100% Achievements guide

A guide made mainly for facts and little details that will help you get all achievements on Dark Arcana: The Carnival.

Some info

• A walkthrough can be found here: clicky.
  
  
• CTRL+F to find a certain achievement easily.
  
  
• There is a total of 19 achievements, none hidden. You can check the progress of achievements with counters on its menu in-game (either via pause or main menu).
  
  
• To 100% this game, you're gonna need at least 2 playthroughs of the main story, so you can finish all 22 hidden-object puzzles and 22 monaco games, which can't be done on one playthrough. With this in mind, if you're trying to save time, it's advised to play it first on Advanced difficulty (or casual, ew), then Expert difficulty.
  
  
• The only difficulty-related achievement for the game is to finish the main story on Expert, and for that you need to start the game from scratch. Changing the difficulty via the pause menu during gameplay will forbid you of this achievement, and changing it from Casual/Advanced to Expert at the last second of the game doesn't grant it to you.
  
  
• The second adventure doesn't have difficulty-related achievements. It doesn't even prompt you for a difficulty selection when you start it.
  
  
• If you need to reset your progress for whatever reason, just create and change to a new profile via the main menu, but remember that achievement progress isn't carried over, which affects unlocking THE COLLECTOR.
  
  
• There is no way to tell if you finished a hidden object scenario by finding the objects or finishing with the monaco game, unless you can just remember or wrote it down, so it's easier to be consistent and finish the game once using only one of them. If you were like me ended up finishing one or two of the first scenarios by playing monaco, you're gonna have to keep progressing until you get the achievement you need. In other words, try not to deviate from a chosen way of progressing (hidden-object or monaco). There are no checkpoints or chapters that you can reload to finish a scenario again with another method, which would mean another playthrough if you're not consistent.

Story-related achievements

None of these below are missable. All of them are awarded near of or at the end of some cutscenes.

PICK UP THE TRAIL

— Acquire a photo of the missing woman

LITTLE HELPER

— Make friends with the monkey

THE EXPLORER

— Travel to the mirror world for the first time

THE TRUTH

— Learn the real story behind the ritual

Puzzle achievements

If you don't keep a consistent playstyle during the game, some achievements from here on out can be easily missed. Just don't use hints or skip puzzles and you should be fine. Also remember that you can click the in-game achievement pop-up to make it disappear; useful if you're going for an achievement that requires you to be quick.

PUZZLE MASTERMIND

— Finish any mini-game in less than 15 seconds
Mini-games = puzzles, the ones that have descriptions on what to do at the bottom of the screen. The best puzzle to get this achievement is probably the first one with the banana inside the claw machine. Right after the moment you insert the coin the puzzle starts, simply press right, right, down, then the red button; you'll be awarded the achievement as soon as the claw grabs the banana. If you don't get it quick enough, you can restart the game for a quick retry, as it's right at the start of the game.

WINNERS DON'T SKIP

— Finish 3 mini-games in a row without using the Skip option
Don't skip any puzzles.

NEVER A SKIPPER

— Finish all the mini-games without using the Skip option
Don't. Skip. Any. Puzzles! 21 in total.

Hidden-object achievements

3-IN-3

— Find 3 hidden-objects within 3 seconds
Start a hidden object scene, but don't click anything, take your time and find 3 items before collecting them. The best scene for this are the early ones, as you'll revisit them quite a few times. This achievement can also be easily done in the first scene that you encounter, of which there is a screenshot below, at QUICK-EYE's description.

DEADEYE

— Finish any hidden-object scene with less than 5 incorrect clicks
Some objects are obscured, some have synonyms as names (quite misleading sometimes), but this can easily be done if you just take your time. The trick described below on QUICK-EYE can also be done here, as long as you don't misclick more than 4 times when getting the last item.

LADY DIY

— Finish 3 hidden-object scenes in a row without using any hints
Just don't use hints and be careful not to misclick the hint bulb, as it doesn't have a confirmation prompt for its usage.

DIY MASTER

— Finish all hidden-object scenes without using any hints
Same as above, fight on and never use hints. 22 in total.

QUICK-EYE

— Finish any hidden-object scene in less than 1 minute
The best one for this is the very first one, the ticket booth. Memorize the image below before starting the scene and if you don't get it at the first try, you can always restart the game for a quick retry.

Monaco achievements

SPEED MATCH

— Finish a game of Monaco in less than 1 minute
If you're good enough at monaco, skip my explanation. A trick that you can use to get this easily is to play the hidden-object scene as normally, getting all but one of the items, then switch to monaco mode and make a pair of cards with at least one of them having a special background, and that's it, you're good. For some reason the game only starts the timer for this achievement when you enter the monaco mode. Sadly this trick doesn't work for QUICK-EYE.

NO SHUFFLE TRIO

— Finish 3 games of Monaco in a row without reshuffling
Never use the shuffle button if you get stuck, but you can still use the Row, Column and Symbol erasers. If you don't like Monaco, you can use the trick described on SPEED MATCH for this.

EQUALLY MATCHED

— Finish half of all the games of Monaco
Will be awarded after 11 games completed. The trick described on SPEED MATCH can also be used for this one.

GAME, SET, MATCH

— Finish all the games of Monaco
Same as above, but will be awarded after 22 games completed. Similar to all above, the trick described on SPEED MATCH can be used for this.

Extra achievements

THE WHOLE STORY

— Complete the game (Expert Mode)
Differences from the other difficulties are simple: the hint and skip features take much longer to be available; neither items, puzzles nor hidden object scenes are highlighted with a glimmer when you're exploring; and your map doesn't show where there are available actions, basically making it useless. Sounds tough, but if you save this for a second playthrough, it should be easily doable.

LIFESAVER

— Rescue Jim
Finish the Bonus Adventure, which can be accessed via the Extras menu once you complete the main story at least once.

THE COLLECTOR

— Unlock all the Achievements
To unlock this achievement, ALL ACHIEVEMENTS must be obtained in the same in-game profile.

Closing notes

There we go. If this guide has helped you out, don't forget to rate it. And if there is any way that I can make it clearer, do comment.

[Galandrielle]

I personally suggest to do the hidden object achievements on the first run (casual or advanced), and do the Monaco achievements on the second run (expert)!

[MrL0G1C]

Thankfully you only have to complete each game of Monaco once so when I started the game again I got the remaining achievements when I finished the 1st game of Monaco, also I completed each game of Monaco by getting most of the hidden objects first.

[Alex]

if you start new profile of course they will be "erased" because its a new profile duh

[MrL0G1C]

I accidentally did a HOG, I already have all the hog achievements, will the game achievements (not steam achievements) get reset if I start a new profile? IE if I start a new profile will I get "unlock all the achievements" just by getting the last ones which is the monaco achievements or does the counter reset like it does for 'nightmares from the deep' Because I'm not playing the ******* ******** game 2 more times just to get the cheevos.

[yah]

Correct!

[LadyTopHat]

Speed Match can only be achieved during a playthrough. You can't unlock it by going to the HO/Monaco puzzles via the Extras menu.

[ToxicDog]

Hello, I added your guide here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=963020290
I hope you enjoy it ^^

[MassConnect]

Thanks. Didn't know you could get 1 min monaco by doing hidden objects first. Seemed impossible otherwise.

[LyndaSmiles ᴱᴳ]

Thanks for all your hard work, it came in handy for me achieving 100%! It helped on the few times I needed it especially on figuring out how to save Jim . You let me know it couldn't be done thru the regular game....only thru the bonus.

[Алла]

Большое спасибо!