I picked up Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion for the iOS a while ago when it was free but forgot to install it on my iPhone until recently. It is a hidden object game with a handful of minigames to break the tedium of searching for objects. Best of all, it’s short and not too difficult to complete.

With the Apple App Store celebrating its 5th anniversary this past week, I’ve been picking up free games and apps left and right. My iOS game library will quickly become something like my indie game library if I’m not careful. However, one of the nice things about mobile games is they are generally short and easy to put down after a couple of minutes. Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion is no exception and while it has a story, it is quite shallow and I found myself more interested in the actual game play rather than the story.

Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion is primarily a hidden object game with some minigames, like find-the-differences, identify-the-match, and jigsaw puzzle, to help break the monotony of searching for hidden objects in extremely cluttered rooms. There are two modes, a relaxed mode which is untimed, and a timed mode if you want an additional challenge. I played through the relaxed mode. I played the game on my iPhone, although I do also have it for the iPad. The main problem I had playing on my iPhone is the resolution looks very nice zoomed out, but when you zoom in, things get very blurry. Add to that the dark corners and some objects being only partially visible and you have a pretty good challenge on your hands.

Luckily, there is a hint function and it doesn’t cost you anything but time (it has a cooldown before you can use it again). For me, being lazy, I tended to find as many things as I could, then hit the hint button, then hunt around to try and find other things while the cooldown was ticking. It wasn’t frustrating in the least, except for when it would locate items that were partially hidden or blended so well into other objects that it was practically camouflaged.

As a detective game, you are also given a suite of tools like a magnifying glass (that wasn’t helpful because it just made a blurry image even more blurry), a flashlight (semi-helpful except when it reflected off of mirrors or glass), a UV light, and a fingerprint duster. The UV light and fingerprint duster are necessary tools in a few of the levels, but the magnifying glass and flashlight aren’t as much. The UV light, much like the flashlight, reflects off of shiny surfaces. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except when the blood is also white in color. Similarly, the fingerprint brush shows fingerprints in white, but on objects that are reflective or small, narrow surfaces, fingerprints can easily go unnoticed. So, it’s really a matter of personal taste, whether you find it frustrating or an extra challenge. I was quite happy with my hint button.

I wouldn’t play the game for the story, although the banter between your character (Chase) and her sergeant is mildly amusing. I felt Masters of Mystery: Crime of Fashion is a good relaxing-type game. I probably spent about 3 hours on it total, mainly playing one stage in ~5 min chunks, although I did have a marathon session (1 hr) before bed one night. It’s short and sweet and I can now mark it off of my unplayed games list.