Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart is one of the better Hidden Object games. Admittedly, it's also one of the easier titles out there, even for the genre, but it's still a pretty enjoyable romp for fans of casual gaming.
Reminiscent of the Ben Stiller movie, Night at the Museum, but in a very bad way, Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart presents the problem of a long dead infamous pirate coming back to life and kidnapping the museum owner's daughter, before taking her to his ghost ship. Thus begins a quite spooky story of intrigue and adventure, with a liberal scattering of casual gaming elements.
It's a pretty fun ride, too. Players are presented with more adventure game type puzzles than usual. While they're rarely taxing, it's fun to explore the scenery and piece together clues and solutions. Hidden Object scenes are still here but they're far from compulsory. Instead, Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart mixes things up by giving players the choice of completing a game of Mahjong solitaire instead. Both options are pretty simple to complete, but it's enjoyable to have that variety. A selection of mini-games continue to keep things interesting.
The only thing that Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart struggles with is its difficulty level. It is far too easy to complete. It's slightly longer than most Hidden Object games but it's never taxing. There's no way of failing the Mahjong game, plus it's possible to skip all of the quite straightforward puzzles if the player so wishes. Obviously, there'd be no point in doing this all the time but there's hardly any need to, anyhow, as everything is so simple.
That sounds immensely negative but it's not really, as it is fun to play through Nightmares From The Deep: The Cursed Heart. It's just unfortunate that the harder difficulty level really doesn't feel that much harder than the standard level. It's a worthy game for fans of the genre and benefits greatly from some nice original touches. Just don't expect to be challenged.