San Francisco game publisher Skunk Studios added a whole new wrinkle (or should I say, "ripple"?) to the hidden object genre last year with the release of Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Ef.jpg)
fect. The game followed Jesse, heir to the intrigue and gadgetry of her eccentric, time-traveling family and ended on something of a cliff-hanger. With Flux Family Secrets: The Rabbit Hole, we follow Jesse er...down the rabbit hole.
The game follows a similar formula to its predecessor, although this time, Jesse's sent back 30 years to 1981 and confronted with a grade-school version of herself. This mini-Jesse helps the adult Jesse to uncover her parents' plot to train her older sister for some mysterious task, as well as the reasons for her own exclusion from it. Both of the Jesses must work in concert with her (their?) loving, (albeit odd) grandfather, whose time-traveling devices have at various points in history, caused disastrous changes.
Throughout the game, gamers search for pieces of Jesse's grandfather's machines in hidden object scenarios and work to put history back on course by solving puzzles. On the way, they meet such historical greats as Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere and Henry Ford and learn some interesting tidbits about the lives and the philosophies of these men.
The Flux Family series offers a fun take on hidden object play that allows you to move objects and open things in order to find the items you need. Aside from this, the game's strengths are its art, which offers some amusing caricatures of historical figures and its music, which alternates between a moving orchestral theme and a whimsical xylophone-heavy piece that almost belongs in a cartoon.
Where Rabbit Hole is a little weak is in its gameplay structure and story. The first Flux Family Secrets took you to a broader range of historical times and places and as such, offered more variety and more opportunities to learn. There was a lot of back and forth among scenarios, finding objects in scenes that were necessary for use in other ones. Rabbit Hole by comparison, feels much more static and the need to move among scenes is more or less eliminated.
If Rabbit Hole's gameplay feels like it's missing something, the story also feels less complete. A very little story is spread across the entirety of the game and in preparation for another cliff-hanger, it ends in a fairly unsatisfying way. It's one thing to leave a few questions unanswered--quite another to leave them all that way.
In any case, Flux Family Secrets: The Rabbit Hole does have enough fun and interest to scratch the itch for fans of the series, and will hold us over until the third installment arrives to (we hope) answer our questions.
The game is available on Big Fish Games for $6.99. Big Fish offers a monthly punch card that gives you a free game for every six games you buy.
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