Forest Legends is a rather long casual adventure game about two star-crossed lovers from different worlds. Its breath-taking graphics go well with the format and the fantasy setting, but those who expected it to be a hidden object game will be disappointed.

Forest Legends: The Call of Love is a casual point ‘n’ click set in an average magical kingdom with a standard plot premise: our heroine, Eveline, is desperately trying to save her kidnapped love, who is shunned both by her family and his race, a civilisation of werecats. In true casual adventure fashion, she achieves this by travelling through a set of usual fantasy locations and whipping up a dozen potions along the way.

This also forebodes the gameplay, which never goes beyond the most basic adventure item hunt, with the occasional conventional puzzles almost being a breath of fresh air. At least thanks to the nice map system, there is only mild backtracking and dead time.
Despite this simplicity, the story continuously keeps going through constant voiced narration and cut-scenes. This effort shows that a lot of production value went into Call of Love, although it is even more visible by looking at the gorgeous art, the biggest selling pont of this game.

In a nutshell:
One of my favorite puzzle adventures to date. Long, good variety of minigames and puzzles, beautiful art, lots of bonus stuff (music, wallpapers, etc), and some of the best VOs I've ever come across in the genre. It's not a HOG, though a couple of optional goals (like finding pages of notes) add a bit of a 'hunt for stuff' feel. No Steam achievements, but please don't let that make your decision for you.

Oh, and if you happen to have some kind of visceral hatred toward anthropomorphic "furry" creatures like talking bipedal cats, you may want to pass on this one. XD

The Long Version
Wow. I honestly didn't expect much from this title. I figured it'd be just another stereotypical HOG with a weak plot and the usual tropes. Not five minutes in and I was pleasantly surprised.

First of all, it's mistagged. From the screenshots it certainly looks like every other good HOPA on the market now, with the same gorgeous art and backgrounds (my F12 key got a workout), but there are no HOG scenes. If you're the kind of person who enjoys HOPAs more for the "puzzle adventure" part than the object/pixel hunt, this is definitely up your alley. If you're primarily looking for another hidden object title, this is to warn you so you don't buy this with false expectations. Hopefully you won't be that picky though.

Forest Legends is primarily a P&C, and it does that well. I never felt frustrated with item usage or weird logic (although one or two choices admittedly made me quirk an eyebrow).

Puzzles and minigames were fun and varied. Mostly average difficulty, with some easier ones thrown in. There's a simple plot-related recurring "potion brewing" minigame where you add various ingredients you've found to a cauldron. You have to select a tool and drag the cursor in various shapes to chop or grate or mix them respectively. I'm guessing originally it was a touchscreen thing, because dragging the mouse would not be my first choice, but it's not too bad. It suits the story and advances the plot, so I didn't mind.

I only ran into one gameplay bug, but unfortunately it's a big one. One of the puzzles at the end of the main game is a "direct the light beam with mirrors" one to open a door. Once you place the required piece and start it, the game crashes. Thankfully it saves and restarts to just before you open the puzzle, but will crash again if you open it again and click to move anything. The only way around it is to use the skip button. So it's probably a good thing there are no Steam achievements, because this would break any "no skip" requirements.

Bottom line, the main game is initially based on a romance between a human girl and a werecatdude. If that weirds you out too much, you may not be able to get as immersed. But if you're okay with that stretch of imagination, you'll probably enjoy the quasi Romeo & Juliet vibe. It gets a bit more complicated than that obviously, but it does set up the lore of the land, and the races' history is nicely laid out in the process. I don't think I've ever played a game that treats "furry" characters in such a serious manner either, so that was an interesting change of pace as well.

Your journal plays a big part in the story, at least if you want to understand more of what's going on. Main entries are fully voiced, and there's an extra tab for "memos" found, which are scraps of paper, signs, or notes left around in various places in the world you can read and collect that give some extra detail or background to characters or situations. They're totally optional, but the game keeps track of how many you've found. And there are a LOT of them in the main game, which adds a fun treasure hunt angle to everything.

I really liked the little humorous details sprinkled into the story, like the naming conventions of Goblins, the twist in Rapunzel's backstory, silly memo texts, or subtle sight gags.

The Bonus Chapter goes a little further back in history. It's the same quality of gameplay and feels long enough to be satisfying, with no sense of "the devs just gave up" that many adventure game bonus chapters tend to be cursed with. It's a worthy little prequel story.

I've played a buttload of adventure games like this, and those that feature voiceovers are hit and miss. The good ones typically feature strong-but-mildly-detached older female voices for protagonists, like in Enigmatis. The bad ones...well, I won't go there. Forest Legends though, is in another category altogether. I felt like I was listening to actors putting on a play, not reading a script. The protagonist Eveline especially, is voiced with more emotion than I've ever heard portrayed in a game like this. It made the narration a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

Music and SFX were good too. Typical quality I guess, though there were a couple of places where a much-too-short audio loop repeated so much it grated on my nerves (when you meet the pixie - his crying and his violin riffs). It was bad enough to make me either leave the area or turn the sound down if I wanted to think about where to go. An unfortunate mar on an otherwise good experience, but thankfully it was only in those couple of spots.

Possible trigger warning: There's one short bit toward the end of the main game that features some big spiders. I figured I'd put that out there for any extreme arachnophobes. It's just one part of a minigame screen, and it's over very quickly, but I'm not afraid of spiders and even I still found it a little startling.


To sum up, I really enjoyed Forest Legends. Despite a couple of hangups, I had a great time playing, and I wouldn't hesitate to pick it up again at some point.

This game is now added to my favorites, harping back to games like the Blue Tea series Dark Parables with the beautiful details throughout the game and lovely graphics, this game reminds me how much can be done with these type of games when developers really think to add lots of unique touches to make it more engaging.

This is not a HOG game as there are no Hidden Object scenes but it does have the same kind of design to it with some simple mini games sprinkled throughout but if you enjoy beautiful graphics, and lots of little details such as Journals are voice acted and you can listen anytime by clicking a play tab, there are memos you find throughout the game that get added to it's own journal and each one is unique so graphically it's really lovely to look at and read.

The journal has hand illustrations. Travel map included. in game stratergy guide and the guide itself is really nice as well, I didn't use it to play but everything in the game has such nice touches I looked at it after.

Graphics are lovely, really beautiful details, scenes have movement, clouds that go by, other touches depending on the scene/map your on. Tip, if you dont realize this you will miss out some of the unique touches of the game. Click on everything, you may get a little surprise. Not everything will have a little indicator but in the maps clicking some random flower may give you a little surprise, click on a statue or anything you may get descriptive narrations so there is a lot you can read in this game too.

Now to the one thing I was a bit disppointed to come upon but it still wouldn't deter me from playing the game or regretting I have it. There is one mini game nearly at the end, it's a game with mirrors, unfortunatly it's broken and so it will crash the game no matter how many times you try so you will have to wait for the skip button and use that. After that you can play the rest of the game fine and it's the only bug in the game. Would be nice if Alwar fixed that but I wouldn't let it stop you from enjoying the game.

all in all a really nice game, not a HOG, point and click with some mini games and things you do ( oh like making spell potions) to progress in the story, voice acting is mostly the main character and she does a good job, the Voice Actor had a lot to do from narrating the journal to her chats throughout the game so have to give her a credit as she did a good job with it.

would like to see more games like this from Alwar, maybe even a squel. also maybe next one if they did it add some HOGS but if not keep all the lovely graphics and little details of the game and you got a winner.

I wrote this not having played the bonus chapter yet but sure it's just as good. also comes with wallpaper, soundtrack and the music is lovely as it's not overwhelming so is relaxing in the background, sketches, bonus game.

I was enjoying this game got near the end on a puzzle that has mirrors that need to be moved with arrows every time I tried to do this puzzle I got kicked out of the game and the skip button doesn't work.

First things first... A list of cons.

- The character graphics in the game are very amateurish.
- The gameplay controls are less than adequate. It does feel like an old game.
- It has no achievements.
- The story is confusing at best, and at worst it just stinks. The exposition is horribly obvious, none of the dialogue sounds 'realistic', and all of the tropes are there.
- So many things made me feel like the game was rushed... For instance, in the bonus chapter, the same dragon from the original game gives you hints. Problem is, that chapter is set before it was even born...
- The voice acting, ah ah... There are multiple female characters, all voiced by the same woman. And don't get me started on the terrible male voices and accents.

As for the pros:

- This is the first time I play a hidden object game where there are absolutely NO hidden object scenes. There is one where you have to find 10 flowers in a scene, but it's treated like a minigame and it's so easy, you just finish it in less than 10 seconds, maybe it was an inside joke, I don't know. So as such, it's a first-person point & click adventure. Which I appreciate.
- Average game duration (about 4 hours, plus an extra hour for the bonus chapter), I've played worse these days, so that's nice.
- Although the graphics aren't excellent, some of the environments were enticing.
- No achievements means I was able to skip some really annoying minigames. And less stress overall.
- Now, I don't know if it's a pro or a con... The story is VERY SIMILAR to Grim Legends 1 and Queen's Quest 2. The pro is that Forest Legends looks like it was released first, so I'm guessing it's likely the other games stole from its concepts. However, and that's the con, they were better executed, especially Grim Legends (which, unfortunately, is also the one to re-use the same story nearly verbatim, down to the old witch in a hut ending up being your royal mom). So it gives me the feeling that Forest Legends is a cheap copy. I don't know. What do you think..?

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this game, but because it supposedly came first, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt, and recommend it for some reason. Still, you can (and probably should) skip it. Actually, the only Hidden Object game from Alawar I'd recommend is Dark Strokes: The Legend of the Snow Kingdom. Otherwise, stick to Artifex Mundi games!

Note that this is a casual point-and-click adventure: there are no hidden-object scenes. There are, however, several very easy puzzle mini-games.

This game is an impressive "achievement" in that it incorporates almost all the the clichés of the genre: pretty girly girl saving her sexy boyfriend, cute little sidekick that does almost nothing, and an incoherent mishmash of well-known fairy and magic stories. This was probably the easiest job the writers ever had!

That said, the complete package kinda makes sense within in its own internal "logic", and the gameplay is OK. There is a potion-mixing mechanic that is a tiresome, but otherwise there are some interesting adventuring puzzles and the graphics are good. It's not a bad game.

It's also not a great game. Fans of the genre may enjoy it, but I feel the writing is just so lazy that it doesn't deserve a recommendation.

Also note that the game is buggy. Speech bubbles are sometimes cut off and are partly off screen. And near the end of the game a puzzle crashes the application. You can skip the puzzle, but it's still annoying. The developer does not want to fix it. See the discussions page for more information.

Very enjoyable - a high quality casual point and click adventure.
Note: This game does NOT have hidden object scenes.

Pros:
-Lovely artwork and traditional fairy tale type setting
-Music (never overwhelms the game, and fits the various settings)
-Puzzles (mostly easy, but some take a bit of thought)
-Characters / protagonist (not especially deep characters, although the father is surprisingly complex, though a minor player; but the key characters are likeable, and the protagonist is intelligent)
-An entertaining Bonus Chapter

Cons:
-One bug in one of the final puzzles that has been known to devs for 1.5 years and remains unresolved
(not a major issue, since there aren't Steam achievements, and the puzzle can be Skipped; still annoying)
[The devs do respond to people who run into this bug; however, it's still happening as of July 23, 2019]
- No Steam achievements or trading cards (and trading cards for this game would be nice!)

Final: Definitely recommended. The one bug didn't break the game, and this is a lovely, immersive game!

I liked the few references to other people's work such as painting the roses in red or the chicken with an axe beak. The puzzles where quite easy and there is no HOG scene (so be aware, it's an HOG game without HOG scene. Don't ask me, why, I'm not one of the dev).
The story doesn't break three legs to a duck, but the side story is absolutely dumb.

Thumbs down. There is a bug in the mirror puzzle which causes the game to crash. The developers have not fixed the bug, and they are not likely to. The mirror puzzle can be skipped, but I didn’t really like the story either. The artwork is mostly okay, but the voice overs don’t look right because characters move their bodies when speaking, but not their mouths.

This game is tagged as hidden object, but I would not consider this to be a hidden object game. It’s a point and click adventure. It’s not the worst point and click adventure I’ve seen, but there are much better ones available. There is some pixel hunting to find hotspots, a few puzzles which don’t seem to have logical solutions, and the bug in the mirror puzzle.

This game might have been tagged as hidden object, because there are some collectible items to find, memos which provide more background information. I didn’t find all the memos, but I don’t think that I missed anything worthwhile. After all, the main story is quite derivative. The heroine is in love with a werecat (a werecat is like a werewolf with cats instead of wolves), but people disapprove because he’s a monster. However, the power of True Love makes everything okay in the end. By the way, the heroine is unaware of her destiny, but she is eventually identified as the Chosen One destined to save the world. Amazingly enough, the evil bad guy does not tie the heroine to railroad tracks at any point.

Game has a game breaking bug and devs don't seem to care