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| genre= Adventure, puzzle | modes= Single player | platforms= Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, iOS }} ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water'', often shortened to ''Dream Chronicles 5'' or ''The Book of Water'', is a 2011 adventure and puzzle casual game developed by KatGames and originally published by PlayFirst. It is the fifth installment in the ''Dream Chronicles'' series, the fourth sequel to 2007's Zeebys-winning game ''Dream Chronicles'', and the middle part of the second unfinished trilogy titled ''Lyra's Destiny''. Set in a mystical world of realistic fantasy where mortal and fairy realms collide, continuing the story from where ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air'' ended, ''The Book of Water'' tells the strange journey of an extraordinary girl named Lyra who has found her way home only to discover that the Fairy Queen of Dreams—her family's biggest rival—has cast a menacing storm over all of her beloved Town of Wish. The town is completely desolate, her mother is missing, and her father is gravely ill, forcing her to embark on a quest to counter the evil spell and seek answers to save her family and hometown.〔 The game includes both new and returning characters and locations from the previous games. ''The Book of Water'' was first presented limitedly as a beta version on December 3, 2010. Another beta version was leaked on January 18, 2011. Just two days before the game's scheduled release, the content was leaked online. It was released worldwide as a digital download under two editions, Collector's and Standard—on April 24 and May 27, 2011 respectively—by PlayFirst. Each edition was quickly available on PlayFirst's exclusive partner, Big Fish Games, on the following day of each release date. Both editions feature the main single-mode game, while the Collector's one also includes a bonus game in which players can play as Faye, three extra locations, several mini-puzzles, eight wallpapers, and a detailed walkthrough from the developer.〔 On August 31, 2011, a high-definition version of this game was available via App Store for iPad device.〔 Similar to the fourth game, it was met with mixed reviews from casual game critics, describing it as "a pure point-and-click adventure experience of the old ''Myst'' school of gameplay, with some minor hidden object elements mixed in," though they heavily criticized it for "() let the (Chronicles'' ) franchise down" and for being short, dull, uninteresting, and ending terribly, which is "bound to leave a bad taste in your mouth." The game itself was moderately successful, and reached the top-ten of the charts in most major casual game charts, but failed to attain the top position in any of them.〔〔 It only reached the top of the iWin.com's ''Top 100 Games'' and Shockwave.com's ''Top Download Games'' chart.〔 Compared to other games in the series, it is the lowest charting and reviewed ''Dream Chronicles'' game to date. ''The Book of Water'' was preceded by ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air'' (2010). As PlayFirst had initially announced and ''The Book of Waters final scenes implied, there would be a sequel called ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Fire'' to be released. But soon after ''The Book of Water'' was released, since July 2011, PlayFirst cancelled releasing casual games on PC/Mac platforms in order to focus on its growing mobile gaming market. Because PlayFirst holds the rights to publish the ''Dream Chronicles'' series, that forced its developer KatGames to move on with other projects; namely ''The Cross Formula'', a ''Dream Chronicles''-alike game was released in early 2012. Partly due to that cancellation, ''The Book of Water'' was cut short its development time, thus making itself felt unfinished and awkward; it was also the last collaboration between PlayFirst and KatGames, and ''The Book of Fire'' will not be developed and released. == Gameplay == ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water'' is structured much like ''Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air'' and other games in the series with some minor twists. There are not so many improvement in gameplay overall compared to other ''Dream Chronicles'' games. It is more of a quest-like adventure than a traditional hidden object game, a mixing of adventure and puzzle game. Featuring loads of puzzles and logical quests with different difficulties, ''The Book of Water'' still assure that puzzles are well-tricky and tightly blended with the story, which is a typical feature of quest or click-and-point games. There are no lists of items to find but a huge amount of inventory based puzzles, logical riddles and quests to solve, which have been scattered through the locations in the game. 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. The hint system is much more evolved and enhanced than all of previous ''Dream Chronicles'' games. Players can use "Locator" button on the left edge to highlight objects that they can pick up, including Dream Pieces. The "Locator" needs to be fully charged to work, and it will charge up over time. But if there are not any, the power of hints is not used. Some puzzles have a skip button available, players just have to wait until it is filled to use it. There is also a help system at players' disposal. By clicking on this button, players will be revealed a hint or objective in a board. The hint or objective disappears from the board when is achieved. The notable feature, which only featured in the Collector's Edition of the game, is that players can play as Faye in the bonus chapter, besides playing as the main character Lyra. Play as Faye in the prequel to Lyra's journey in ''The Book of Water'' find out what happened just moments before Lyra's story began. Like the previous game ''The Book of Air'', ''Dream Chronicles''’ feature factor called "Dream Jewels" come with four special powers (one ability was lifted compared to the fourth game). They can be used to light up a dark place ("Illuminate"), reconstruct objects of things broken apart in pieces ("Weld"), reveal invisible things or secret ("Reveal"), and permits seeing someone Lyra love that is far away ("Vision"). In order to activate Dream Jewels, players need to fill them with Dream Pieces which are thrown throughout. At the end of the game, players earn an overall high score. The faster how players can complete the game, the more Dream Jewels and Dream Pieces they can find, the fewer times they skip puzzles, the better score they will earn. When players play again under the same name, some of the key items themselves will be in different places the second times around. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dream Chronicles: The Book of Water」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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