Around the World in 80 Days [Download]

by Playrix Entertainment

Product Features

• Spectacular Adventures - On Land, Sea And Air.
• More Than 80 Addictive Levels.
• Bonus Animated Screensaver.
• Marvelous Story Adaptation.

Product Details

• Downloading: Currently, this item is available only to customers located in the United States and who have a U.S. billing address.
• Note: Gifting is not available for this item.
• ASIN: B001L5TI56
• Release Date: February 27, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,318 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #21 in Video Games > Game Downloads > Casual Games > Puzzle
  • #37 in Video Games > PC Games > Puzzle

Product Description

You only have 80 days to circumnavigate the globe. Think that sounds easy? Travel back in time to the late 19th century and get ready for spectacular adventures on land, sea and air together with the English daredevil Phileas Fogg and his loyal French servant Passepourtout. Use the unique chance to visit four continents and complete the inconceivable journey in this outstanding puzzler based on the classic adventure novel by Jules Verne!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Match 3 to drop pieces style w/a hammer power-up game, December 7, 2009

By 

LanaFire (NY) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Around the World in 80 Days [Download] (Software Download)

this is a simple, short time limit, "match 3" by switching 2 jewels to drop 3-6 item pieces to the bottom.
it has the usual ice, double ice, chains, double chains & blocks at the bottom (so you have to move item piece to a diff column *hardest for me*). it also occasionally has hourglass for more time, money bags for extra points & very rare heart for an extra life. the item pieces, hourglass, money bags are obviously "dead" pieces that are in your way to match 3 jewels/stones, the more there are ...
the other unique style to this game is the hammer power-up. if you match 4+ you build up power to create a hammer that can destroy 1 jewel/stone. do even more match 4+ w/o using the hammer & it becomes more powerful to destroy all the stones of the color you choose. build up more 4+ matches & you have a bomb that destroys 5-6 jewels in any area you choose. the next/last power-up destroys in a line burst in 4-5 directions. if a jewel is chained or iced, you only take off, for example, one chain, not both. you can use the power-up as much as you want if you can match 4+ that many times in the time limit. you can only use the power-up in that level, each level you start from scratch.
you only get 5 lives to start & besides the rare heart, you need 100,000 points for another life. I get on avg. only about 5K points each level. if you run out of lives, you start from the beginning of that landmark. such as USA (last) would have about 12 levels.
the way this is done, it starts out incredibly easy & introduces new challenges slowly. also, it has a hint system to tell you where a match is if you don't make one for over 5 seconds (it automatically shuffles/restarts when there are no matches). as another reviewer said, if you make a match & falling stones/jewels keep making matches, you have to wait & watch as the stopwatch keep ticking (which can go on for 15+seconds). that was the only thing I didn't like. also, this game, especially towards the end, really focuses on the hammer power-up as many layouts can't be done w/o using the powerup more & more often during a level. Such as lone blocks away from the main area which makes it impossible to match since there aren't 3 blocks together.
besides intertwining a classic book by seeing static drawn faces w/speech bubbles & reading pages in between the 80 levels (not much of the book, more like cliff notes & you can skip all dialog & reading), you get a screen saver of 7 static landmarks that are in a sideshow: England, France, Egypt, India, China, Japan, USA. the only thing they do (besides rain & clouds move) is have the sun/moon rise/fall so you see the night & day change with lights (the night look I think is the only good one.)

this game gets more challenging by the 60th level, but it still gives you a little easier levels here & there. I didn't lose all my lives until day 78. yeah, so close & that's as far as I've gotten so far, I don't play often. this isn't as hard as "Atlantis quest", but it is maybe slightly harder then "big kahuna reef", though not by much if at all. I liked this more then "big kahuna reef", the hammer in the earlier levels made it incredibly easy & does give a level of satisfaction to see the problem disappear when used right.

edit: I finished all 81 levels. it has 2 more journeys, the exact same boards & retells the story again w/same time limit, except it adds more difficulties. so far on journey 2 to level 31 (start of india), it already adds "debris" which looks like a boulder/brain/fog & you can swap it w/jewels & get rid of it by dropping it down as well, though it will reappear at the top again.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Game with a Classic Theme, April 25, 2009

By 

Nuknuk (Springfield, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Around the World in 80 Days [Download] (Software Download)

This is great game adaptation from the classic book by Jules Verne, "Around the World in 80 Days". Another game from the mold of Bejeweled, Big Kahuna, Jewel Quest, Rise of Atlantis, etc. But with the classic background and wonderful story theme, this is a winner. Every time you finish a round it flips a page on the book, feeding a piece of the story as you continue your travel.

Graphics is superb with great details. The background music is soothing.

When you get a power hammer, it actually lets you know which tiles can be removed. The tiles will shake and makes it easy to see if your selection is strategically what you want to remove, or decide to pick another set of tiles. I just wish that you can carry over the power hammers when you finish a set of tiles to the next round.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Missing feature ruins the game, December 5, 2009

By 

invisiblgirl "invisiblgirl" - See all my reviews

= Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Around the World in 80 Days [Download] (Software Download)

The other reviewers are right - it's a gorgeous game with a fun concept, but it's slow - the in-between levels stuff is what makes the game interesting, but some elements (like score tallying and splash screens for each level) aren't really necessary. During the game, play is entirely stopped at times while the tiles move around after you've made a match - you have to wait until everything settles before you can make your next move.

You can turn off the 'hints' feature, but it doesn't stay turned off. I find this really distracting when I'm looking over the board to decide what I need to move to get a piece unstuck, but this seems to be an unfortunate standard with match-3 games.

My major complaint is the lack of an untimed mode. I'm not playing to get the highest score or best time - I'm playing to relax. I get enough deadlines and stress in real life, and I found myself getting very tense as the clock wound down. That pretty much took all the fun out of the game, and if there is a cheat code to get around it, I couldn't find it on a google search.

Going back to Big Kahuna - it's getting a bit old, but at least it doesn't stress me out.