This is a pure list-driven HOS with a wide variety of puzzles of varying difficulty. There is no story and you?ll learn no history. But I like it. You select your HOS from a map; each location tells you the number of HO you need to find and objects are easy to find in the richly-detailed colorful HOS. [Purists will be aghast to learn that not all objects are true to the 16th Century France period.] Objects move around each time you go back to a location. As you progress, you will find a higher number of objects at each of the 15 levels. There is no inventory. After successfully completing the HOS for each level, you must solve a puzzle to discover a missing element of Nostradamus?s crystal ball. Puzzles have varying degrees of difficulty (easy to challenging) and include Wheel of Fortune, unscramble the pictures, knocking out targets, scrambled cards. The searches are timed. In timed mode, you get about 40-50 minutes while untimed gives you about 80-90 minutes per level. In other words, there is no hurry. You have a limited number of skips, so I would advise saving them for the puzzles you have difficulty solving. One annoying factor was a ?clearing the throat? noise ? it adds nothing but irritation. You can silence it by changing the ambient sound to zero.

This is a slow pace HO game, with some interesting mini games. Some items are hard to find. No real story with it kinda old fashioned style. Just a nice wind down game. Music is just OK as well. If you don't give up right away your eyes adjust and items are easier to find. Hints recharge fairly quickly, There is the timed mode and relaxed mode which I played. Not one I would buy, but you should at least give the demo a try and you make up your own mind.