Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts

Review

Henry Hudson, the custodian of the Unsolved Mystery Club, has briefed you on an important mission. Five UMS explorers have disappeared while investigating ancient civilisations whose citizens may have had contact with extra-terrestrial beings.  The explorers were last seen in five different locations and you must follow their tracks for clues as to who abducted them and where they have been imprisoned. Good luck, new UMS explorer!

Unsolved Mystery Club: Ancient Astronauts is a casual/hidden objects/ puzzle game developed by Freeze Tag and published by HH-Games in July 2019 on Steam.

As you start the game, you’ll have to decide on which level of difficulty you’d like to play. You can choose either Casual or Expert, the difference being that on the Expert level it will take longer for the hint button to regenerate itself and it will take longer for the skip button to become active during puzzles. Next, you’ll be asked to pick up your gear and head up to the mission room. This sequence is basically a quick tutorial. Then, as you arrive at the mission panel, you’ll be given an ancient artefact known as the Black Sun. This artefact has 12 missing gems which you have to recover. Interestingly, each of the five missing explorers was also trying to locate these gems. It is said that when all the gems have been placed into the Black Sun, whoever handles the relic will receive a surge of power.

First you’ll travel to Mali, then to Egypt, Mexico, Peru and Antarctica. At the start of each level, you’ll see cut scenes showing what happened to the UMS explorer who was investigating that specific location. Each stage has 10 to 12 different places to explore, in which you will find objects, interact with other characters, and also activate puzzles and hidden objects phases. You’ll go back and forth a few times to open the next place within the stage until you successfully finish the level. Each level might take you around 30 to 40 minutes to complete. There is a strategy guide button (walkthrough) available if you don’t know what to do next. - nice and handy!

There is another scenario to unlock, but you must finish the first five to be able to play it.

Most of the puzzles are pretty simple, but there are a few that are not so easy and will likely frustrate you. I do like the hidden objects sequences as the items are well-hidden in each of the images.

The story is fictional, but based on true events, which is fun!  At some point during each level, you’ll unlock a video with a bit of historical background.

Graphically the game looks good, and has several soundtracks. One thing that annoyed me during my gameplay was this strange sound that popped up every so often when I picked up an object. Thankfully, you can mute the sound effect if you wish to. If you have a wide monitor like me, you might have an issue with the resolution above 1920 X 1080 and will probably end up playing the game in the windowed mode. Saying that, I can play the game on a full screen on my laptop as long as I stay at 1920 X 1080.