There’s treasure out there, and if anyone can find it, it’s Alicia. One part adventurer one part daughter searching for her lost father, Ms. Quatermain heads out with a pack of explosives on her back and a few workers at …
There’s treasure out there, and if anyone can find it, it’s Alicia. One part adventurer one part daughter searching for her lost father, Ms. Quatermain heads out with a pack of explosives on her back and a few workers at her side, ready to carve a path through jungle and temple. Nothing’s going to get in her way. Not even a pack of baby pandas.
Alicia Quatermain: Secrets of the Lost Treasures is a time management game that focuses on gathering resources as efficiently as possible. Alicia ventures through a variety of locations with maze-like roads stuffed with piles of stone, food, and gold. Send out workers to grab the easy pickings, then use those resources to clear piles of rubble or fill in pits that block the way. The more you gather the more of the map you can open up, giving you access to resource generating buildings and other surprises.
Alicia isn’t content to sit by and let her workers have all the fun. Once her path is clear, she can strut out and blow up blocks with her handy pack of explosives. Alicia is also the only character who can interact with certain treasures or push hidden buttons on the screen. She’ll also enlist the help of certain NPCs who clear other road blocks out of the way, such as Jade Lee, the resident panda rescuer.
As you progress through Secrets of the Lost Treasures, stages get more complex and resources become leaner. To help speed things along you can unleash timed power-ups that do things like provide an extra worker or make everyone faster on their feet. These come in especially handy when surprise events come your way, such as the never-do-wells that plant bombs early in the game. Hey, nobody said being an adventurer was going to be safe.
Alicia Quatermain: Secrets of the Lost Treasures is built like your everyday resource management game, but it does things slightly different in a number of areas. For starters, the base game is extremely simple and easy to understand. There are only a few resources to worry about, buildings are a snap to set up and add to your resources pool automatically, and obstacles are clearly labelled with their requirements, no fussing about required. This provides a fantastic jumping off point for the more intriguing aspects of the game that spice up some of the levels. Yes, the dynamite guys are pretty fun, even if you’ll hate yourself for not disarming the TNT in time.
All in all, Alicia Quatermain: Secrets of the Lost Treasures is a surprisingly captivating entry into the resource management genre. Simple to learn, fun to master, and with enough gameplay variety to set it apart from the rest of the pack.
