This game is the sequel to "House of 1000 Doors: Family Secrets." You don't necessarily need to play through that one first to understand this one, but I would highly recommend it.
The gameplay is similar to its predecessor, and involves:
1. Item-based puzzles (find objects, then use them to solve tasks).
Compared to the first game, "Palm of Zoroaster" does a much better job of streamlining your puzzle solution objects. It drastically reduced the rate of item redundancy, and it also paced the items properly, so that most of the time you are only lugging around things that are germane to the puzzles at hand.
2. Traditional hidden object screens. As with "Family Secrets," these take the form of "junk with no coherent theme, scattered across a location." (Seriously, why are there always children's toys mixed in with priceless antiques and vegetables?) The puzzles were a good challenge level, incorporating two-part objects (i.e. pitcher + glass = "glass of water"), cached objects (stowed in drawers or chests), and click-to-zoom areas. The objects were well drawn, well delineated, and clearly labeled.
3. Bonus hidden "beyond" objects that appear in the background art and slowly morph back and forth between two different images. There are 46 total to find in the main game (approximately one per screen, including some detail screens). There is no incentive to collect these other than personal pride, and the locations are included in the game's built-in comprehensive strategy guide.
4. A handful of easy mini-games (rotating discs, swapping tiles, matching, etc.) that unlock new objects or open new paths. I liked all the mini-games in the main mission, but I actually skipped one in the bonus content because it was just too tedious (and I pride myself on never skipping anything in a casual game).
The music and character designs are pretty much recycled from the first game, which makes sense, but all of the background art and puzzles are new.
I liked the story of this game better. It was more coherent, and the plot was a bit less dark, centering around the history of a single cursed object instead of around cursed objects + unfortunate accidents + witchcraft + mediums and psy powers + your maligned grandmother. I also thought the locations were more interesting (even though they were stereotypical, rather than accurate, representations of those places).
One nit-picky thing that bothered me was the tone of the portals. In the first game it was clear that the portals led to a dream-like world where ghosts were trapped in the moment of their tragedy. In this game I was unsure at first whether I was in a dream world created by the house, whether I was in the actual past, or whether I was in the present day. This was mostly due to the letters and journal entries, but there was also an odd mash-up of anachronistic items in each location. The confusion didn't really affect my overall understanding of the plot or my ultimate enjoyment of the game, but it did momentarily break the immersive experience.
The voice-acting was also bothersome.
Some things this game did that the first game didn't:
- There is now a map that not only shows you where you have actions available, but allows you to instantly teleport to any screen in the game. This is a great feature to eliminate backtracking, or to give you a nudge in the right direction if you are stuck.
- They added an "expert" difficulty that has a slower hint recharge rate and eliminates the "interactive area" sparkles.
- They reused HOGs from the main game in the bonus content. (Booooo. Lazy.)
Overall, I enjoyed the art, the story, and the adventure game elements better than "Family Secrets," and I liked the new map feature, but the HOG puzzles and mini-games weren't quite as solid, and the bonus content felt rushed and superfluous.
I would rate the game a 7.5/10