Cheap Safecracker (Software) (Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows 98) Price

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Customer Reviews of Safecracker

obsolete
i'm running WinXP pro, i can't get this thing to run at all-- it uses an ancient version of quicktime that you are required to install, as well as DirectX 7.0A.

unless you're running win 95, or you like installing old software and reconfiguring your whole system for one game, i'd save your money and get something a bit more modern.

Entertaining and Addictive
If you like puzzle games, especially games that have a sense of humour, you could do a lot worse than play _Safecracker_. The premise is a simple one: You're in line for a job at Crabb & Sons safe manufacturer, designer of elaborate safes for the well-to-do and eccentric. In order to get the job, you must break into the Crabb headquarters and retrieve bits of the combination of the "master safe" from safes located throughout the mansion's cluttered rooms. When you get the combination, you can crack the master safe and retrieve your job contract. You have twelve hours.

The game is played in real time -- you REALLY have twelve hours, and a convenient clock counts them down for you. I was afraid at first this would be a problem, but it didn't turn out that way; I actually finished the game in half the time allowed, cracking a few safes every night over the course of a week. None of the safes is particularly challenging to crack once you have all the pieces, and several are possible to crack without clues, using a combination of inspiration and educated guessing. (In fact, after cracking a certain safe, I was surprised to find almost the entire solution hidden in another part of the house, which I thought rather unnecessary). But the variety of safes is quite entertaining. You must do everything from math puzzles, to sliding tile puzzles, to win a game of poker to crack them.

The graphics are quite good. I was amused to see numerous reproductions of famous art masterpieces on the walls, with the heads and faces of the game programmers substituted for the real ones. There are several fun spots, like the computer that plays 30-second satires of real games. The music was simple enough and somewhat repetitious, but provided a nice background.

Two things keep me from giving _Safecracker_ a five-star rating. One is that the play area/screen size is very small -- only about four by six inches. I would have liked it to have been bigger. However, I still had the sense of being immersed in the environment, so it was not a major concern. The second is that there are numerous red herrings in this game -- hot spots where nothing happens, inventory items that are never used and the like. So you can waste a lot of time trying to do something where no action is possible.

All in all, however, I really enjoyed this game. I'd play another like it in a minute.