Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child

Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child, or Dream Chronicles 3 in some cases, is a casual adventure, hidden object and puzzle computer game developed by KatGames and published by PlayFirst. It's the third game of the Dream Chronicles series, the second sequel of the award-winning 2007 video game Dream Chronicles, also the last game of the first Dream Chronicles trilogy called Faye's Journey. Follow the events of the first twos, the game tells a story of a woman names Faye, who wakes up from a dream and doesn't remember who she really is. Recovering lost memories, she has to embark on the third and final quest to save her only daughter.

Released as a download in April 2009, The Chosen Child immediately become an another Dream Chronicles hit, reached the top of 11 casual game charts and peaked inside top ten on many other charts. The game received positive receptions from game critics, describing it as "another visually stunning Myst-like adventure that transports players into a fantasy world of fairies." In June 2010, RealArcade announced that The Chosen Child was nominated for 2 awards, "Top Hidden Object Game" and "Best Story", in their second annual Great Game Awards. The Chosen Child was preceded by Dream Chronicles 2 and followed by The Book of Air.

Story
At the start of the game, Faye is living in a tree house as Brenna, having lost all her memories of the previous fairy adventures. Images of a strange man, a little girl and even about the red-outfit, wicked-smiling woman often appear in dreams and frustrate Brenna as well. One day, waking up from a dream like this, Brenna suddenly finds a crystal ball, in which a man - just like in her dreams - appears to urge her to find a girl names Lyra. Bewildered and confused but Brenna still listens to that strange man's tips as she says she can believe him. Brenna is led to a strange house whose is herbalist through a nexus gateway. After concocting a memory recovery potion, Brenna finally remembers everything: herself Faye, her husband Fidget, her missing daughter Lyra, and the rival Lilith as the Fairy Queen of Dreams. Faye quickly goes on her way to rescue her daughter, following clues left to her by an unknown. In order to open new areas in the Dream Realm, Faye needs to forge more Dream Jewels as she heads to the Forging Area. Now she knows that Lilith hiding in her retreat lying beneath the sea. On finding an amulet to unleash the power of the cliff-side elevator which lies near the underwater retreat, Faye goes back her home in Wish town for the first time. This time difference is still no one besides her and her home is full of dust. As Faye feels more closer to Lyra, she knows that she needs to keep going on. After traveling to beneath the sea, through many strange rooms and two labyrinths, Faye eventually arrives at Lilith's retreat and meets her. Faye demands to know where Lyra is. Lilith calmly tells Faye that the Dream Librarian has abducted Lyra, believing her to the Chosen Child of prophecy. This prophecy states that a half-fairy, half-mortal child will replace the missing Fairy Lord. Lilith reveals that she is the one guiding Faye all along with those clues she left for Faye before, as she refuses to accept Lyra as her Fairy Lord. Suddenly, strangely, Lilith asks to help Faye bring Lyra back. Being acknowledge that Lilith has her own "selfish interests" at heart but Faye still accepts Lilith's help. Going back to the Enchanted Tree, which appeared in Dream Chronicles 2, Faye takes Lyra's teddy bear and brings Lyra back at her home in Wish. Faye's family is finally united. A new life has already opened above them. With Faye, she says these Dream World adventures "will haunt my dreams forever". But one thing she doesn't know that Lilith is pregnant. And no one knows exactly what Lilith will be up to.

The Chosen Child ends the first Faye's Journey trilogy. The events in The Book of Air will occur 10 years after those in The Chosen Child.

Characters
First 3 people listed below are main characters, other twos play the minor parts.


 * Dream Chronicles 3 Cutscene.jpgFaye / Brenna is a mortal woman who reprises her role as the main protagonist. Waking up from another dream, Brenna finds a strange man in crystal ball. He helps Brenna remember herself as Faye and recognizes him as her husband. This time, Faye, along with Fidget, embarks on the final quest to rescue her daughter Lyra and finally save her. On the quest, Faye discovers an overwhelming secret about Lyra, which will lead many unforeseen consequences. Faye is a strong and persistent woman, who never gives up hopes and always tries hard to get her family back to their old peaceful days. Though being the main character but Faye doesn't appear in person as you play as her point of view.


 * Lilith, Fairy Queen of Dreams, is the main antagonist. After releasing Fidget, that her who captures him into a crystal ball. Lilith often appears through cut-scenes and finally appears in person at the end to reveal Lyra's fate with Faye and seems like she is hatching other evil plans in the future.


 * Lyra is the daughter of Faye and Fidget. In The Chosen Child, she is kidnapped by Lilith and then be released, along with being revealing her fate with her mother Faye, which will leads Lyra to be the main character of the second trilogy. She is believed to be the Chosen Child who is phosphecised to replace the missing Fairy Lord because of her unique mix of half-fairy and half-mortal blood.


 * Fidget is a fairy raised in the mortal world by his fairy parents Aeval and Tangle. Though he is captured in a crystal ball, Fidget can help Faye along on her quest.


 * Dream Librarian is the keeper of all knowledge in the Fairy Realm. She's the closet person to Fairy Lord and is his loyal adviser too. Lilith reveals that Dream Librarian believed that Lyra would be the Chosen Child and that she is actually the one who tries to separate Faye and Fidget. This character hasn't appeared yet, she's only mentioned by Lilith.

Gameplay
Awem Studio described the game: "Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child is an adventure-like hidden object game with numerous puzzles and challenging tasks. It borrows much of its game play from Dream Chronicles 2 and goes deeper than the prequels."

Gameplay in The Chosen Child is structured much like that in Dream Chronicles 2'. Each area, which consists of half a dozen or more unique locations, has a set of puzzles to solve using items players find strewn about the landscape. Play as Faye, players have to travel back and forth to find what they're looking for. Carrying items between scenes is an important part of solving the intricate puzzles. There are many puzzle types in game: word unscrambling, potion mixing, looking for constellations with the help of telescope, piecing together a sewing machine, playing Simon and sliding games, locating items in the right place and more. The objects that players find may be used in a scene other than the one they found it in. Objects will stay in inventory until players need to use them. All objects that players are able to pick up will serve a purpose, whether they are used in that scene or not. A lot of times in this game the pieces players pick up may only be used as they get to the next scene. Some items may not become visible in a scene right away, players must perform other tasks first before they become visible.

In addition to give players time to really explore every aspect of the scenes, KatGames add a device called "Nexus Gateway" with hoping to make the game non-linear which allows players to move freely throughout the game world. Instead of being confined to a linear path, The Chosen Child opens the door for wider exploration, creating the epic feel the series needed to move to the next level. As a result, now players can go through all the scenes, from the first scene to the lastly 25th scene of game, by using the nexus gateway. But this feature only appeared in The Chosen Child.

Dream Jewels, as well as the new element - gold nuggets, in this game are required to open new nexus gateways, and for the first time, can be forged by the player themselves. There are 64 gold nuggets, 30 Dream Pieces molding 10 Dream Jewels to complete, other 60 Dream Pieces work as bonus scores, which are scattered throughout the game. Like Dream Chronicles 2, players need to replay several times before you can find all of 16 Dream Jewels.

For the second time in the series, players can enjoy the experiences of solving maze puzzles. The Chosen Child contains two underwater labyrinths, one in the nineteenth scene and the other in the twenty-third scene. However, they're sometimes being criticized for their highly difficult level, which sometimes prevents some players from completing the game.

The game has only one weak spot: hint system. The crystal ball is of little help. It rarely tells the exact solution, but instead gives players slight hints.

As usual, at the end, players earn a score. How quick players can solve the puzzles and complete the game, the quantities of Dream Pieces and gold nuggets that players find will all determine their final score.

Development
The Chosen Child was first released as a beta version in February 2009 for limited beta players. A game preview debuted shortly after on Gamezebo. The teaser trailer made its first appearance on PlayFirst on April 3, 2009. Following its release, PlayFirst released more 4 entries on their blog, Inside PlayFirst, to show new features in the development of The Chosen Child:


 * Dream Chronicles 3 Nexus Gateway.jpg April 10, in the first entry, Pablo Vietto, KatGames' art director explained for the first time the inspiration behind the artwork of the Dream Chronicles series. From the start, the goal with the Dream Chronicles series is to bring the story and adventure to life in a world inspired by a very unique art style. The work of Antonio Gaudi – a famous Spanish architect known for his fantastic modern designs – was at the heart of this inspiration. The Art Nouveau movement that he represented provided the perfect combination of fantasy and reality with his designs being based on very appealing and organic shapes. When starting the design of a scene for one of the Dream Chronicles games, KatGames do extensive research to gather reference and ideas for the architecture, devices, and graphical elements that could be used. Based on these materials, they create sketches to consolidate the ideas and see how all the elements fit together. Since the game is presented from a first-person point of view, a principal sketch is created with particular attention given to how the scene is framed and composed – as if someone was actually standing in the space. To develop the more complex objects, additional sketches are often created to communicate an extra level of detail to the modelers.


 * On April 13, in the second entry, Miguel Tartaj, KatGames' founder described some new puzzle features in The Chosen Child. When KatGames starting designing the puzzles for The Chosen Child, they wanted to focus on having the player experiment and interact with the scenes a lot more than in the previous Dream Chronicles games. There were a few puzzles in Dream Chronicles 2 where all the player was required to do was collect a lot of items from the scene and put them back where they belonged. While this is still fun, it can get repetitive. To address this, they invented some elaborate and magical devices for The Chosen Child where the player has to focus more carefully on figuring out the right items to collect and the proper combination in which to use them.


 * On April 14, in the third entry, Miguel Tartaj revealed new technical details in this game. Start from The Chosen Child, the game is presented at a higher resolution, 1024x768, instead of the original 800x600 resolution to make sure delivering even richer, more detailed and beautiful scenes to players. Every scene in the game has moving elements to make them more immersive and compelling. For example, when players activate the mechanism to shift the magical portals in the nexus gateway, massive gears turn to show them how the doors are shifting to give them access to new areas of the game. Players may also notice more subtle atmospheric effects like drifting clouds, blowing sand, or fish swimming by the windows in the underwater areas.


 * And on April 15, in the forth and final entry, Miguel Tartaj described new feature highlights in game: the nexus gateway, the crystal ball and the underwater labyrinths. In Dream Chronicles 2, players would move through areas of the game and never see them again. KatGames felt like this diminished the believability of the game world and didn’t give players time to really explore every aspect of the scenes. This was the motivation behind adding the nexus gateway, which has been mentioned above. A crystal ball is also added in game to make sure that players have the necessary hints and help they needed to keep moving forward through the story. The final feature, underwater labyrinths, are actual three dimensional spaces that players can move around in. This means they can watch the fluid and beautiful graphics flow by them just like players are actually walking around in a maze.

Reception
The Chosen Child was officially released on April 16, 2009 by PlayFirst and was promoted: "Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child brings the Dream Chronicles series to a new level [...] With a backdrop of amazingly intricate artwork and advanced technical detail as well as the new multi area puzzles allowing for more player mobility, established fans and new players will be challenged and delighted." The game was another Dream Chronicles hit, peaking at number one on 11 casual game charts: PlayFirst, Shockwave, RealArcade, Oberon Games, SpinTop Games, MSN Games, Logler Global, iWin.com, GameFiesta, Mac Game Store, Yahoo! Games; number two on GameHouse, Reflexive Arcade, Pogo.com, Amazon.com; number three on Big Fish Games and peaked inside top 20 on other casual game charts. Like two previous Dream Chronicles games, The Chosen Child earned positive reviews both from game critics and casual gamers.

Gamezebo's Erin Bell commented on The Chosen Child: "The Dream Chronicles series has earned a reputation for having beautiful visuals and music, and The Chosen Child is no exception. Each of the game's environments has been lovingly crafted with a soft, distinctive art style bursting with detail, and the soundtrack is equally evocative. In short, The Chosen Child boasts production values that put many of the recent hidden object game releases to shame." However, she noted the length is "disappointing" and "over all too quickly": "I was also let down by the abrupt ending, which left me feeling that The Chosen Child was just a set-up for the inevitable fourth game." After all, she rated it 4.0/5.0 stars.

Meanwhile, John Bardinelli, an editor from Jay Is Games praised: "The latest installment in the Dream Chronicles series has arrived, and it's as breathtakingly brilliant as everyone would expect. A little bit of hidden object finding, a little bit of puzzle solving, and a whole lot of adventuring can be found in this superb sequel, along with some of the most gorgeous scenery you've seen since looking out your own window (assuming you live in a fantasy world with fairies, fountains, and vibrant gardens). It's an excellent follow-up to the previous Dream Chronicles games and a fantastic game in its own right." Later in his review, he said: "These [Dream Chronicles] titles just keep getting better and better. It's a perfect blend of object finding and adventure gameplay, and the puzzles are constructed so cleverly you might even giggle when you think of the solution. And I swear you'll melt from the combination of the gorgeous visuals and enchanting music."

Meanwhile, Awem Studio stated that: "Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child fulfills the series' best traditions and looks elegant. The smooth and vibrant dreamy world presents gorgeous scenes and magically changes locations before your eyes. Enchanting music adds to the atmosphere. There is little new in the interface, but it’s what fans expect and love in Dream Chronicles. Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child is a fantastic game that's a must have for all fans of the genre."

In late 2009, The Chosen Child was placed at number-two 2009 customer favorites by Big Fish Games. This is the second time a game in Dream Chronicles series entered the Big Fish Games' most popular games annual list. In June 2010, GameHouse announced that The Chosen Child was nominated for 2 awards, "Top Hidden Object Game of 2009" and "Best Story", in their second annual Great Game Awards but it didn't win any eventually.

General tips

 * Collect any Dream Pieces and gold nuggets you see as soon as possible. You don't need to get them all but they help make up your high score at the end.


 * In order to open another gateway and visit the next area by using nexus gateway, you need to collect Dream Jewels, and match the colors so that they correspond to the colored gems above the closed gateway.


 * If you do something incorrectly, just exit the kitchen and re-enter to reset all of the ingredients.


 * When you're navigating the underwater labyrinths, each square represents one click, and it's in a checkerboard pattern to help you see individual squares. The squid and mermaid icons represent where certain statues appear in the maze.

Release history and charts
Any digital download of The Chosen Child can be bought at 6.99$.