Chocolatier: Decadence by Design

Having been a fan of the Chocolatier series I was both delighted and disappointed after playing this sequel, Decadence by Design. On one hand, PlayFirst’s latest proved to be a highly polished adventure with challenging gameplay and charming characters and story. But despite a few welcome additions, the gameplay itself is virtually the same as the original, which might let down those anxiously awaiting to see where the developer takes this coveted franchise next.

Like the games that came before it, Chocolatier: Decadence by Design is an economic simulation that challenges players to build up a successful confectionary company. Now set in a post-WWII economic boom, you take over the Baumeister family business from Alex, who sets off to find her missing husband after he failed to return home from the war.

You’ll start off in Zurich, but as with past games in the series, will travel all over the world in search of new recipes, buying ingredients and selling your creations to markets. These tasks usually come in the form of a quest, therefore you’ll be asked by such-and-such to buy XX amount of some ingredient from a person in some town, and you might want to haggle on the price, and then combine the ingredients to create a new product back in Zurich and then deliver to someone in another part of Zurich or the world in order to turn a profit. Characters will often make comments or ask questions related to the Baumeister family, which is a nice addition.

Selling your goods to shops that you own will always net a premium price for your chocolates. You’ll aim to, eventually, take control of major chocolate factories around the world, amass your fortune and distribute your goods around the globe. Some of the 20-odd ports you’ll travel to include Capetown, Tokyo, Toronto, Baghdad, Havana, San Francisco, the Falklands and Belize. You’ll see an Indiana Jones-style map with a little plane flying to each city.

While making chocolates almost always require cocoa beans and sugar, you’ll travel to find great deals on milk, hazelnut, lemon, mint, caramel, coconut, honey and other ingredients to bring to the factory and play the arcade-like mini-game to make your new product. The factories used to make the confections consists of rotating machines, each with a number of slots to house the ingredients. You’ll use the mouse to aim and fire the correct ingredients into each machine, such as shooting two cacao beans and one sugar to create a Dark Chocolate Bar (opposed to a Milk Chocolate Bar that consists of one cacao bean, one sugar and one milk). While it’s not too difficult – that is, until the machines start spinning faster and faster – some economic simulation fans may not want an arcade element in the same game, but I think it breaks up the game-play nicely.

Without giving much away, Chocolatier: Decadence by Design also lets you create coffee concoctions (with a different mini-game that has you fire ingredients to match three identical ones), truffles and infusions, exotic delicacies, and other products. But the real new addition to this sequel is the ability to design and name your own chocolates, and sell them into the marketplace. Players gain access to a secret test kitchen in Iceland, where they can try out experiments by mixing ingredients — such as cocoa, milk, blueberries and honey (“Marc’s Mouthfuls”) — which become part of the game’s recipe book and weaved into the story. Great idea, and it works well as you aim to impress Evangeline Baumeister with a couple hundred cases of your own creation. Too bad you can’t upload your recipe to an online — but in-game — recipe book and download other player’s delights.

Chocolatier: Decadence by Design returns to its roots and proves to be a very entertaining and challenging treat, but this reviewer wishes there were a few more delicious surprises in store. Still, you’ll love this tasty simulation.

Review by Marc Saltzman
Gamezebo, Inc.

Home Sweet Home 2: Kitchens and Baths

Given the continued popularity of interior design shows, it should come as no surprise that Home Sweet Home is receiving a sequel. Playing almost identically to its predecessor and emphasizing quantity over innovation, Home Sweet Home 2 is a fun but strictly by-the-numbers return to form, and one that’s beginning to lose its novelty value at that.

On the plus side, more is definitely the merrier here: Dee Ziner, Bill Dur and crew are back, only now, they’re packing over 500 customizable items from tables to cabinets, refrigerators, stoves, chairs and showers to choose from. In addition, unlocking the entire collection of goods on offer – which can be used to outfit your own personal space, or jazz up clients’ abodes – requires earning medals awarded for top-notch work.

As such, there’s plenty of replay value packed into the outing. Literally every scenario plays out slightly differently each time depending on how you configure objects and overall room layouts, with the immediate arsenal of available items dependent on how well you perform in past challenges. Thankfully, it bears noting that you can always revisit prior levels to pick up any goodies you might have missed.

Adopting an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude though, the setup has changed little from the previous outing. Once again, play is divided into two phases: Design and building. Starting out, you’re presented with a puzzle in the form of a description of the given client’s general character, ostensible desires and personality quirks. For example: A chicken wing magnate might prefer his walls and cabinetry lacquered in spicy oranges and reds, or a woman looking to curl up with a good book in the bath a tub, window and shelving.

Afterwards, provided a set budget and minimum quota of items to meet, you must then drag and drop furniture and accessories onto a 3D diagram of the room in question to construct each patron’s ideal layout. The more accurate your interpretation of their needs, and introduction of corresponding items, the more a client satisfaction meter rises. Once full, and if enough objects have been placed in the room, you’re awarded a score and the build phase can commence.

In this latter mode, you take control of a team of builders – specifically Goran, Brian and Liz – who must be picked up and dropped onto the outlines of highlighted objects to begin constructing them. (Furniture and accessories slowly color in the closer they draw to completion.) The catch being twofold, in that you must keep constant tabs on who’s assigned to what task, and maintain peak productivity levels by dragging either coffee or requested tools over to workers who need a quick pick-me-up or specific implement.

Meanwhile, time’s always ticking away, and it’s up to you – using either lone crew members or multiple parties to bang away faster on bigger goods or appliances – to finish the job before a set number of days runs out. Periodic injuries and the occasional need to remove trash also present additional challenges.

So far so good, except for one small point: What seemed so fresh and new last holiday season no longer has the benefit of that just-painted smell. Granted, we’re suitably impressed by the range of goods offered to choose from; multiple approaches that can be taken to completing each task; and ability to kit out custom rooms at your leisure and snap collectible photos for posterity.

But frankly, it’s a given that newcomers are going to eke way more enjoyment from the experience than returning vets, even provided fresh twists like the all-too-common need to strip existing rooms bare of patrons’ belongings before going all DIY on them.

Still, even alongside a few minor niggles – dropping workers on closely-located items can be a hit-or-miss proposition, client riddles remain mostly simple and one-dimensional – it’s hard to complain. Giving fans more of what they crave, Home Sweet Home 2 undoubtedly delivers the goods when compared with the average time management outing. We just hope that, should a third installment happen to grace casual game portals, creators Big Blue Bubble won’t be above giving the series a much-needed extreme makeover to keep curb appeal high.

Review by Scott Steinberg
Gamezebo, Inc.

Fabulous Finds

Not all hidden object games are created equal. Many savvy game designers – including Cara Ely of the Dream Day Wedding series – are adding their own unique spin to the popular genre. While it’s not without its share of problems, Fabulous Finds is a fabulous find indeed.

Here’s the premise behind this fun and fresh download: you’ve inherited a home in Carmel, California, from your Great Aunt Beatrice, but it needs some serious work to whip it into tip-top shape. In order to fund your renovation plans you decide to sell off your great aunt’s things through yard sales. Fabulous Finds is made up of three main types of game-play: a seek-and-find hidden-object task, yard sale puzzler and The Sims-like room decorator.

The first task is to go through each room and collect a number of items to unload at these themed yard sales; one theme might be “Health Nuts” (fitness items), another “Seasons and Celebrations” (costumes and such), “Fashion” (purses, shoes), “Travel and Transportation” (luggage, camera) and “Babies & Kids” (toys), and so on. Rather than read a list of words for objects to find in a messy room, you’re simply given the theme and must click on relevant objects. If you’re unsure what the item is, leave your mouse cursor on it for a moment and it will show you. After you’ve collected all the items required (such as 12), and any “helper” items (such as a charger for a camera), you’ve finished the room and can sell it all at the yard sale. If you need a hint you can ask for one, but clicking incorrectly too many times will take some time off the clock.

OK, onto the yard sale. With an angled top-down view of the front yard, customers will saunter in and begin to look around at all the items ready for sale. Hints will appear on the right-hand side of the screen, such as “the policeman is a dunk master,” so you’ll drag and drop the cop onto the basketball net. Or it will say, “the doctor is looking for a twin” so you’ll connect him with the twin bed. The animated characters who traipse around your yard look great and often resemble celebs and familiar characters, including Superman, Jackie O and Marilyn Monroe. Once you successfully match a character with the correct item you’ll move on.

The third game component lets you decorate a room in the home by selecting various designs for floors, walls, curtains, beds, decor and such, and use money earned in the yard sale to unlock new items. What’s more, by following the clues displayed at the start of this The Sims-like exercise you’ll earn up to 5 stars; it might say “don’t forget the caffeine” (add a coffeemaker to your kitchen), “use wood tones and neutral stones” (for floors) and “only the finest appliances will do” (the most expensive appliances should be used).

Sounds great, no? It is a lot of fun, yes, and there’s even a mini-game, where you need to clean out a storage room by dragging and dropping items into its correct box (such as clothing, fitness and seasonal items) – all using a flashlight to see the products. But there are some issues, too.

Aside from there only being one game mode, the items you’re supposed to find can be confusing – and frustrating when you’re wrong. For instance, in the first yard sale it says a mom-to-be wants a place to sit but when you drag her onto the bench it says it’s incorrect, but a second bench hidden by shrubs was correct. As players will soon realize, the first bench is simply part of the yard backdrop for every level.

The problems are worse in the hidden object game portion. For the “Babies and Kids” theme I clicked on obvious items such as a crayon, dice, dartboard and globe — but all were incorrect! This simply isn’t fair. Similarly, in “Health Nuts,” items that were correct to click on include a bike, weights and skipping rope – so why are boxing gloves wrong?

Shortcomings notwithstanding, Fabulous Finds is a fun spin on the HOG games. It would have fared much better had it not been for these annoying issues, but is still worth playing for fans of this popular genre.

Review by Marc Saltzman
Gamezebo, Inc.

Mushroom Age

Mushroom Age hardly sounds like a puzzle and hidden object game. Don’t let it throw you, and get ready for a big surprise. Meet the latest wonderful addition to the genre that involves more than finding objects. It blows away many of these games as it lasts much longer than other titles infamous for their short length. Furthermore, the lack of a clock takes away pressure so you can relish the experience.

The story begins with Vera arriving at the lab where her fiancé, Tom, works. She runs into an Albert Einstein look-alike who hates being mistaken for the creator of “E=MC2.” She demands to know where Tom is because their wedding takes place in two days. Einbock refuses to tell her anything.

Vera, a woman of action, grabs the bull — or cell phone in this case — by the ringtones and looks for Tom through time beginning with the year 3008. Time travels include the Stone Age and Jurassic Period, as well as visits to Socrates and Nostradamus.

Obviously, the cell phone does more than connect with Vera with friends and family. She lands in a graveyard in a futuristic location where many things fly just like cars on the highway. She encounters an ancient looking robot that easily malfunctions and laughs with a funny “A-A-A” sound.

All of the dialogue appears as text supported by audio. When the UM-21 acts up, Vera reboots the robot by entering a password with up to five guesses in a hangman style mini-game. If you miss, it loads a new password.

Vera’s search for Tom leads to a second mission as she stumbles onto an evil plot that she needs to stop. The story lasts for 23 chapters and about three days of standard play. Most games of this genre — think Azada and Mortimer Beckett and the Secrets of Spooky Manor — last one day. The tasks for every level vary and not all require just finding objects. For example, Professor Einbock faints, so Vera needs to find two items to help wake him up.

Mushroom Age, like most hidden object games, provides several ways of seeking objects. Some scenes contain shadows of the objects or a list. Some scenes require finding differences between two scenes. In other scenes, you seek out one thing and it leads to another and another as part of a bigger puzzle. For example, you need a key to unlock the gate. You’ll need another object to reach the key. Other scenes require seeking out all of the same items, but they may not all be identical — they could be in the same class like symbols, for example.

Hidden object games often revisit scenes, some disguise a scene as different locations. In Mushroom Age, returning to a scene has a purpose, and it never feels like anything repeats — except for several mini-games, but they grow more difficult with each turn and you aren’t stuck playing them too many times.

While objects and scenes contain sharp graphics, the movement of characters feels archaic. They look like cut out pictures. The animation moves the whole character from side to side or up and down when excited or fainting. It could be by design, but it lowers the quality of the visuals.

Sometimes it’s difficult to identify an object. Click the question mark whenever you need a hint, but you won’t get another until it fills back up. That’s it and no winning bonus hints. This works fine with one exception. When an object is in another room, the hint flashes to let you know you need to go in the other room. But it wastes a hint since it won’t point out the object. This challenges advanced players and frustrates everyone else.

Mushroom Age contains bits and pieces seen in one hidden object game or another. Though it may not have original ideas, it tells a creative and absorbing story while making all the games an important part of it. So what’s up with the name? We’re not in the business of spoiling things. But it does come into play in this gripping and humorous game that will please plant and non-plant lovers everywhere and of all ages. No green thumb required.

Review by Meryl K. Evans
Gamezebo, Inc.