depicted, early twentieth century, very well. It gives the sense of mystery and light adventure, which is perfect for the game. The graphics are very beautiful and highly detailed. You can zoom in on the image, and the quality is still great. At some points in the game annoying shadows can block your view, but this adds to the challenge of locating the hidden objects.

The basic idea of the game is simple yet fun. A scene will be displayed. Using two fingers to "pinch" the screen, you can zoom in or out of the image (similar to other applications on the iPhone). When starting, I highly recommend you remember that! Either this wasn't mentioned or I completely missed it, because I was having some trouble before I realized I could zoom in on areas! Tapping the screen will attempt to select an object if an object is present at the location you tapped. If the object is a key object, it will show you other objects you have to find to complete that key object. When all the key objects have been completed, the level is finished! Each set of levels has a special item type such as a gear. If you collect all of those items in a set of levels, you can access the final puzzle for that area. The puzzles are very interactive and act as mild brain teasers. These were my favorite part of the game and were very fun.

Over the course of The Mystery of the Crystal Portal, the story slowly unfolds. You play the role of a young woman attempting to find her missing father who studied the mysterious Crystal Portal. You travel all over the world, finding objects, solving puzzles, and investigating your father. Each location has multiple levels or scenes, and you can change between them at any time once they're unlocked. Sometimes the story requires you to find a particular object in a particular scene before continuing. This adds an element of the adventure game genre to The Mystery of the Crystal Portal. While the light story provides ample justification for the events in the game and incentive for the player to continue, the game seemed to end a bit abruptly. I don't want to spoil anything though, so you'll just have to play through the game to see what happens.

The game integrates with Facebook, allowing you to post updates when you progress in the game. If you're stuck in a level, you could just tap everywhere, hoping to find something. However, there is an easier way though. You can tap a hint button to be shown a hidden object. After using a hint, you can't use another immediately after, but you can buy the ability to use more hints from the App Store.

I enjoyed playing The Mystery of the Crystal Portal, although I wish I had known about zooming earlier! The game combines story, music, realistic visuals, and puzzles with a game mechanic with which most people are probably familiar. This makes the game easy to quickly understand and start playing. Hopefully a sequel will be on the way with a bit more story and a lot more puzzles!