1 Moment Of Time: Silentville. Suddenly your hands begin to wither as you stand at a train station. The world seems forlorn and desolate. You walk inside the train station to find an attendant who has been trapped in the same spot for….eternity? He tried to leave but never could escape, and so he now just sits around doing nothing. You begin to investigate the strange occurrences in this town…
1 Moment Of Time: Silentville is a hidden object game first seen with Big Fish Games, but now available on Steam courtesy of 2 Monkeys and their publisher, Jetdogs Studios. I had actually watched my wife play bits of this previously, and that factored into a decision I made late in my playthrough. More on that later.
The story for 1 Moment of Time: Silentville was fairly standard HOG (Hidden Object Game) fare, in that there is an overarching mystery you must solve. In this case, the town, Silentville, is frozen in time due to what appears to be occult activity, and you have to figure out how to reverse the curse that has enveloped the town. Nothing too extraordinary per se, but it was interesting enough
I think the story aspect of this game warrants a 6.5 out of 10. You’ve seen it before, but it is done reasonably well.
The graphics make used of washed out colors for the story board parts and lush scenery for the rest of 1 Moment of Time: Silentville to emphasize the desolation that can only come from being set apart from the wheel of time. Nothing really stood out as amazing, but 1 Moment of Time: Silentville is a pretty game.
This aspect of the 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville I would assign a 6 out of 10. A little bit above average and fairly consistent with the genre.
1 Moment Of Time: Silentville is a hidden object game, so you can expect hidden objects obviously. The puzzles were actually pretty decent overall. Nothing too mentally taxing, but well thought out as a whole. What 1 Moment of Time: Silentville does very well is blend in more traditional puzzle gameplay such as you might find in point and click games, and even has an Angry Birds-esque puzzle at one point. This does a good job of keeping 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville from getting stale or boring as can often happen when simply moving from one hidden object puzzle to the next. I found that to be a particularly refreshing aspect of 1 Moment of Time: Silentville. That is a great element to the game, and if I was to base my rating on this alone, 1 Moment of Time: Silentville would score quite highly.
Unfortunately, gameplay is also where the 1 Moment of Time: Silentville shows its greatest failings. The first frustration I felt while playing 1 Moment of Time: Silentville was when I realized I was always going to have to battle with the item bar on the bottom of the screen. A lot of the hidden objects and items you are required to click onto in 1 Moment of Time: Silentville are actually underneath that bar so not only can you not really see those items, but since the back button is also basically right there at the top of the bar you will find yourself constantly exiting puzzles and rooms despite your best intentions. This lead to quite a bit of frustration and in my opinion it was completely unnecessary. An actual back button and a collapsible item bar would have prevented these issues and should have been simple enough to implement and notable enough of an issue for 2 Monkeys to have actually done so. Either that or simply crop the screen so the actual on screen objects dont get lost under the taskbar.
Additionally, there are game breaking bugs in the game. I read about a few in the forums, and actually encountered one with maybe 10 minutes left in the game. This is where my wife having played  1 Moment of Time: Silentville previously factored in, as I was aware of a particular puzzle in the game involving an anchor, and when I reached that point, the anchor vanished. I had hoped it would reappear but it never did and that made it impossible for me to finish the very last section of the 1 Moment of Time: Silentville. That was particularly frustrating.
As far as gameplay goes, if I was judging based on the mixing of Hidden Object games with point and click puzzles, I would have rated this as an 8 out of 10. Unfortunately, the technical issues with 1 Moment of Time: Silentville rendered the game frustrating and unable to be completed, and so I must give 1 Moment of Time: Silentville a 2 out of 10 when it comes to gameplay. Highly disappointing.
The sound in 1 Moment of Time: Silentville is more of an afterthought and is mostly used to signal that you have found certain objects or triggered certain events.
Not truly noteworthy and pretty much a 5 out of 10.
While I actually enjoyed my time with 1 Moment of Time: Silentville, the frustrations and my inability to complete 1 Moment of Time: Silentville due to game breaking bugs and frustrating controls left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth. However the game is also in the sub 1 USD price category and for that price I have no problem suggesting that you find out for yourself. It’s fairly certain that not every play through will encounter game breakers, and it’s a good enough experience as a whole to recommend playing this if you have a couple hours to spare and dont really feel like playing anything less casual. I would say get 1 Moment of Time: Silentville if you see it for 50 cents or less (such as it is right now at the time of this writing on Steam).
