In case you need some light reading, GameTunnel.com has just posted a very nice review of Secret Worlds:
http://www.gametunnel.com/html/reviews-207.html
Secret Worlds Review on GameTunnel
Moderators: ~xpr'd~, tyteen4a03, Stinky, Emerald141, Qloof234, jdl
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Midnight Synergy
- Site Admin
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That was an excellent review - congratulations to everybody.
Couldn't help noticing this quote
"once you start playing, you'll probably keep at it until you finish the game,
and when you do you'll feel a sense of loss when it's over."
They didn't make much mention of our very active community, and all the new levels available to play.
Little do they know what they're missing.
Couldn't help noticing this quote
"once you start playing, you'll probably keep at it until you finish the game,
and when you do you'll feel a sense of loss when it's over."
They didn't make much mention of our very active community, and all the new levels available to play.
Little do they know what they're missing.
Mrs. Annie Purple Hat
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Midnight Synergy
- Site Admin
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- Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2003 3:39 am
- Contact:
I think this is the list:Dianna wrote:I didn't know until I read that review that some Wonderlanders made levels for Secret Worlds. Who made which levels?
Patrick..................................everything before Wondertown.
eeyore,Patrick and mette............Wondertown
popo and mette..........................The Plains
majic1.........................................Kreepy Keep
jg................................................Foggy Mountains
mette..........................................Mountains - the 4 Caves
leandemon..................................Fire Island
sfseaman....................................The Volcano
O/G.............................................Forever Forest
rmelin.........................................The Wasteland
Malc............................................The Void
Malc/majic1.................................Cloud City
Patrick........................................Stinker Rescue
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Liz Mayhew
- Rainbow Spirit Master
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DiscGolfer
- Rainbow Wizard
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- Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2003 2:24 pm
- Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Here it is DG, can't have you feeling left out. 
After Wonderland and Return to Wonderland, the adventures of Stinky, Loof and other Wonderland inhabitants continue in this new action/puzzle game from Midnight Synergy. This time, the levels are not designed solely by the regular staff - Wonderland Secret Worlds features original levels created by ten members of Wonderland's bustling Internet community, rewarding the players with an experience even more fun and diverse than the previous games in the series.
Graphics: 8/10
When you take your initial glance at the game, you'll immediately notice the vivid colors and retro character designs reminiscent of arcade machine hits like Q*bert or some of the games from the early and mid-90's, a decade when the action/puzzle hybrid genre was in its prime. The graphics really show that this game has embraced its own heritage and isn't afraid to use designs which might look a bit silly or childish to someone used to the more 'serious-looking' games - one look at the computer screen when someone's playing and the game will practically scream, “Look at me, I'm a puzzle game and I'm proud of it!”
Unlike the classics however, Wonderland Secret Worlds features a modern 3D engine, bringing a lot of graphical improvements to the familiar top-down perspective prevalent among the games of this type, though also putting some additional strain on your graphics card. This also means that the backgrounds are completely three-dimensional, using detailed models done in the same style present throughout the game and accomplishing something rarely seen: almost everything on the level is in some way interactive and there is very little distinction between background objects and puzzle-related elements.
Sound: 8/10
Nothing about the audio really stands out as either very bad or especially excellent. Both the music and the sound effects are a solid fit for a game of this type. The music is your typical puzzle game 'elevator music', not so upbeat or annoying as to disrupt your thinking, but still providing a pleasant and cheerful background for the action-oriented as well as the puzzle-solving levels, while the sound effects mostly consist of various beeps and bleeps. Some of the sounds will quickly become familiar to you as they can be an early warning sign of a possible level feature you might have missed visually, like the fireball-shooting cannons or spikes suddenly coming out from the ground. Coupled with the squeaky cartoonish voices of the main characters, they make for a pretty decent, although not really ground-breaking sound package.
Gameplay: 9/10
The gameplay of Wonderland Secret World is, summed up in two words, fun and addictive. You will be guiding four characters through both action and puzzle-packed levels, collecting stars to advance between sections of a map similar to the one in Super Mario World, and advancing the storyline as you go along. From the basic Sokoban-like box puzzles, cannons and barriers featured in the first Wonderland game, the game has evolved to include two more playable characters and a whole bunch of new objects to interact with.
Each level in this game has a specific number of keys you need to unlock the gates that keep you from reaching the exits which are marked by a gold star. To complete it all you have to do is solve puzzles to clear your way to the exit and collect the keys as you go along. It might sound like a simple concept but the trick is that it's not all about the puzzles. Your characters don't have any weapons to battle the numerous enemies guarding the keys and a single contact with them is deadly, so you are forced to rely on your wits and evasion skills, which brings quite a bit of arcade action to the game. Since the same level features are deadly both to you and the enemy characters, you will often have to outsmart them by using their own AI against them and leading them to their doom.
Some of the monsters have distinct pre-programmed behaviors, like following only one of your character, so cooperation and fast switching between the characters is absolutely essential. For example, when you're trying to eliminate Chompers with Stinky, you must be very careful not to leave Loof in their path or the other way around or you'll be forced to restart the level, since all the characters have to reach the exit in order to move on to the next one. The same goes for one-way floor tiles or bridges collapsing after you cross them. To reach the exit, you will have to do a lot of thinking ahead. Sometimes the objects you need to interact with are not close enough to show up on your screen so you can use ‘Shift’ combined with the arrow keys to see the complete level and plan your actions accordingly. As for the other controls, they are very simplistic and perfect for a game like this since all you really need to do is move your characters in one of the four directions and switch between them.
Something that seems to be missing from the game, though it is a pretty standard feature of many puzzle games, is a single screen somewhere in the main menu listing all the possible objects, enemies and their characteristics. Although these are explained on info tiles when you first encounter them while playing, it would be very handy to have all the brief explanations in a single place.
Value: 9/10
The game boasts more than a hundred levels, each slightly more complicated than the last one, guaranteeing you a very long and challenging gaming experience and making the $19.95 price tag more than reasonable. There is, of course, a free demo to try out first but once you do I'm pretty sure you'll get hooked on Wonderland's gameplay right away. If you even remotely like puzzle games but haven't been introduced to the Wonderland world yet, it might be a good idea to start purchasing the games in succession, since they have developed over time and added new features in each installment.
Concept: 8/10
Most of the game elements like boxes, push buttons, rolling boulders, spike traps, barriers or deflection prisms have already been seen in numerous predecessors to this game, but what makes Wonderland Secret Worlds different is the sheer variety of the levels, some of which feature more unique puzzles integrated in each single level, than you might expect to see in a whole game.
Another nice feature of the game is that it actually has a storyline with a purpose and a very well designed game world. The map your characters travel through is divided into various sections like Wondertown, Mushroom Grove, The Creepy Keep, Forever Forest and The Volcano. All the levels in the same section share the same visual theme suggested in their names, making you feel like you are actually traveling through Wonderland instead of, as often happens in such games, just solving completely unrelated puzzles.
Fun: 8/10
There is no doubt about it, Wonderland Secret Worlds is a very fun game. Not too hard on the earlier levels, the game follows your learning curve by introducing new obstacles as you progress through the storyline. It is never being boring or repetitive, and always has something new in store to test your puzzle-solving prowess.
Bonus items are present on all levels and, if you want the highest score, you have to collect them all. This is, of course, not essential to complete the level, but it adds another challenging feature to the game. Some of the levels have more than one possible solution, the easier one just getting you to the exit and the harder one enabling you to collect all the bonus points, and it's completely up to you to decide if you'll settle for less or try to achieve a perfect score.
Some of the longer levels can be quite frustrating at first because there's no such thing as a save/load feature, but when you repeat them a few times you'll get the hang of it and complete the tasks you know how to solve almost mechanically, allowing you to think about what's next. Even if you get totally stuck, don't worry! There are online hints for specific levels and a very lively discussion forum, both available in the form of in-game links directly from the main menu. As a last resort, if the level is too hard for you even with the hints, or is too action-oriented for your tastes, you can use the level-skipping cheat code. As in all games, though, once you do that, it's hard to restrain yourself from using it again.
Overall: 8/10
Don't let the colorful graphics and Mr. Potatohead-inspired characters with silly hats fool you, this game is definitely not meant just for kids. Wonderland Secret Worlds offers just the right combination of old-school arcade gameplay and extremely challenging puzzles to succeed in being appealing to a very broad player audience. The basics of the game mechanics are simple enough to learn quickly, helping the players who have little experience with this genre to get immersed in the game right at the start, while the problems you'll encounter later on are designed for more skilled puzzle-solvers. No matter which player category you belong to, once you start playing, you'll probably keep at it until you finish the game, and when you do you'll feel a sense of loss when it's over. All in all, playing Wonderland Secret Worlds should be an enjoyable experience to pretty much everyone.
Added: April 19th 2005
Reviewer: Damjan Flegar
Score:
Hits: 391
Language: english
After Wonderland and Return to Wonderland, the adventures of Stinky, Loof and other Wonderland inhabitants continue in this new action/puzzle game from Midnight Synergy. This time, the levels are not designed solely by the regular staff - Wonderland Secret Worlds features original levels created by ten members of Wonderland's bustling Internet community, rewarding the players with an experience even more fun and diverse than the previous games in the series.
Graphics: 8/10
When you take your initial glance at the game, you'll immediately notice the vivid colors and retro character designs reminiscent of arcade machine hits like Q*bert or some of the games from the early and mid-90's, a decade when the action/puzzle hybrid genre was in its prime. The graphics really show that this game has embraced its own heritage and isn't afraid to use designs which might look a bit silly or childish to someone used to the more 'serious-looking' games - one look at the computer screen when someone's playing and the game will practically scream, “Look at me, I'm a puzzle game and I'm proud of it!”
Unlike the classics however, Wonderland Secret Worlds features a modern 3D engine, bringing a lot of graphical improvements to the familiar top-down perspective prevalent among the games of this type, though also putting some additional strain on your graphics card. This also means that the backgrounds are completely three-dimensional, using detailed models done in the same style present throughout the game and accomplishing something rarely seen: almost everything on the level is in some way interactive and there is very little distinction between background objects and puzzle-related elements.
Sound: 8/10
Nothing about the audio really stands out as either very bad or especially excellent. Both the music and the sound effects are a solid fit for a game of this type. The music is your typical puzzle game 'elevator music', not so upbeat or annoying as to disrupt your thinking, but still providing a pleasant and cheerful background for the action-oriented as well as the puzzle-solving levels, while the sound effects mostly consist of various beeps and bleeps. Some of the sounds will quickly become familiar to you as they can be an early warning sign of a possible level feature you might have missed visually, like the fireball-shooting cannons or spikes suddenly coming out from the ground. Coupled with the squeaky cartoonish voices of the main characters, they make for a pretty decent, although not really ground-breaking sound package.
Gameplay: 9/10
The gameplay of Wonderland Secret World is, summed up in two words, fun and addictive. You will be guiding four characters through both action and puzzle-packed levels, collecting stars to advance between sections of a map similar to the one in Super Mario World, and advancing the storyline as you go along. From the basic Sokoban-like box puzzles, cannons and barriers featured in the first Wonderland game, the game has evolved to include two more playable characters and a whole bunch of new objects to interact with.
Each level in this game has a specific number of keys you need to unlock the gates that keep you from reaching the exits which are marked by a gold star. To complete it all you have to do is solve puzzles to clear your way to the exit and collect the keys as you go along. It might sound like a simple concept but the trick is that it's not all about the puzzles. Your characters don't have any weapons to battle the numerous enemies guarding the keys and a single contact with them is deadly, so you are forced to rely on your wits and evasion skills, which brings quite a bit of arcade action to the game. Since the same level features are deadly both to you and the enemy characters, you will often have to outsmart them by using their own AI against them and leading them to their doom.
Some of the monsters have distinct pre-programmed behaviors, like following only one of your character, so cooperation and fast switching between the characters is absolutely essential. For example, when you're trying to eliminate Chompers with Stinky, you must be very careful not to leave Loof in their path or the other way around or you'll be forced to restart the level, since all the characters have to reach the exit in order to move on to the next one. The same goes for one-way floor tiles or bridges collapsing after you cross them. To reach the exit, you will have to do a lot of thinking ahead. Sometimes the objects you need to interact with are not close enough to show up on your screen so you can use ‘Shift’ combined with the arrow keys to see the complete level and plan your actions accordingly. As for the other controls, they are very simplistic and perfect for a game like this since all you really need to do is move your characters in one of the four directions and switch between them.
Something that seems to be missing from the game, though it is a pretty standard feature of many puzzle games, is a single screen somewhere in the main menu listing all the possible objects, enemies and their characteristics. Although these are explained on info tiles when you first encounter them while playing, it would be very handy to have all the brief explanations in a single place.
Value: 9/10
The game boasts more than a hundred levels, each slightly more complicated than the last one, guaranteeing you a very long and challenging gaming experience and making the $19.95 price tag more than reasonable. There is, of course, a free demo to try out first but once you do I'm pretty sure you'll get hooked on Wonderland's gameplay right away. If you even remotely like puzzle games but haven't been introduced to the Wonderland world yet, it might be a good idea to start purchasing the games in succession, since they have developed over time and added new features in each installment.
Concept: 8/10
Most of the game elements like boxes, push buttons, rolling boulders, spike traps, barriers or deflection prisms have already been seen in numerous predecessors to this game, but what makes Wonderland Secret Worlds different is the sheer variety of the levels, some of which feature more unique puzzles integrated in each single level, than you might expect to see in a whole game.
Another nice feature of the game is that it actually has a storyline with a purpose and a very well designed game world. The map your characters travel through is divided into various sections like Wondertown, Mushroom Grove, The Creepy Keep, Forever Forest and The Volcano. All the levels in the same section share the same visual theme suggested in their names, making you feel like you are actually traveling through Wonderland instead of, as often happens in such games, just solving completely unrelated puzzles.
Fun: 8/10
There is no doubt about it, Wonderland Secret Worlds is a very fun game. Not too hard on the earlier levels, the game follows your learning curve by introducing new obstacles as you progress through the storyline. It is never being boring or repetitive, and always has something new in store to test your puzzle-solving prowess.
Bonus items are present on all levels and, if you want the highest score, you have to collect them all. This is, of course, not essential to complete the level, but it adds another challenging feature to the game. Some of the levels have more than one possible solution, the easier one just getting you to the exit and the harder one enabling you to collect all the bonus points, and it's completely up to you to decide if you'll settle for less or try to achieve a perfect score.
Some of the longer levels can be quite frustrating at first because there's no such thing as a save/load feature, but when you repeat them a few times you'll get the hang of it and complete the tasks you know how to solve almost mechanically, allowing you to think about what's next. Even if you get totally stuck, don't worry! There are online hints for specific levels and a very lively discussion forum, both available in the form of in-game links directly from the main menu. As a last resort, if the level is too hard for you even with the hints, or is too action-oriented for your tastes, you can use the level-skipping cheat code. As in all games, though, once you do that, it's hard to restrain yourself from using it again.
Overall: 8/10
Don't let the colorful graphics and Mr. Potatohead-inspired characters with silly hats fool you, this game is definitely not meant just for kids. Wonderland Secret Worlds offers just the right combination of old-school arcade gameplay and extremely challenging puzzles to succeed in being appealing to a very broad player audience. The basics of the game mechanics are simple enough to learn quickly, helping the players who have little experience with this genre to get immersed in the game right at the start, while the problems you'll encounter later on are designed for more skilled puzzle-solvers. No matter which player category you belong to, once you start playing, you'll probably keep at it until you finish the game, and when you do you'll feel a sense of loss when it's over. All in all, playing Wonderland Secret Worlds should be an enjoyable experience to pretty much everyone.
Added: April 19th 2005
Reviewer: Damjan Flegar
Score:
Hits: 391
Language: english
Minnie. (Polly's big sis)
Thanks to Kymmie.
Thanks to Kymmie.
majic also did a couple in The Plains. In fact she did more than anyone else, so if you're having trouble you know who to blame.Midnight Synergy wrote:I think this is the list:Dianna wrote:I didn't know until I read that review that some Wonderlanders made levels for Secret Worlds. Who made which levels?
Patrick..................................everything before Wondertown.
eeyore,Patrick and mette............Wondertown
popo and mette..........................The Plains
majic1.........................................Kreepy Keep
jg................................................Foggy Mountains
mette..........................................Mountains - the 4 Caves
leandemon..................................Fire Island
sfseaman....................................The Volcano
O/G.............................................Forever Forest
rmelin.........................................The Wasteland
Malc............................................The Void
Malc/majic1.................................Cloud City
Patrick........................................Stinker Rescue
Pauline
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DiscGolfer
- Rainbow Wizard
- Posts: 439
- Joined: Fri Nov 21, 2003 2:24 pm
- Location: Fayetteville, Arkansas
I've been trying so hard to get three more gold stars so I can get into the Void. Malc did these levels? OK, that means I know they will be great, and also that I will be lucky to finish even one!
Wow, what a great group effort this game is! I love it even more, now that I know this. Congratulations to all of you on a terrific Wonderland!
Wow, what a great group effort this game is! I love it even more, now that I know this. Congratulations to all of you on a terrific Wonderland!