The Secret Order 5: The Buried Kingdom

I've played enough Artifex Mundi HOPAs to know exactly what I'm getting when I sit down with one, and The Secret Order 5 delivers the studio's reliable formula with a few touches that push it above the average genre entry. You play as Sarah Pennington, a member of the Griffin Order, tasked with rescuing her friend Julie from the Dragon Clan inside a mythical underwater realm. The setup is breezy fantasy-adventure stuff, and while the story follows familiar beats, the pacing keeps things moving across seven chapters plus a bonus chapter that extends the adventure after the credits. The core loop alternates between hidden-object puzzles (HOPs), point-and-click inventory puzzles, and standalone minigames. The HOP scenes are the highlight here. Rather than simple shopping-list hunts, several scenes layer in interactive steps where you have to manipulate objects within the scene to uncover what you need, which gives them a satisfying little puzzle-box quality. The 34 minigames cover the genre's usual toolkit including laser-mirror redirects, rotating ring puzzles, and pipe-connection challenges, though a handful lean toward the busywork side of things. The point-and-click sections are serviceable; the logic for which inventory item applies where can occasionally feel arbitrary, but it's nothing that halts progress for long. What Buried Kingdom does particularly well is its bonus layer of collectibles. Dragon eggs in multiple colors are scattered across locations, and morphing objects require you to watch scenes actively instead of just clicking through. Neither mechanic is groundbreaking for the genre, but together they give completionists a real reason to slow down and look at the hand-painted environments rather than rushing to the next HOP. The fast-travel map is genuinely useful across the game's 38 locations, and the integrated hint system handles both newcomers and series veterans without being intrusive. Voice acting for the main cast is competent and consistent with the rest of the series. On the downside, veteran HOPA players who have followed this series from the start will notice some tonal inconsistencies. The story feels a bit looser than earlier entries, leaning more on a generic rescue-the-friend structure instead of the tighter Griffin Order mythology the series built up. Some reviewers who followed the series closely noted the narrative felt less focused than prior installments, and a few minigames pad time without adding much tension. The game also runs four to five hours for a standard playthrough, which is on the shorter end, though the bonus chapter adds a meaningful chunk. If you are new to hidden-object adventures, this entry is accessible without prior series knowledge and works as a comfortable on-ramp. If you are already a genre regular, the well-executed HOP scenes and the collectible layers are the real draw. It is not the series at its absolute peak, but it is a clean, polished entry that earns its Very Positive Steam rating without needing any asterisks. Alex, Scout Team