Little Shop World Traveller

It’s a sad fact that being good at games doesn’t instantly make you any better at the real life equivalents.

For example, I’m pretty nifty at FIFA 10, but place me in a real match at anything above (and possibly including) Sunday league level and I’d be completely out of my depth.

Similarly, I’m not boasting when I say I rock at RealNetworks’s latest hidden object game, Little Shop World Traveller. Yet, mysteriously, I’m absolutely terrible at finding things in real life - just ask my frequently exasperated better half.

Searching through the history books

The last game we covered in the Little Shop series was Little Shop of Treasures almost two years ago. That was a simple but playable title that tasked you with searching a number of environments for a list of fairly random objects.

World Traveller doesn’t mess with that formula at all. The key difference, as the title suggests, is that rather than a modest array of shops to scour you’re provided with a modest array of exotic locales.

So there’s a Clock Tower in England (okay, that’s not too exotic), an Egyptian bazaar, a Day of the Dead festival in Mexico, and an Australian tribal village. Those with eagle eyes and sharp memories might notice that this gives the game one stage less than the previous title, and there’s no denying that the game lacks longevity as a result.

I managed to work my way through the game’s four ‘Trips’ in around an hour or so of play with absolutely no problems, and without using a single hint.

Indeed, combined with a number of codes you find in the game that promise to unlock features in the PC version, there’s a sneaking suspicion that this is simply a hastily composed sample aimed at pushing you toward the more fully featured versions.

Putting on the Blitz

This suspicion is partly allayed by Blitz mode, which requires you to find every last object in each level as quickly as possible. It adds a certain dose of high score related charm, but the game really isn’t suited to such fast-paced concerns - particularly on a standard D-pad (as before, the game is better suited to touchscreen phones).

The core item-searching gameplay on display in World Traveller is as immediately fun, as ever, but in a field that now includes the slightly more sophisticated Dream Day Wedding franchise, RealNetworks needs to offer something a little more valuable to keep us searching.

Little Shop World Traveller

World Traveller is a bright and enjoyable hidden object title that struggles to find enough things for you to do
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.