Sonya is a casual game from Specialbit Studios; it tells the story of a girl in search for her sister. The game is almost entirely based on searching for hidden objects, combining them with puzzles and mini games typical for casual games.
You play as Sonya, a girl who has to rescue her sister Lily from some strange magical power. Through cutscenes you learn that someone broke into your house and left you locked up in a room. When you manage to get out, you find the house is in a complete mess and that someone attacked your sister, stealing her life force. Along an extensive journey, you will make use of your puzzle solving talents to follow clues and piece this story together, all aiming to save your sister's life.
To that end, you start by exploring different locations to find helpful objects, paying attention to cursor changes. Your search takes you to explore a forest where magic portals, orbs, and some weird creatures await you.
The tasks you need to solve along the journey will appear in a list at the top of the screen (get out of the house, create eyeglasses to protect your eyes, etc.), and these will often require you to walk from one location to another picking up objects and solving mini games. Two kinds of HOGs add a bit more variety to the game: the usual one, showing you a list of items; and another, where you have to find fragments of objects. Items that can help you solve a puzzle will be stored in the inventory, and those marked with the plus sign can be combined with others to create new tools. Hints in HOG scenes will help you spot an item immediately, and those used outside HOGs will give you the solution to a puzzle, making the game extremely easy.
I didn't like much the fact that some puzzles are too elaborate, requiring too many steps to finally solve them. Also, you will find yourself playing the same HOG scenes more than once. Other than these details, I found the game quite entertaining and loved its quiet atmosphere and graphics. Though it presents nothing you haven't seen before, its story is interesting and is surely a breath of fresh air in a genre crowded with horror-themed games.
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