Not a traditional Hidden Object Game, as the objects that are hidden are in the frames/scenes themselves, so you only need to find one or two at a time which you aquire as items (rather than a zoom-in where you find a list of things before gaining an item).

The cut scenes are pretty fuzzy and the voice acting is bad to the point of cringe-worthy distraction. On the plus side, there are many options to make the user interface easy to work with at the expense of making the puzzles a bit easier.

Overall , its hard to recommend this to casual players because there are better examples of the genre worth looking into and experienced adventure gamers will find the story and puzzles obtuse and difficult to care about.

First of all, this game is very short and the puzzles very easy. Finished it in two hours without problems. Click a bit around, find all items in the scene, try to combine items or use them. Next puzzle.

Secondly and more important: The story is very poor, the dialogs are cheesy and the ending not satisfying. There is no mystery to solve, no story to uncover. Games like this need a story that drags you in. I wandered through the game and always wondered, why I am doing this or that.

Without a good story it is just a series of short, not very interesing puzzles. There are better implementations of this kind of games out there, played one just last week. An undead pirate had captured my daughter and I had to free her. The hunt for the daughter was the driving force and motivation, the history of the pirate a mystery to uncover.

It's not stellar. It's not truly memorable. It's strange and disjointed and has wonky dialogue.

And I'm recommending it.

It's short, which is a saving grace in my book. These types of games often suffer from difficult puzzles with unclear objectives, but Tales from the Dragon Mountain: The Strix does an excellent job of guiding you from place to place. If you are ever unable to find an item in the background, a generous hint system will help you locate it so you can move on. The storyline is interesting and bizarre, and the sheer weirdness will likely keep you moving forward to see the next oddity.

Easily beaten in 2-3 hours, it won't take up much of your time. Considering how few games of this type have made it to Steam, it's nice to have another diversion. Just don't expect the next GOTY.

This game tries, bless its heart, with a decent voiceover, many locations, a tolerable storyline, and by mixing up hidden object mechanics a bit… but it just doesn’t work as a whole.

On first glance, Tales from the Dragon Mountain: The Strix looks like a nice enough hidden object game. And, for the most part, it almost is, but somehow the individual elements just don’t work well together.

First, there is the writing: the protagonist learns about her magical heritage, and with the help of a green gnome, she sets out to defeat an Evil Wizard—standard HOG story. The individual scenes are nice, but as a whole, it is just disjointed and short (there is an internal achievement for finishing it under an hour).

Then, there is the gameplay. The smaller issue is with the puzzles; they feel lazy and uninspired, something only put there because other HOGs have them. The real problem is with the hidden object scenes, or more like the lack of them: item search is integrated into the main scenery, not separated from the normal exploration. While it may seem like a good idea, sadly the execution is poor, pushing the game into the not recommended category.

It's very short, took me less than 3 hours to complete it without rushing. Also, the game is trying to look story-driven but the truth is that you don't get any info on the characters and locations that are introduced and the ending is a bit of an anticlimax.So you can easily leave with an unsatisfied feeling if you played it merely for the story and wanted to know more about the story/magic/world/etc...

Despite these things I really enjoyed playing it. It was like reading a book in which the author had a lot of good ideas but didn't work them out properly: it stills feeds the imagination of the reader and it's fun until you reach the ending. So even though the ending was dissapointing, that doesn't mean it ruins the game because I had fun playing it. I got through the game without pauses and I was amused with the dialogs and the puzzles.
I bought it as part of a bundle, so I think the price I paid was right, but I don't recommend it for the full price.

I tried to like this game but it stinks of a cheap student project or something similar. Very simple 3D room renders that sometimes forget the sense of scale, really mediocre voice acting, weak story and the overall jankiness leave much to be desired here.

There are plenty of other great Hidden object games on Steam, for example, the games by Artifex Mundi, which are all good, or by Gogii Games, which are mostly good. Try those instead.

Tales From The Dragon Mountain: The Strix is a short and enjoyable point and click game, which was quite pleasant, having a good storyline and a nice concept. The storyline is quite debatable, I found it quite interesting and the end was not too anti-climatic, I quite enjoyed the ending. The narration did have flaws, with Mina and the Grandmother, having the same voice actor. I did notice some typos in the letters and diary entries. The game is quite simple and very short, it was a small, fun experience which I did not regret. The atmosphere was convincing and some of the puzzles/solutions did have a unique twist to them, needing common sense.

☆Good storyline.
☆Good atmosphere.
☆Short.
☆Relaxing music.

☆Typos in letters/diary entries.
☆Narration lacking.
☆Short.

Overall, this game was a fun, short point and click adventure, which is well worth the play. The gameplay goes for about 1-3 hours, depending on difficulty, etc. I really enjoyed playing this game, even with the typos and narration problems, it turned out alright.

There's nothing much I can say about this game.

Overall: Meh... (pretty mediocre even if you got it in a $2 bundle)

* Awfully short
* Dull narrative

This game almost got a recommendation from me, however it falls short due to two important things. The first is the story. It kind of works, but it is too simple and short to give the player any value other than to just force feed us the next puzzle or area. The other big shortcomming is the voice acting, and this problem really ehances the weakness that the story is to the game. Having few voice actors in a game is not necessarily something to make a big fuzz about in a budget title, but this game would have gained more from only written dialoge rather than the addition of these voice actors. It might be that the game is targeting children and that a child of about 10-12 would enjoy this more, but for me it was simply so detrimental that it just dragged the experience enough down to miss the recommendation.

The puzzles are somewhat enjoyable and the grapichs and aestethics are serviceable. The mechanic I enjoyed the most was the ability to tweak the difficulty in the options to fit your playstyle and patience. I also encountered a bug when trying to click object. Just some small glitches that made is a little cumbersome to click and choose the objects you want to. Fixing this would have given the game just that little extra feel of polish.

Not recommended, but close nonetheless. One of the better non-recommended games for my taste.

I got this for a very cheap, cheap price. Probably the worth of 2 pieces of gum and a paperclip, so with that in mind, it was... okay. While it functions enough with some kind of entertainment, I wouldn't exactly feel compelled to tell anyone to buy this in the price it's asking for. Heck, I don't think I could even tell anyone about it even if it was on a bundle. I suppose it just makes for a nice stocking stuffer when you're out travelling since its small size can perfectly compensate tablet computers and mini laptops.

I played it thrice to get all the achievements (for some reason it registered that I skipped the dialogue the first time), although this game is actually relatively short---about half an hour long at most without cutscenes. I wouldn't call it a HOG, this is definitely more like a Myst-type puzzle adventure. The graphics remind me of early 90s computer games, so it kind of has a bit of soft spot in my heart; the dialogue albeit cheesy had pretty good grammar and spelling.

It's hard to play the game without its item list checker function, especially finding all the sticks in a woodsy background. Without the item list, I would have probably been miserable and frustrated. I don't recommend going in hard mode the first time, where there's no action sparkles and item checker, since you'd likely be tearing your hair out in rage. The puzzles themselves were wayyy too easy, almost... a little broken with how easy they were. It did feel like they didn't even try to make it a challenge. There were too many "arrange the broken bits" segments too, it gets boring the second time round.

I dunno, it's a real big shrug for me. It wasn't good per se, but it wasn't godawful either. I didn't really get too frustrated or bored with it. I don't think I could say I hated it, I mean, I did manage to tolerate playing it 3 times for funsies. I don't have the heart to thumb it down when I feel like it didn't really deserve it.