Object of The Game: Re-visited

In Treasure Hunt - The Game, you have won a month-long vacation in the tropical Port town of CaraCasa. Their are six dive sites to access, in addition to the training, or Certification, area.

Your objective is two-fold:

To make as much money as possible in your new vocation. You can view your total earnings by looking at the High Scores screen, which is accessible from the main Opening screen, or you can touch the Shopkeeper, who will give you the balance of your bank account.

To recover the four pieces of the Treasure Hunt Amulet. The quest to find them is presented to you by Oscar the Octopus at one of the dive sites. The four pieces of the Amulet will be found somewhere in the dive sites after Oscar presents you with the Treasure Hunt Amulet Excursion.

Flow of The Game

When you arrive at the Port, Oscar takes you under his wing (or tentacle) and teaches you how to control your diver. You then visit the Dive Shop, where Jessie, the shopkeeper, shows you around. Jessie tells you about Chip Shott, who happens to be standing in a corner of the Dive Shop.

Chip is the first of the three Excursions Guides you will meet, and each Guide will present you with several Excursions, asking you to recover items from the various sites. The appearance of each Guide, and their subsequent Excursions, is triggered by the recovery of particular items in previous dive sites. For example, on Chip Shott's first Excursion you will dive on his ship, the 19th Hole. While there you might find a set of keys and a putter, among other things. When you present the keys to Chip, he will provide you with another Excursion, with additional items to find. Presenting the putter to Chip will trigger the appearance of General Chaos, another Excursion Guide, who will tell you a story about a Smuggler's ship. Locating a particular gun on the ship will trigger a new Excursion, in which you'll explore around a sunken helicopter. And it goes on from there.

So what are these various trigger items, and where are they located? Good question!

And one of your objectives is to determine what they are, and where they are. But before you start recording all the locations, remember this: many items can be found in one of several locations . . . nothing is ever as simple as it looks . . . providing you with a new experience every time you begin a new game!

Excursions

There are 16 Excursions in Treasure Hunt. Some are easy, and involve collecting only a single item, while others require you to collect considerably more items. You can review the 'Completeness' of your Excursions in your PDA (Personal Digital Assistant).

Here are the Excursions, and the Excursion Guides who will present them:

* Items for these Excursions will be found in more than one Dive Site

Options Screen

You can access the Options screen by pressing the 'wrench' icon while viewing the Area Map. The following settings are available:

Roll-Turn Sensitivity: This allows you to adjust the degree to which your device responds to tilting it to one side or the other, and affects your ability to turn your diver by tilting your Apple device. Making the sensitivity low will require you to use Pull (scroll) Turning to turn your diver.

Pull-Turn Sensitivity: This allows you to adjust the degree to which pressing (scrolling) sideways on your screen will affect your ability to turn your diver. Making the sensitivity low will require you to use Roll (tilt) Turning to turn your diver.

Treasure Collection: Some items are deeply buried, and by setting the Treasure Collection to 'More Taps' you can experience the staged recovery of the item, as it rises from the sand, is cleaned, and finally collected. The default 'Few Taps' setting enables you to recover the treasure items as rapidly as possible, with as few taps as possible.

Music Volume: Adjusts the volume of the game music. Moving the slider to the extreme left (lowest volume) will reduce the game music volume to its lowest setting, to allow you listen to your own music collection if you have chosen to hear your own music.

Sound Effect Volume: Adjusts the volume of the game sound effects.

Certification Dive Site

This is a diving training area, surrounded by an impervious wire fence, which is designed to keep you in a controlled area while you learn to control your diver. The fence also keeps you away from the sharks and barracudas!

You can return to the Certification Area at any time. If you run out of money to buy Dive Gas you can touch the Certification Training poster in the Dive Shop and gather some items of trash and treasure from the ocean bottom. This is the only area of the game in which the treasure and trash items, with the Exception of Oscar's can of tuna, continue to reappear with each visit.

You can also re-visit this area if you would like to review any of the instructions provided by Oscar.

Your Dive Shop

There's lots to see here. Touch everything you can, to see what it is.

At the beginning of the game you'll have to manage your money, and you'll be able to purchase only the basic items needed to dive. Later in the game you'll find you can afford to but anything you need.

You can carry only a certain amount of some items, and you'll hear a 'growl' tone if you have reached your limit.

Here are the items in the Dive Shop:

The Shopkeeper: The first time you come into the Dive Shop, Jessie will tell you things you should know. On subsequent visits she will pay you for any trash you collect, and she'll tell you how many Carras are in your bank account.

Excursion Guides: These will appear as you collect 'trigger' items throughout the game, and they'll provide you with Excursions, or quests.

Swim Fins: You must buy a set of these to dive.

Dive Mask: You must buy one of these to dive.

Dive Gas: These come in various sizes for various costs. The larger tanks last considerably longer. As in real life, Dive Gas is used up more rapidly the deeper you are diving.

Mesh Bag: This is a collection bag, made of mesh to let water drain from it, which you'll use to collect items. Every item has a different weight and/or volume, so some will fill the Mesh Bag more quickly than other items. They are sold in packs of three, and you can own a maximum of nine Mesh Bags at any time. When you are diving you can touch the Mesh Bag to display pictures of everything you collected . . . the closer you are, the more clear the pictures will be.

Lift Bags: These are used to raise items that are too large to fit into your Mesh Bag, or too heavy for you to carry to the surface. If you are carrying Lift Bags they are affixed to heavy items automatically, and an appropriate amount of Dive Gas is automatically taken from your Dive Gas tank to provide enough lift to carry the bag to the surface. A Lift Bag will not be used if you have insufficient Dive Gas in your tank. They are sold in packs of four, and you can own a maximum of 24 Lift Bags at any time.

Flashlight: Some areas of ships are dark, and the Flashlight is needed to see properly. The final dive site, called The Deep, is so deep that the ocean bottom is totally black, and a Flashlight is mandatory to enable to to see anything.

Batteries: These are used in Metal Detectors and in the Flashlight. They are sold in boxes of 12, and you can own a maximum of 24 Batteries at any time.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA): This is a device you can use to review the Excursions you have accepted, and to view the items you are asked to locate, or which you have already located. The PDA can be updated only when you return to the Dive Shop and interact with the appropriate Excursion Guide, who accepts the items you have gathered and then updates the PDA for you.

There are three types of PDA's, and their content is always synchronized:

Dive Shop PDA: This is 'lent' to you at the beginning of the game, before you can afford to purchase your own. It is always available in the Dive Shop.

Standard PDA: This can be taken into your dinghy, but it is not waterproof, and cannot be used underwater.

Waterproof PDA: Can be viewed anywhere, including underwater.

Metal Detectors: These are useful for locating items that are buried and contain gold or iron. When a Detector senses an item it causes the item to glow. The brightness of the glow indicates the relative size of the object. When you are close enough to the object, touch the glow to collect it.

There are two types of Detectors:

Gold Metal Detector: For locating items with any gold content.

Iron Metal Detector: For locating items that contain silver, iron or steel.

Camera: You can use the Camera to snap screenshots of anything that interests you, or that you wish to share with a friend, or post on a social networking site.

Dive Gas Refill: Touch this wall-mounted box to refill all your Dive Gas tanks at once. It's the buy-of-the-month, and costs only 200 Carras to fill any number of tanks!

Cash Register: Touch the Cash Register to display a receipt that shows the items you have selected to purchase. Press the red 'minus' sign to delete the item. Press the 'Purchase' button on the receipt to buy the items. Sorry, no refunds!

You can also re-visit this area if you would like to review any of the instructions provided by Oscar.

Diving

Learning to swim might take some practice. You'll find that slow scrolls on the screen will give you better control over your diver, whereas rapid scrolling might not provide the results you expect. We have tried to present you with the feeling of truly swimming underwater, and it is difficult to turn rapidly underwater.

Moving forward: Touch your finger to the screen and then pull your finger down the screen. Just pretend that you can dig your finger into the sand on the bottom, and pull yourself forward.

Pull-Turning: You can turn by pulling your finger sideways on the screen. Again, just as though you are digging into the sand, or cupping your hand to pull yourself through the water. You can adjust the sensitivity of the screen to this 'Pull-Turn' in the Options screen.

Roll-Turning: You can also turn by tilting the device to one side or the other. The response is slow, sort of like flying. You can adjust the sensitivity of the device to this 'Roll-Turn' in the Options screen.

Stopping: You can stop by pressing your finger upwards on the screen, just as though you have your hands open in front of you, and are trying to stop by pushing against the water.

If you run out of Dive Gas you will faint, but recover in your dinghy.

Dangerous Critters

You will contact quite a few dangerous fish down there, but you will not 'die' in the game and have to start the game again. Rather, you will manage to swim back to the dinghy, where you will miraculously be healed. The downside is that you will have dropped your Mesh Bag!

Your health varies between a state of 10 (perfect health) and zero (lights out!). Health state is displayed by the color of your diver icon in the upper left corner of your screen.

The health state colors are:
White: good health (10 - 7 health points remaining)
Yellow: mediocre health, better be careful (6 - 3 health points remaining)
Red: very poor health, think about going to the dinghy (2 - 1 health points remaining)
None: lights out, your dive is over and you've dropped your Mesh Bag (0 health points remaining)

Each dangerous fish will inflict a certain amount of damage to your health. Here are the types of dangerous fish you will encounter, and the amount of injury they inflict:

Eel: 5
Great White Shark: 5
Hammerhead Shark: 4
Mako Shark: 4
Jellyfish: 4
Sea Snake: 3
Barracuda: 3
Stingray: 2

The Dinghy Screen

The name of the dive site is shown at the top of the Dinghy screen.

Your Dinghy will carry all the items you have purchased in the Dive Shop. When you touch an item it is placed on the board at the bottom of the screen, which displays everything you are carrying. To return the item to the Dinghy, touch its image on the plank at the bottom of the screen. If the Dive Gas tank shown on the plank is empty, touch another one to exchange it. You can carry only on tank (or a set of double tanks) on you during a dive. You can exchange Metal Detectors in the same way, because you can carry only one at a time.

Lift Bags, a PDA or a Camera will be carried by your diver at all times, and will not be displayed on the plank at the bottom of the screen.

The state of the Batteries in your Metal Detector or Flashlight is shown when you select the item. To replace the Batteries, touch the Box of Batteries on the Dinghy seat.

If you have run out of Dive Gas you will be returned to your Dinghy. You'll then have to select another Mesh Bag, to complete your outfit and be able to dive again.

FAQ's

Q. What happens to my Mesh Bag when I run out of Dive Gas?

A. Basically you drop it, because you have fainted and floated to the surface. Fortunately Oscar the Octopus always finds it for you, and if you can find Oscar you'll see your Mesh Bag nearby.

Q. Why can't I avoid the dangerous fish that hurt me?

A. You can, if you see them coming. But sometimes they'll sneak up from the side or from behind you.

Q. Why do some of these dangerous fish attack me? In the real world a barracuda does not always attack divers.

A. True, but this is only a game after all!

Q. How do I return to the Dinghy?

A. Touch the Dinghy icon, which appears when you are swimming near the surface.

Q. Sometimes, when I go into the Dinghy, the 'splashing diver' is not in the top-right corner. Why is that?

A. The 'splashing diver' is the icon you press to dive, and it displays only when you have selected the basic items necessary for each dive: Dive Mask, Swim Fins, Mesh Bag and Dive Gas . . . and there must be some Dive Gas remaining in the Dive Gas tank.

Q. How many times can I be attacked before I cannot dive any more?

A. It depends on the size and type of dangerous fish. Watch the color of your diver icon, and if it gets yellow, be watchful. If it gets red, return to the Dinghy for first aid, before you get hurt by another dangerous fish and lose your Mesh Bag.

Q. When I look at the Area Map, some dive sites have a Diver's Flag, and others have a life-ring. What's the difference?

A. Sites with a Diver's Flag are sites which you cannot yet access, because you have not located the trigger item which enables the Excursion Guide to appear and/or offer the Excursion to you. Sites with a life-ring are accessible to you.

Q. When I played the game the first time I found the ring in the Captain's chair, but the next time I played the game it was not there. What happened?

A. Many, but not all, items have up to four possible locations, and we randomly place the items at the beginning of each game . . . just to increase the challenge!

Q. Sometimes, when I press the Compass to look at the Mini-Map, I can see the Map has not been wiped away in certain areas where I know I swam. Why?

A. The Mini-Map is wiped to show areas where you have been close enough to the bottom to be able to see items on the ocean floor. If you are swimming at the surface you are often too far away to see the bottom, so the Map will not be wiped to present a clear picture of the bottom.

Q. Why can't I carry both Metal Detectors at the same time?

A. Oscar the Octopus could, but typically divers have only two hands!

Q. When I touch the training posters on the counter in the Dive Shop, nothing happens!

A. Quite so, Oscar has taken a vacation, so training is not available! Sorry, that was our sense of humor kicking in . . . truth is, we had always planned to release the training courses in a future release of the game, as opposed to having it available at the first release of the game. Our apologies to you if you are inconvenienced by this, and we'll send you an automatic update when the feature is available.

Q. OK, so how can I get back into the Certification Area, to collect more trash and the rest of those coins when I run out of money?

A. Unfortunately, at this point the only way to return there is to begin a new game. Usually someone will run out of money only at the beginning of a game, if they have not been able to collect many items in the 19th Hole site. We hear you though, and will change this.

Q. You have rated this game at 4+, but my young child is afraid whenever a dangerous fish attacks and the blood appears on the screen. Matter of fact, I don't really like the effect either!

A. As a result of your comments we're providing a 'Danger Fish' setting in the Options screen. It will enable you to turn off all effects of the dangerous fish (sound, visuals and how it affects your diver's health). We'll do our best to make this game an enjoyable experience for all players.