Game: Mystery Coast: Treasure Hunt
Genre: Simulation
System: iOS
Developer|Publisher: Playdeo
Age Rating: 4+
Price: Freemium
Release Date: 2019
Restoring and cleaning
For the DS gamers among us: remember Fossil Fighters? I have fond memories of the game, and to be honest, not because of the Pokémon-like fighting. No, because in the game you found fossils to turn into real life monsters. Fossils that you had to carefully clean to the best of your ability, making them the highest ranking fighters. And somehow that was very therapeutic for me.
That’s what I instantly thought of when I saw Mystery Coast in the iOS App Store. Cleaning artifacts! Count me in!
In Mystery Coast you follow Storm, a young lady who was raised by her father to find treasure in the see. Her mother disappeared one day when she was just a girl, and that’s a mystery she really wants to solve. With her crew, she dives shipwrecks for lost treasures and artefacts, piecing together her family history.
An excellent combination of gameplay
What makes Mystery Coast special in my eyes is that it’s served as a combination of several elements. First, there’s cleaning the artifacts you dive up. You get assignments of what treasure your clients are looking for. But not by a dryly presented piece of text. No, with a video call as if you are talking to your mom or a colleague from work. And the story of Stom is told in chapters that you have to unlock, by gaining enough experience points. And those chapters are little film clips. And then on top of that, you can use your device camera to present the artifacts in AR in your own home.
The developers state that the narrative in the game is technically abstracted from the game mechanics. “Rather than interactions and game mechanics driving the story, and vice versa, the different elements of the game — narrative video, the workshop, the map and so on — are complementary but technically independent. This means that as a studio we can build as we go, opening up huge new vistas of possibility. We can build new tools for restoration in the workshop, come up with completely new stories, or refine those we have, based on where our players find most satisfaction.”
You see the potential right? Anyways, back to the gameplay itself.
In the game, you see your missions, the map of the route your boat can take to get to the next diving mission, the workshop where you clean the artifacts. Lastly there’s your collection, featuring the items you gave in your inventory and the collection showing the treasures you’ve brought up to the surface.
The freemium bottle necks
The freemium part of the game is as expected. You gain xp to progress by doing the main missions and other daily ones. It nets you money too. Leveling up you get diamonds, and you need those to get brushes and such to make quicker progress. And extra slots in your inventory cost diamonds too. And you need energy to dive.
As always, you are encouraged to spend your hard earned cash, but with some patience and not getting annoyed at the commercial videos in between, you can have a good gaming time in Mystery Coast.
The treasures that you have to clean very in worth from common to epic. No surprise that the rubber duckies are common. And you not always get the item you need to deliver to your client. Doubles happen, but you can always sell them at auction or use them to fulfill the daily missions.
Conclusion
It’s been awhile since I dove into games that were specifically developed for mobile devices. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised at Mystery Coast: Treasure Hunt and its combination of gaming, video clips and AR. Yes, it’s freemium and yes, all the mechanics are in place to seduce you to spend real money. But, you don’t have to and still take your time to painstakingly clean the lovely things that come up from the bottom of the sea.
Final Verdict: I like it a lot!
Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knows what you can do with the coins that you earn from auctions on the Mystery Coast game? Any info would be great!
You know, I checked back when I saw your question. But I can’t find what the coins do. Everything seems to revolve around XP, energy and diamonds!
So I THINK I’m done. I got the last item for a client and there’s now no way to advance. I don’t mind really. All games end. But there is nothing to tell you that you are done! And the inability to spend coins is maddening. Ok. Well, not madden maybe, but certainly stupid to put something in the game that you can’t use. I enjoyed the game play. Very relaxing… until the ending which is very anticlimactic ☹️
Hi Liz, glad you agree it’s a relaxing experience! But you’re right, strange that they don’t signal in the game that you’re done. They could intend to bring updates, not sure though.